Critique My Recipe?

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Raccoon_Army

New Member
Joined
Jul 18, 2017
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Hi all, new to this site but have made two successful cold process oven process soaps now. Am interested in crock pot soaping just because I'd like to be able to test out small batches sooner before making a larger batch. Have heard crock pot soap ~can~ be quicker to use because the saponification is generally done within 48hours. I would be testing the soap after 2-7 days of curing time.

I have a mild skin intolerance to coconut oil and am hoping to go with a soap that is moisturizing and maybe geared towards helping with acne or dry skin, etc. I am a bit all over the place I admit.

I believe it was added as an attachment. I have been having computer issues and need to restart but don't want to lose post, will type it out when it restarts.

View attachment Soap recipe 3.pdf
 
Welcome!

Cold process and hot process both take the same amount of time to cure, it's a common misconception that HP cures faster. The curing process removes excess water and changes the entire crystal structure of the soap (courtesy of our local science whiz, DeAnna!). Whether CP or HP, you should cure your bars for a minimum of 4-6 weeks. :)

HP does have some benefits - you can use temperamental fragrances that may not cooperate in CP. And you have a bit more control over choosing your superfat oil.

As for your recipe, I see you have no value for your superfat? It should be somewhere between 3-7% for most general recipes.

And because your recipe is all soft oils, you will likely need a nice long cure to harden your bars up. You may want to consider adding a hard oil like lard, tallow, palm or shea.

You may want to remove the soybean and grapeseed oil from your recipe - these oils in particular have a short shelf life and can make your soap develop DOS (dreaded Orange Spots - a sign of rancidity). And make sure your safflower oil is high-oleic otherwise it is also a DOS-prone oil.

Check out this handy resource on what different properties oils have: http://www.lovinsoap.com/oils-chart/
 
Welcome Raccoon_Army! :wave:

Ditto all that Toxicon said^^^.

Your recipe has a lot of soft oils in it, which means your soap will more than likely need a longer than normal cure time for things to harden up half way decently. Even once fully hardened, it will be on the softer side of things as solid bar soaps go because of all the high-linoleic oils in it.

Speaking of linoleic- the total linoleic acid content in the fatty acid profile shows a whopping 43.4%. High amounts of linoleic (i.e., anything much over 15%) puts your soap in the high danger zone of coming down with DOS/rancidity. To remedy that, I would either completely remove both your grapeseed oil and soy oil, or at least decrease them while increasing your olive oil until you can see the linoleic % come down to more reasonable/safe levels.

I highly second Toxicon's excellent suggestion to add a hard oil or a butter to your formula to help firm things up a bit....something more along the lines of this, perhaps, sounds a lot better to me:

Olive oil 50%
Lard 35%
Castor oil 5%
Grapeseed 5%
Soy 5%


IrishLass :)
 
Ditto what has been said.
I myself would use vinegar for half of the water and calculate the extra lye needed to react the acetic acid. There are several good threads on doing this. The acetic acid reacts to become sodium acetate which helps harden your soap.
It does NOT shorten cure time but does add to the hardness of the finished product.

If you are not yet comfortable doing the vinegar thing wait and we'll help ya through it later.:bunny:
 
Welcome, Racoon_Army.

You are correct that you can test the soap sooner, and for that reason, it seems to make sense to HP the soap while you are still trying to perfect a recipe. However, be aware that the soap will not be at its best that early. A proper cure improves the performance far more than I ever realized when I was new to soaping. Besides that it also makes the soap last longer. But as long as you realize the soap will 'melt' faster while that young, that is okay. But keep out a couple of bars to do a longer cure and compare notes a few months down the road. I guarantee you will be amazed at the difference.

I am guessing that because there are no animal fats in your soap recipe, that you may not want to use them and that is fine. You can obtain perfectly good soap without them if that is your desire. When I started I did not make any soap with animal fats, and have only made some with since then for some members of my family who have no specific objections to animal fats in their soap. My all vegetable oil soaps I started with are actually quite nice soaps, and I stopped needing lotions for my skin almost immediately. So although I would not claim that they moisturize or condition anyone's skin, I am positive they are not stripping my skin of necessary oils like the store bought soaps I used most of my life. My DIL raves about that aspect of my soaps and it really warms my heart.

If you have access to cocoa butter, it's nice one to add into your soap to give it a little more hardness. If you don't want to order online and don't really want to spend a lot of money on it, you could give it a try for a small investment just to see how you like it. When I started out I bought a couple of sticks of 100% cocoa butter at Dollar General and added that to my soap to increase hardness and for the benefit of the oil in soap. For a 500 gram batch, one stick is a little over 5%, so that's not bad for only a dollar a stick. Here's what they look like at my DG, although there are other brands that look a bit different.

61Cy0uQw9tL._SX522_.jpg


And I do like the vinegar addition to soft oil soaps that Steve mentions. It has really helped to harden them. But I didn't start doing that in the beginning. So perhaps try one with and one without so you can compare the difference.
 
Ditto what everyone said. You need more palmitic acid, stearic acid for this soap to last longer. Hence the palm, tallow, or lard suggestion. Soy wax & shortening are other options ( but not interchangeable with the above ). ;)
 
Hiya Racoon, and Welcome! :bunny:

Soap Qualities (Recommended “Range” in parentheses)
12 Hardness (29 - 54)
0 Cleansing (12 - 22)
87 Conditioning (44 - 69)
7 Bubbly (14 - 46)
19 Creamy (16 - 48)
116 Iodine (41 - 70)
77 INS (136-165)

12:88 SAT/UNSAT Ratio

YIKES! Those numbers look like "soap soup" to me! LOL Maybe don't even soap them. Just combine and use as a scented body oil. (seriously) I do like the 0% SF and 33% water tho, so that's a start. I use 0% SF in soaps high in liquid oils. But that's just me... I'm not recommending you do that.

Even if you went back to the drawing board and tried to bring the values to within the recommended range for a balanced formula, it would be darn near impossible without the addition of a hard oil as mentioned by preceding posters. If you can't use coconut oil, I'm wondering how you feel about Palm Kernel Oil? It's the best sub for coconut -- to up the hardness, cleansing, and lather.

For the SAT/UNSAT ratio, you would need to reformulate to bring it closer to 50:50. Once again, by adding a hard oil (SAT = saturated fat).

The exception to that guideline is a castile (all olive) or bastile (80% olive + 5% castor + 15% oils of choice). Now that I think about it, and since you're shooting for a NO COCONUT DRY SKIN SOAP, try that and see how you like it. It's a good choice for HP too!
 
Just two quick notes to add: I love lower cleansing soaps and use coconut milk/coconut water in almost all of them. (The added sugar of the coco water helps with the bubbles). Since you don't want to use coconut, there is almond milk soy milk.... quite a few to choose from.

As long as you don't mind the end feel, your soap will feel more like lotion with very few bubbles. If you have hard water in your area, even more so. My husband although he likes the non-drying feel of the soap, he says he doesn't "feel" clean because he can't see the bubbles rinsed away.

In the beginning there are too many oils to try. The ultimate goal is a balance of the fatty acid properties. Combining multiple oils with basically the same properties really does not add anything to your soap. Your goal then should be how to add some of the properties you are missing.

Spend some time learning about each property and what it adds to the party and then start finding oils with what you want. Whether it's just for yourself and family, or if you want to start a business down the road, you should always be able to explain why you picked the ingredients you did in formulating your recipe. - Granted most people won't ask, but there is always that someone who will.
 
...The ultimate goal is a balance of the fatty acid properties. Combining multiple oils with basically the same properties really does not add anything to your soap. Your goal then should be how to add some of the properties you are missing.
^^^^^ Ditto. Well said, Cindy. :thumbup:
 

Latest posts

Back
Top