Help with Soap calc...

Hi everyone,

Iam a bit stuck with soapcalc. I am trying to make a recipie using milk fat ( coconut milk) but i dont understand the amounts it gives me.
How does this work. I want to use a mold of 17.5x8x5.5cm. Do i put the amount of the total content of the mold in as total oil weight? also, after i choose milk fat as a option and i get a gram amount in the row with the oils, but i also get a water amount with the lye. What should i do? use both the water amount and the milk fat amount? i think i am doing something wrong here. Will i not end up with to much liquid in my soap... i have tried a recipie of someone els before and it seems fine. Now i am tried to put together my own recipie and i dont get it....anyone??? Thank you all in advance!!

SoapCalc will not calculate milk as a separate liquid...so you would either:
a) substitute the milk for the exact liquid amount called for
b) subtract a small amount of the liquid from your lye mixture, and add that subtracted amount as milk at trace
c) use half milk and half water (or whatever proportions you deem worthy) for your entire liquid amount in your lye solution

For example, if your recipe calls for 20 oz of Water and 8 oz of Lye, you could:
A) Use 20 oz of milk and 8 oz of Lye
B) 16 oz of Water with 8 oz of Lye for your solution, then add 4 oz of milk at trace (for a total of 20 oz of liquid)
C) 10 oz Water & 10 oz Milk with 8 oz of Lye

OR, if you are straining pure fat from the milk, you would just include that as an "oil" in the calculator. I never do this, but I would assume you could enter it as the "Milk Fat, any bovine" option, even though it's Coconut Milk. Personally, I like option B above because you're less likely to scorch the milk with the lye that way, and I haven't had an overheating issue this way. I always use Coconut Milk (if I'm using milk) and that's how I do it. Lots of soapers use milk as their entire liquid amount that they use for their lye solution with no problem.

Here's a tutorial on how to figure how much soap your mold should hold:
http://soapmakingforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3461

Thank you so much...this is helpfull information. I took added my water and milk amount of soapcalc together as my liquid amount. I even occasionally squrted some more water in there... Ill have to see how they comewhen dry.

Your mold 17,5 x 8 x 5,5 will hold 770 ml of soap.
I would use 500 gr of oils, ex 80% oliveoil and 20% coconutoil, and not change anything else on soapcalc,
= 38% water, superfat at 5%. it will give you a soapmength that will fit your mould.

Up to half of the content in coconut milk is fat. I use the information on the can for fat content and calculate that into my recipe. It will make a meaningful difference in your superfat % if it's not calculated as part of your base recipe. Many soapers like the extra conditioning that coconut milk brings to the finished product

judymoody said:

Up to half of the content in coconut milk is fat. I use the information on the can for fat content and calculate that into my recipe. It will make a meaningful difference in your superfat %.

Click to expand...

This +1. A lot of soapers treat coconut milk like animal milk (freeze and add to lye water) I didnt bother with that. It seemed fiddly to my mind. I added mine at trace intead and my soap turned out perfectly. Coconut milk is basically water, fibre and coconut oil. On the can I used it stated the fat content was 18% of total weight and water 60%. I used 100gms so I roughed out 18gms coconut oil and 60gms of water.

Added the coconut oil content of 18gms into my total oils in soap calc
Subtracted 60gms of water from my water amount.
Made lye water with the (now discounted) distilled water.
Added the room temp coconut milk at thin trace. The soap thickened really quickly after I added it, stirred a bit and poured.

The result? Creamy white coconut milk bars.