Drying/ Sticky feeling in soap

Heya,
I have ventured to make a few batches of beer soap.
I have made plenty of other types of soap and they have generally turned out lovely. Nonetheless, I have been using the following recipe but only replacing the water with beer (that has been boiled and frozen). I add sodium lactate and Titanium Dioxide to my batches.
However, my problem is that the soaps when used on the body leave the skin feeling like it is being dried or an almost a sticky feeling.

I am wondering where I am going wrong here as I want to give these soaps out to my friends and practice absolutely perfecting my soap making.

Thanks for your time!

Just looking at it, your cleansing level is too high, especially for a soap with 5% superfat. If you wanted to use palm kernel oil with coconut oil, you need FAR less than what you have. As it stands, your soap has 38.45% of cleansing oils. If you had used 10% each of coconut and palm kernel oils, your soap would not be anywhere near as drying unless you're like me and need even less of the two said oils.

I can't pinpoint what may be leaving the sticky feeling on your skin but that could also be the palm kernel oil since you used so much of it. That oil is even stronger than coconut oil, as far as cleansing level and bubbliness is concerned. It's also pretty easy to make the mistake of assuming that it is interchangeable with palm oil, which would have made this a far better soap. I don't know if you did just that however, please forgive any inference I may have made.

Lastly, please don't think about giving this soap to your friends. You may want to consider holding on to them, grate them down and re-batch them with another soap with no cleansing oil whatsoever. but as it stands, this soap could potentially turn them off to handmade soaps if they don't normally use them.

How long was your cure?

In my experience sunflower ends up almost identical to olive. My first soap had a similar % of olive/sunflower and was extremely sticky when I first called it "cured." A year later I decided to give it another try and the full year cure time made a huge difference in the draggy feeling. Soap is definitely an item that gets better with age. If you have enough bars use one at 3 moths, 6 months, 1 year.... and take notes. Chances are the bar will just get better and better.

For your next batch, I agree with Animara's comment on cleansing. A higher cleansing number doesn't mean you get cleaner, it just means that the soap will be better at cleaning oils. A bar with 0 in the cleansing number will get you just as clean as the cleansing number you have. For an example run the numbers for 100% olive and 100% coconut. Olive oil soaps have been around for centuries and 100% coconut is common for salt bars (due to salts effect on lather).

Do you have access to lard, tallow, or palm (not pko)? All three add that "little extra something" but some people have concerns about them for religious/dietary/ethical reasons. There's almost always someone around if you want to run another recipe and need advice.

Arimara said:

If you wanted to use palm kernel oil with coconut oil, you need FAR less than what you have. As it stands, your soap has 38.45% of cleansing oils

Click to expand...

Ditto ^^^

Hi, and welcome to the forum! That said...
I see some things that jump out at me. I would like to give some suggetions, if you don't mind.

First, 6 pounds is a TON of soap to make while experimenting. I suggest 1 to 2 pound practices until you find what you like. THEN share some with friends after you find nice recipes.

You may love this recipe, but it would strip many a hide off others. That is because coconut and palm kernal oils are both stripping oils. They strip natural oils off skin. Most here stick to 10 to 20% coconut. If you want pko with co, split it a total of 10 to 20% only. Like pko 8% coconut 12%.
Palm kernal oil or pko flakes? I use pko hydrogenated flakes. High pko (flakes at least) creates a waxy weird consistency, if I recall. I *think* obsidian on here experimented with 100% pko flakes soap and discovered that. (May be wrong). That said, looking at soapcalc, pko is less hard slightly and more conditioning than the pko flakes I use, BUT they're virtually just as cleansing which is the main problem with using too much pko with too much co.

You have no hard oils. Only stripping oils and soft liquid oils. Hard fats/oils like lard, tallow, and plain ole palm oil create a better creamy balanced and hard recipe. Lard is easy to get at walmart if you're in the states. Lardy lard. Lllaaaarrrddd.
Yes that was a subliminal message.
Lard

Oils @ less than 5% honestly don't bring anything to the table (this isnt the case with things like beeswax, but oils, not worth it). High oleic sunflower is better for the rancidity issues plain sunflower can have. Sunflower does have many different qualities than olive, so experimenting may be worth while. Just remember if it isnt ho sunflower, you may run into rancid issues at high amounts.

Your olive is almost 60%. If making high olive soaps, it gives a snotty slimy lather and needs a LONG cure. Castilles (100% olive oil) cure best at 6 months to a year (a year is much better I hear). Some like it, a lot do not. The snot feel will get better with that longer cure, I think. I never used a high olive oil recipe. Who wants to wait that long when this is a hobby for them?! Not me

If you reformulate a
20% co OR 8%co 12%pko
15%olive
5% sunflower (since you got it anyway)
60% lard, tallow, or regular palm

It would be better balanced, and then you can alter and play with percentages from there. If you grab castor oil you can try it @ 5% and it stabalizes the bubble lather...do not be fooled, it shows it is a high bubbly oil in soapcalc, but it is NOT, it just helps stabalize them. You can find a small bottle in the laxative section at walmart to try and experiment with one batch.

Now if you switch recipes and find a white flakey drying effect on skin, it may be hard water issues. Hard water can affect homemade soaps and your skin with that leftover scum that dries out. I use sodium citrate @ 2% ppo to combat that drying feel, scummy sink and bath issue. Edta works great as well.

One thing I noticed, you're using 33% water as a % of oil weight. It is better to use it as "lye concentration " on soapcalc. The reason is, you're using your water amount against the total oil weight. If you change your oils up, 33% water as oil weight will not yield the same amount of water because different oils weigh different amounts. Thus your water amounts change each time. To be more consistent with water amounts, use it as lye concentration. That way water amount is always measured to the amount of lye needed to saponify everything. It yields better consistent results.

You may know all this or most of this already having made soap before. I wanted to share it, not just for you, but for newbies that may be reading as well. I hope this helps some

A high percentage of cleansing/stripping fats can over-clean your skin and that can leave the skin feeling overly dry or uncomfortably "squeaky clean".

Even with a well-balanced recipe, soap can leave a sticky feeling on the skin if you are washing with "hard" water. Soap reacts with hard-water minerals to form insoluble soap scum that sticks to the skin, leaving the skin feeling sticky and even a bit rough.

Loving the responses you have given me here!
Lots of this is familiar but given that I don't live and breathe soap everyday so it is nice to be refreshed.
I have taken aboard your feedback and will be readjusting my recipe. I have ordered some Sodium Citrate to counteract the scum, and will be adjusting my oil levels accordingly- I just found it strange that only my beer soaps made me sticky and not my other ones I have made (which are a similar recipe) I was already suspicious about the hard water and this is a problem for me locally (Australia). I have ordinary palm oil available and will drop my olive oil levels as you are right it does yield a snotty type of lather.

So this was my latest recipe I did on the weekend.
I felt that it turned out really nicely, no overheating or air pockets etc and can't wait for it to cure.
Could I get some feedback re. the recipe?

That there beer soap has a nice head on it! Formula

As Zany said, formula is good!

And you can do a little math as you are using soap calc. Hardness-cleansing=longevity
( it means how long does it last, the bigger number the better.)
And you can notice it's jump from like 15 to 28 ( sorry I didn't remember exact number as I type ) and now you got a MILDER, LONGER LASTING, balanced loaf of soap!!! Congrats!

If you check soapee.com, it has a longevity number build-in so you don't have to do the math. It also has a longevity suggested range.

Thanks so much for the encouragement!
I am really looking forward to using this one!
It smells so good.