My First Soap Recipe

Hi guys,

This is my first post, and my first soap recipe! After looking at a few recipes, combined with some of the oils I already have and like to use, I put this together.

I'm hoping to get feedback on the recipe or recommendations on how some of the ingredients might be tweaked to get a different result. Or perhaps this is a terrible recipe and I shouldn't make it at all! That would be good to know too

Here we go:
*Jojoba oil - 3oz, 15.02%

*Coconut oil - 3oz, 15.02%

*Sweet almond oil - 3oz, 15.02%

*Mineral water - 4oz, 20.03%

*Lemmongrass essential oil - 7ml, 1.2%

*Cedarwood essential oil - 7ml, 1.2%

*Red Maroccan clay - 0.5oz, 2.5%

*Lye - 5oz, 25.03%


Jeff

First problem I see is that your oils don't equal 100%. You don't include your EO's, Clay, Water and Lye all together. Just enter your oils into a soap calc and it will give you our lye/water amounts. Also, that's a lot of Jojoba. I would leave that out and use some Palm, Lard and/or Olive oil. Keep it simple until you get the hang of it.

You could do 40% Lard or Palm
20% Coconut
30% Olive
10% Almond Oil

Jojoba is expensive and I would wait to use it and not in such a large percentage. I would also try to get some Castor Oil, you can get it at any pharmacy or walmart (it's a laxative). I would add that at 5% and subtract that amount from the Olive.

Good luck to you!

Hey and Welcome!

The second thing I see(after the oils total, and I agree with Shunt2011), is that there is not enough water to dissolve that lye. You want at least a 1:1 ratio.

Here is a wonderful tutorial on how to use SoapCalc.net. You need to learn to use a lye calculator before making any soap. You never trust anyone else's recipes, you always run it through the calculator for yourself.

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=49627

Water is only 20% my lowest water I used is 30% with my castile soap awhile back

Agree to all of the above and add that mineral water is a bad idea. Distilled water will give you a better result. Some minerals do not play nice in soap and can react funny with the lye.

Thanks, guys! Hoping to make a batch in the next week or so. Stay tuned!

I put your good advice to work and here is the output!

In the soap bar qualities section, does this look like a good score for "cleansing" and "conditioning"? My end goal is to create a soap to wash my beard with, so I'm hoping this mixture can accomplish that.

View attachment Base Recipe.pdf

I'll ask you a better question - what do YOU think of it? Explain why you chose that mix of ingredients, what you are looking for from the recipe. That way, the feedback can be more defined.

The Efficacious Gentleman said:

I'll ask you a better question - what do YOU think of it? Explain why you chose that mix of ingredients, what you are looking for from the recipe. That way, the feedback can be more defined.

Click to expand...

The ingredients were influenced in three ways:
1. In this thread stunt2011 recommended to use palm and olive oil.
2. I like mixing coconut oil with essential oils and rubbing it into my beard. Because of this, feel like coconut oil in my shampoo bar would be good.
3. I've seen almond oil, beeswax and cocoa butter in other soap recipes. After researching them, I liked the idea of including them in my recipe.

Also, red Moroccan clay powder will be in my recipe. I wanted to include this for two reasons:
1. It has facial/skin cleansing benefits.
2. It will turn my shampoo red, and I was looking for a way to make my shampoo bar red.

Ultimately, my goal is a shampoo bar that cleanses my beard and facial skin and conditions my beard. I think it's most important to keep my goals in mind when developing a recipe. Since I'm new to this, I don't know if it's realistic to achieve those three goals for a beard shampoo and conditioning bar, and I'm not sure if the ingredients I have are the best way to achieve that, but hopefully I can get some guidance on whether or not I'm on the right track.

Does that help?

I am going to give you some basic advice that we give all new soapers, so don't take this personally, OK?

Too many ingredients complicates your first attempts. You need no more than 4 oils, lye, and water for a first batch. You have a learning curve on the process that you need to conquer before adding more ingredients. Don't try any fancy swirls, colorants, or EOs just yet. Get a good basic 3-4 oil recipe and work on that for a first attempt.

Then, in 4-6 weeks, you can make a judgment on how you love or hate that recipe. Once you know what that first recipe gives you, you can then add ONE additional ingredient. And if you insist on adding small amount of oils all at once, you will never know what each one brings to the soap. After you trial and error your way to a recipe you are happy with, then you can start adding colorants and such.

Try this:

Lard/Tallow/Palm Oil 55%
Olive Oil 20%
Coconut Oil 20%
Castor Oil 5%

Superfat 5%
Leave the water amount at default for Soapcalc.

This should give you a good hard batch of soap that is well behaved. Then you can add and subtract oils in and out from there.

Note: In my personal opinion, lard is the most conditioning of those choices. But that is one person's opinion.

soapthunder said:

2. I like mixing coconut oil with essential oils and rubbing it into my beard. Because of this, feel like coconut oil in my shampoo bar would be good.

Click to expand...

Also be aware that just because a certain oil behaves one way as an oil doesn't mean it will be that way as a soap. Coconut is a prime example of this. It's wonderful for skin/hair as an oil, but it's very stripping once it's made into a soap. That's why it's kept to low percentages in a typical soap, unless you add a really high superfat (such as when making a salt bar).

^^^^^this!


It is very important to keep the distinction between oil and salt - CO in a soap becomes sodium cocoate (when using NaOH, it is potassium cocoate when using KOH) which reacts a lot differently than coconut oil does.

A lot of reasoning in your recipe, which is great - too many people use it "because" so it's good to have a plan as to why. Did people know that you were aiming for a shampoo bar when you asked for advice originally? A lot of people use a lot less CO when making a shampoo bar, as a shampoo bar is a totally different animal than a normal bath bar. That said, they are also really hard to get right for each person - one recipe works for one person but not another and vice versa.

I'm not sure if you have seen this thread http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=30946&highlight=shampoo+lindy which gives a great 101 on shampoo bars - well worth a read if you haven't done so already.