Ran out of OO

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lowes home improvement has fry oil RICE BRAND rice oil 3gallons for 25 here in ny and here are the location that have it
 
Ok you all are making me change my formula to add RBO in and even at a bit of higher amount.\
I am not a huge OO fan, it's ok, but kinda slimy to me

:p
 
I've been wanting to change because it seems like the OO I use rises in price by $1 every 6 months. I'd also like to get my bar costs down to $5 a bar without sacrificing quality (just to clarify, that's the price I'd like to sell them at, not what it costs me to make them). I had been doing some experiments with HO sunflower, but either the test bars developed DOS quickly or weren't the quality I'm looking for. I'm moving on to RBO, which I have used minimally in the past but didn't put anything through long term testing. If nothing else, this is pushing me to understand fatty acid profiles a bit better.
 
Well you better get what you can at Lowes before others know this tiny secret ! ;)

Mine is actually on sale here ! AND I have a coupon DOUBLE WHAMY !
On sale brings it to about $0.05 an Ounce
Coupon is for $10 off if I spend $50
so that makes it 4 cents an ounce
 
I understand that olive oils is very expensive in America. But what about immigrant shops? Maybe they have olive oil from Turkey, Iran, Morocco or other countries, that can be cheaper.
 
Rune said:
I understand that olive oils is very expensive in America. But what about immigrant shops? Maybe they have olive oil from Turkey, Iran, Morocco or other countries, that can be cheaper.
Click to expand...

The problem with that is the possibility of adulterated OO. There are so many on the market that have ben adulterated. Would just need to check labels carefully. I've checked a few shops in my area with not much luck cost wise.
 
According to tests done in Norway, the olive oils from immigrant shops was not more adulterated than those from the grocery store. But they did not test all, just a few brands. I think the key to avoid adulterated olive oil is to choose cheap refined and not expensive extra virgin. They will try to cheat where there is most money to be made. I have never heard about adulterated refined olive oil, or pomace. But it can exist, of course.

I need to go to immigrant shops to see if I can find castor oil. A long story short, castor oil does not exist in this country, other than in small bottles for a price higher than heaven. It is sold as laxative and some hair growth thing, or what it is.
 
Rune said:
I need to go to immigrant shops to see if I can find castor oil. A long story short, castor oil does not exist in this country, other than in small bottles for a price higher than heaven. It is sold as laxative and some hair growth thing, or what it is.
Click to expand...
When I first started out that's how I bought my Castor Oil, as the 3 - ounce bottles sold as a laxative. Since the percentage in soap is so small (usually I use 3%, but 5% is often recommended), a small bottle like that was sufficient for several small batches of soap.

But you don't actually need Castor Oil to make soap if it's hard to come by or too costly. I have made many soaps without Castor and they clean just fine.
 
i normally cut my olive in half .. if it ask for 24 oz i use 12 of olive and 12 of rice oil. :) or canola Oil ...
you can also find canola oil in resturant supply houses cubes for much cheaper than store gallons . you can also find shortening in 45lb cubes
 
earlene said:
But you don't actually need Castor Oil to make soap if it's hard to come by or too costly. I have made many soaps without Castor and they clean just fine.
Click to expand...

Yes, I guess it is possible without castor. But when I ordered my soap cutter from Turkey, I also ordered three soaps from her. I wanted to see how her soaps compared to mine, and since she is selling, I wanted to see if my soaps are good enough for sales. I know that the soap I made last is not, because of scratchy activated charcoal and not a too pleasant scent. But that is not the most important, I wanted to compare the recipe, lather, feel etc. And I'm sooo glad I bought soaps from her! I could instantly feel an enormous difference. Her soaps is like luxury bars, so silky smooth and with a rich lather. I don't know how to describe it, but it feels like pure luxury. So, I went to her website and looked up her ingredients. She used olive, palm, coconut, sunflower and castor + color and scent. I don't know how much of each she is using, other than that it is in falling order, and I don't want to find out either, since I don't think it's fair to copy her. But I do think she has added a mystery ingredient. I can't figure out what it might be, but the bars have a peculiar smell. My mother says is smells lye. And yes, maybe it is lye. Because the smell reminds of that lye you use on wood to lighen it. It might be her fragrance oils, but all three bars have the same sort of scent, so I suspect some ingredient in the soap itself. Well, I don't know. Maybe it is the Turkey Red Castor Oil, since she is in Turkey? No, who knows. But it is a peculiar scent, and the bars are not lye heavy (I have zap tested).

My recipe is shea, olive, coconut and rapeseed. The shea, coconut and rapeseed is from a vegetable lard type of product, so I just added olive. But my bubbles are really not at all good enough. I don't have that silky smooth feel either. Something has to be done to be able to get up to her level. So I think adding castor will help with the bubbles. I feel I need it. I don't want to up the coconut too much, but I can try to add some extra coconut too. And sugar. I forgot that when I made my soap, since I was supposed to add it to slightly cooled lye, but messed things up.

I think I will try to formulate a recipe like this and see if I can get closer to her rich, foaming bars of soap: Shea, high oleic sunflower, coconut, rapesseed and castor. I don't have palm oil. I hope that the shea can be a replacer for palm, somewhat. I think I will add some kaolin clay too. But I have to wait until my supplies from England and Germany arrives before I can make the soap, since I have ordered mica, clay and castor.
 
Rune said:
And sugar. I forgot that when I made my soap, since I was supposed to add it to slightly cooled lye, but messed things up.
Click to expand...

Have you added sugar to lye solution before? I ask, because the one time I did this it turned the lye solution into a thick, gloppy mess and was very hard to stir in. Now I take some water from what I have weighed out for the batch and stir the sugar into this until it is dissolved. Then add it back into the batch water before adding the lye.
 
Rune said:
Yes, I guess it is possible without castor. But when I ordered my soap cutter from Turkey, I also ordered three soaps from her. I wanted to see how her soaps compared to mine, and since she is selling, I wanted to see if my soaps are good enough for sales. I know that the soap I made last is not, because of scratchy activated charcoal and not a too pleasant scent. But that is not the most important, I wanted to compare the recipe, lather, feel etc. And I'm sooo glad I bought soaps from her! I could instantly feel an enormous difference. Her soaps is like luxury bars, so silky smooth and with a rich lather. I don't know how to describe it, but it feels like pure luxury. So, I went to her website and looked up her ingredients. She used olive, palm, coconut, sunflower and castor + color and scent. I don't know how much of each she is using, other than that it is in falling order, and I don't want to find out either, since I don't think it's fair to copy her. But I do think she has added a mystery ingredient. I can't figure out what it might be, but the bars have a peculiar smell. My mother says is smells lye. And yes, maybe it is lye. Because the smell reminds of that lye you use on wood to lighen it. It might be her fragrance oils, but all three bars have the same sort of scent, so I suspect some ingredient in the soap itself. Well, I don't know. Maybe it is the Turkey Red Castor Oil, since she is in Turkey? No, who knows. But it is a peculiar scent, and the bars are not lye heavy (I have zap tested).

My recipe is shea, olive, coconut and rapeseed. The shea, coconut and rapeseed is from a vegetable lard type of product, so I just added olive. But my bubbles are really not at all good enough. I don't have that silky smooth feel either. Something has to be done to be able to get up to her level. So I think adding castor will help with the bubbles. I feel I need it. I don't want to up the coconut too much, but I can try to add some extra coconut too. And sugar. I forgot that when I made my soap, since I was supposed to add it to slightly cooled lye, but messed things up.

I think I will try to formulate a recipe like this and see if I can get closer to her rich, foaming bars of soap: Shea, high oleic sunflower, coconut, rapesseed and castor. I don't have palm oil. I hope that the shea can be a replacer for palm, somewhat. I think I will add some kaolin clay too. But I have to wait until my supplies from England and Germany arrives before I can make the soap, since I have ordered mica, clay and castor.
Click to expand...

If you can get these oils and want an amazing soap recipe that is creamy and has a silky feel here you go: ( you can up your water amount of course) when adding sugar use sorbitol or xylitol ( sugar alcohols) to your lye solution and add sodium citrate to your soap at light trace. Notice the superfat @ 8% :) Amazing Soap.JPG
 
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The luxurious-ness of the soap is as much if not more about PROPORTION of it's ingredients, than it is about the actual ingredients, really. So if her ingredients list is in descending order, which one would expect (but cannot always be sure of unless the country she sells from requires it by law/regulation), then there might be a higher percentage of Olive Oil in her recipe.

But it could also mean that out of a 5-oil soap, there is an equal amount of each oil (20% of each of the 5 oils) and the order of the listing is by choice. You cannot truly know. But a bit more reasonable educated guess would probably be something along the lines of perhaps a higher proportion of olive and the rest in descending order a lower percentage of castor oil (and probably NOT Turkey Red Oil, but normal Castor).

I don't think shea is a good substitute for palm in soap, but it is certainly more luxurious than palm in my opinion. However, it really should not be used in very high proportions. It will decrease your bubbles, too. I have read that some people do cook with shea, but I have not actually every tried it and have never seen a vegetable shortening that includes shea on the ingredient list. It must be uncommon in the US, I guess.

As for adding a 'mystery ingredient', I suppose it's possible, but I would guess the ingredient list is most likely all inclusive. The fragrance she added is probably what is giving the soap it's smell. I don't believe I have ever noticed a 'lye smell' in my finished soaps, and I have a fairly sensitive nose. Maybe a very high lye-heavy soap might smell of lye, but I would not expect a superfatted soap to ever smell like lye after saponification. But remember soap without fragrance also has a scent that comes from the formation of soap, and it seems to be influenced by the various oils. Some people can actually identify a soap high in olive oil by it's scent.
 
Terri E said:
If you can get these oils and want an amazing soap recipe that is creamy and has a silky feel here you go: ( you can up your water amount of course) when adding sugar use sorbitol or xylitol ( sugar alcohols) to your lye solution and add sodium citrate to your soap at light trace. View attachment 30851
Click to expand...
This would be much to much CO for a luxurious soap in my opinion. Sure it will lather with fluffy bubbles, but it would be to stripping for me. JMO
 
dibbles said:
Have you added sugar to lye solution before? I ask, because the one time I did this it turned the lye solution into a thick, gloppy mess and was very hard to stir in. Now I take some water from what I have weighed out for the batch and stir the sugar into this until it is dissolved. Then add it back into the batch water before adding the lye.
Click to expand...

Thank you for a great advice! No, I have never added sugar to lye water before. But I have added potato starch, supposed to be vegan silk or something (I don't have any silk). And that seized up immediately, the lye water became a jelly. I added it to hot lye or in the water before I added the lye (can't remember). I will never do that again. Thank you for warning me about the sugar!
 
Thank you Terri E for the recipe :) And thank you Earlene for the good advice :)

I don't know if it is a vegetable lard, but I think so. Well, yes, it must be. Because that fat is ment to use when deep frying norwegian christmas cookies, like our type of donuts, for example. Traditionally, something called "smult" was used, and that is lard. They had lard in shops before, but not now it is replaced by this fat that contains shea, coconut and rapeseed. So lard is nowhere to be found in grocery stores. Maybe they have added shea to replace palm oil. I'm quite sure of that. Because palm oil does not exist in grocery products here. I think it was because consumers demanded palm to disappear. So the manufacturers had to replace it with something else. And this deep frying fat is a product that typically would contain palm oil. In Sweden, every or almost every margarine or similar product have palm oil. In Norway, it is replaced by hydrogenated coconut and hydrogenated rapeseed, for the most. This product with a high amount of shea (if I remember correctly, it was 60-something percentages) is one of its kind. I have never seen any shea on the ingredient list of other products. So it is uncommon here too. But this fat is not the cheapest either. Affordable, but maybe around triple the price of regular margarine.

So you see, palm oil is not widely available here. But I can order it from the UK. I have found a supplier with really cheap shipping.

Yes, I also think the strange scent must come from the fragrance oil. It is strong and lingers on the skin, so it is not the soapmaking oils, I think. It is a strange scent, but also somewhat familiar. I have thought about it, and I think it must be low quality fragrance oil, or fragrances they prefer in Turkey. It suddenly stroke my mind, that it actually reminds me of fake perfume. The kind you can buy on the street at holiday destinations. They all smell the same, more or less. I bought a bottle in Greece once. And the fake perfumes have a very peculiar scent. Or had, they might have changed since 1999.
 
right now Lowes has RBO 3 gallons for $6.16. Not sure it is in all Lowes but it seems to be most of them. I Googled it and that is what came up.
 
Yes! Isn't that great? I love a deal. It also keeps (per Bramble Berry) for at least a year.
 
Rune said:
I think the key to avoid adulterated olive oil is to choose cheap refined and not expensive extra virgin.
Click to expand...
:thumbs: Correct. As far as I know, the COOC at UC Davis only tests EVOO, mainly because there are way more consumers of OO than there are soapers and so they don't even consider the cheaper grades. I use pomace OO -- highest in acidity, thus better for soap, according to many sources. Here's a link to just one:

https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/types-of-olive-oil-for-soap-517112
 
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