What's giving this recipe a sticky "glide"?

Hi everyone! I'm so excited to join and have high hopes for how everyone's expertise will help me to soap better.
I made the following recipe 2 weeks ago. I tried it out in the shower a few days ago and noticed 3 issues I'd like to improve:
1. It's a firm bar but gives when I press a finger into it hard. My other bars don't do this so it's a bit softer than I'd prefer. What in the recipe is making it not so hard? Or has it not cured long enough?
2. The slip of the soap on my skin after using the soap is sticky. Like my skin is just so dang stripped of oils that, if there was sound effect to my hand rubbing my arm, it would be like tires screeching. Is this the "cleansing" element? How do I make a less stripping bar and more of a moisturizing bar?
3. There is very little lather. What can help create more lather?

Mocha Scrub Bar recipe:
248 g. chilled coffee
111 g. lye
198 g. refined coconut oil
113 g. unrefined cocoa butter
340 g. olive oil (I used pomace)
85 g. sweet almond oil
57 g. kukui nut oil
.88 g. coffee essential oil
3 g. used coffee grounds
2 g. cocoa powder
whole coffee beans (for decoration)

If anyone has oil/butter substitution suggestions that would help the above issues, please note I would prefer *not* to use palm oil.
Thank you in advance for any help with this. I really appreciate it!

Best,
Sara

I think it's the cocoa butter making it draggy on your skin. I'd replace most or all of that with shea or some other butter.

The coconut oil is what contributes most to the stripping, drying feeling. Reduce the amount you use to 10-25% of the total to reduce that feeling. Another probable culprit to the squeaky, draggy feeling is your water. Hard water contributes to the formation of soap scum, which is what makes that feeling. Chelating agents can help counter this. Sodium citrate and EDTA are two common ones.

Adding castor oil up to about 5% of the total can help with the lather, stabilizing the bubbles other oils produce.

The softness and some of the lack of bubbles are likely due to not letting it cure fully. The full cure time will also likely make the soap a little bit milder on your skin, reducing some of the drying feeling.

Welcome Sara! Most soap needs to cure for a minimum of 4 weeks before it becomes nice and hard and non-stripping. So you still have some curing time left to go.

I ran your recipe through the Soapee calculator just to check it out. Your lye and water amounts look good to me. You used 25% coconut oil, which is on the slightly higher side. Coconut oil is very cleansing and can make your hands feel stripped and dry. Most of us like to use it in a percentage of 15-20.

You used 43% olive oil, which will result in needing a longer cure before your bars harden up fully. For most of my recipes, I use olive oil at a max percentage of 30%.

Sweet almond oil and olive oil have similar properties and are both "soft" oils and interchangeable.

And as an FYI - kukui oil is considered an exotic oil and is better used in leave-on products like lotions or body butters. Since soap is a wash-off product, it goes to waste, especially if it's expensive for you to source!

Are you open to trying some lard or tallow in your recipes? They make fantastic, hard bars. I use them for around 50% of my recipes.

Hi Sara and welcome! Yes as others have said, you should let your soaps cure for at least 4-6 weeks, and I prefer much longer. Here's your recipe in soapcalc. You can see at the bottom your hardness, bubbly and creamy are on the low side. Your Palmitic number is very low as well. You have a lot of soft oils which will need a longer cure time... I would remove the Kukui nut oil and replace it with Castor oil. I would also lower your OO content and sub some lard or tallow since you don't want to use PO. Would probably use Shea butter instead of Cocoa.

Kittish: Thank you! Oh no, if I replace the cocoa butter, it won't be mocha anymore ! But if that is, indeed, what's causing the drag, perhaps it is better to replace it and just go for an "espresso" bar or something. I will look at lowering the coconut oil and adding castor oil.

Toxikon: Thank you! Yes, curing. Noted. Will definitely lower the coconut percentage. So good to know about kukui! I'll keep it for my body butters and lotions instead.

SoapTrey: This is so helpful thank you! I've just spent some time fiddling around in SoapCalc to improve my numbers. Unfortunately, I'm not down to try lard or tallow just yet. Perhaps some more time around the soaping block will wizen me up to its benefits but, for now, I'm trying to make do without.

Ditto 100% on the curing. Four to 6 weeks at minimum. Here's a great thread on what happens to soap during cure: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=43979&highlight=crystal

Regarding the coconut oil- although a good handful might prefer a range of 15-20%, I just wanted to state that that is not a unanimous stance. There are others of us here on the forum that are perfectly fine with 28% or higher (like myself and lsg and several others). I personally would hold off on making a final judgment about your CO amount until you have tested your soap with the 24.97% after a proper cure.

Regarding the numbers- as has been so often stated before in many threads on the forum- don't rely on them as the 'be-all, end-all". They are just guides at best. They are great to use as a foundation for tweaking an already made and cured soap formula that you have bathed with and have found wanting, but that's about as far as I would trust them.

Before deciding to change anything, I would let your soap cure for 2 to 4 more weeks, try it out, and then decide from there.


IrishLass

I don't think olive oil and almond oil are interchangeable. I like them both in a soap. I think there is a distinct difference between pomace and OO in a soap in the way they behave and feel. High OO soaps do take longer to cure but are with it in my opinion but that's just me.

Wait patiently.

penelopejane said:

I don't think olive oil and almond oil are interchangeable. I like them both in a soap. I think there is a distinct difference between pomace and OO in a soap in the way they behave and feel. High OO soaps do take longer to cure but are with it in my opinion but that's just me.

Wait patiently. ��

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By interchangeable, I mean if your recipe had 30% olive oil, you could use 30% sweet almond instead and not suffer any ill effects because the fatty acid profiles are very similar. Definitely not the same - but similar enough to serve the same function in a recipe. The same way you could replace Palm in your recipe with Tallow or Lard.

toxikon said:

By interchangeable, I mean if your recipe had 30% olive oil, you could use 30% sweet almond instead and not suffer any ill effects because the fatty acid profiles are very similar. Definitely not the same - but similar enough to serve the same function in a recipe. The same way you could replace Palm in your recipe with Tallow or Lard.

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Ok. But that would mean if you used 50% OO and 50% Almond oil you would end up with a soap similar to Pure Castile and that is not the case.

I know oil profiles are important but there is just some magic (or science!) that changes them into something different entirely when they saponify.

penelopejane: What do you think is the distinct difference between pomace and olive oil? There seem to be two distinct camps: those who find no difference and those who are olive oil loyalists. I'd love to hear what your experience has been leading to this conclusion.

saratk said:

What do you think is the distinct difference between pomace and olive oil? There seem to be two distinct camps: those who find no difference and those who are olive oil loyalists. I'd love to hear what your experience has been leading to this conclusion.

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Hope you don't mind if I respond to this. The soaping/oil properties of OO, EVOO and Pomace are the same. Pomace is made from the "last squeeze" from the flesh of the olive, and is often extracted with hexane or other solvent, the same way Canola oil is produced. Probably due to the last squeeze, the pomace is much darker than the others and likely has some minor additional properties. (sort of the difference between using distilled water and tap water, or goat's milk vs homogenized cow's milk).

They all seem to soap about the same, the color is quite different and it does seem "stickier" to me anyway. Maybe it's because of the solvent residue or the last bits of olive. (shrug)

Regardless, a 2 week cure on a 43% OO (pumace or no) is going to be a bit soft and sticky.