milks in cp soap

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claireobell

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Hi all! Have been searching on here are can't find the answer I'm looking for! I made a cp soap the other day with coconut milk (first time) which I added frozen to my lye and topped up with water. It all mixed in fine although it turned a light brownish colour, went and melted my oils and when I came back to it half of it had turned solid floating on top! I figure that is the fats from milk saponifying, I stirred it up a bit and made my soap which at first I thought would be hideous brown but it turned out lovely albeit a bit soft! So my question is this: does the fats in the milk add to superfat level? My recipe on soap calc was Superfatted to 5% and there is no option on there to add coconut milk fat. Should I be keeping superfat low to make up for the extra fat? And one other thing - if the lye had already saponified the coconut milk then would there be less lye to saponify the oils in my recipe?
Sorry for the long question and thanks in advance for your help!
 
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Hi Claire!

Yes- the fats from milk do increase your super-fat level. And yes- there will be less lye to react with your other oils, but no more less than what you might be thinking. All things being equal, your soap will still come out with the same super-fat level even if the lye reaction had been more evenly distributed.

Here are 2 excellent links (the first one is from our very own JudyMoody) that discuss how to calculate for the extra fat in milks:

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=46932


and the second one is from David Fisher on the About.com site:

http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/b...ke-Milk-Soap-With-Heavy-Whipping-Cream_15.htm

Speaking only for myself, I usually lower my superfat to 3% when I'm making 100% milk soaps.


HTH!
IrishLass :)
 
Cool thanks for that,I got a fright when I saw it saponify in the lye container! Thought I'd ruined it! I will post some pics up soon of all my soaps so far to see what you guys think! There is just too many soap ideas and not enough time or money! I did have an exciting parcel arrive today with tussah silk :) ever used it before? Think you add it to the lye?
 
Speaking only for myself, I usually lower my superfat to 3% when I'm making 100% milk soaps.


HTH!
IrishLass :)

What is the practical effect of having too high a superfat in milk soaps? Does it make it softer or more greasy?
 
The reason why I lower my super-fat with my full milk soap batches is so that it doesn't cut in on my bubbly lather. My soap still comes out hard enough, but my bubbly lather quotient is reduced, which is something akin to committing blasphemy in my household. lol


IrishLass :)
 
What is the practical effect of having too high a superfat in milk soaps? Does it make it softer or more greasy?

Too high of a SF will make it a bit softer in the beginning perhaps, but the real issue is you have a bunch of oil in your soap. This will reduce the lather and has the potential of going rancid giving you DOS. The amount of extra oil, and the type will make a difference to all factors.

For an example 100% coconut oil soap for bath use is usually SF'ed to 20%. However coconut has a long shelf life and is a hard bar. Now if you took a recipe with all liquid oils and SF'ed with a lot of sunflower oil, you would have a softer bar and an increased chance of DOS. By a lot I mean over 10%.
 

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