Recipe for cheap soap in India (no palm, no lard)

[momoha]

Hello everyone,

I’m trying to figure out a recipe to make a cheap well rounded durable soap. Something affordable for everyone, good for most skin types. Here we don’t have access to palm oil or lard (really! I did search A LOT), so this is quite a challenge.

I’m giving prices as a reference, but once I switch from mini-testing to mass production, then prices would drop considerably of course. But at least like this we can see which fats are cheaper.

So I have access to very cheap coconut oil and pomace olive oil (around 3.50USD/liter). Other quite cheap oils that I know of would be ghee, sesame, groundnut, soybean (all less than 7USD/liter). Palm kernel is pretty expensive (23USD/liter) but I think it would be necessary to replace the palm oil isn’t? Then in the butters kokum is the cheapest (14USD/liter), and I get castor oil at the same price.

I came up with this recipe but would love your reviews. I found out that ghee seems pretty good at hardening the soap. I’m doing HP with 5% superfat after cook.

Castor Oil 5 %
Coconut Oil 15 %
Ghee 20 %
Kokum Butter 15 %
Olive Oil pomace 30%
Palm Kernel Oil 15%

I’m thinking to superfat with coconut and add some turmeric powder (adds a great colour and here it’s believed to be very good for skin).

This would bring me at a cost of around 0.6USD/85g soap (buying oils in small quantities). As a reference, for 85 g soap, Nivea soaps are sold at around 0.4USD and the cheapeast "natural herbal handmade, blablabla" soaps are at 0.7USD upto 2USD.

So any thoughts on the recipe? Any ways to make it better/cheaper?
Thanks!

 

[szaza]

Finding a good recipe without palm or lard is difficult right?
First of all, safe yourself the trouble of trying ghee, the buteric acid stinks in soap. I once had the same idea because the properties/fatty acid profile looks quite good, but I had to toss the soap because whenever I washed my hands with it, they smelled like old, rancid butter afterwards (I did use regular butter, not ghee, but I'm pretty sure ghee also has buteric acid). If you want to try ghee in soap, please make a tiny test batch!
Palm kernel actually is more like coconut than palm oil when it comes to the fatty acid profile. Since coconut is so much cheaper for you I'd use that and leave the palm kernel out.
That leaves you with CO+soft oils. If you want to make a longer lasting bar you could try a salt bar or soleseife type soap. Those don't require butters or palm/lard and are long lasting. They do need a good cure though (salt bars more than soleseife I believe, but there are people more experienced with these kinds of soap on the forum)
As I don't have any experience with kokum butter I can't really help you with that..
Just one last thought, do you have access to beeswax or any other wax?
Have fun experimenting!!

ETA: if castor is so expensive for you, I'd leave it out.. you can make perfectly good soap without it.

 

[shunt2011]

I agree with szaza. If you do a search there are several that have tried ghee. Plus it makes your soap really yellow and does transfer color. I like a combination of CO & PKO together. I generally use a bit more PKO than Coconut. You can leave out castor and add about 1-2tsp of sugar to your water and dissolve it before adding your lye to it. That will help with bubbles. I would try your recipe leaving out the ghee adding the difference to your olive. However, with that much olive you'll need to give it a good cure. Likely around 8-10 weeks or longer. You'll probably be tweaking it. Some people can use higher CO/PKO some can't.

 

[momoha]

Oh no! Ghee, why!

I searched a bit and DeeAnna report having successfully done dairy butter soap by using mint EO, and she says any spicy, woody smell would go along with the butyric smell, so I’m tempted to still give it a try. If it still smells really bad I’ll sacrifice myself into bathing with it! Vomit shower it will be. If it works out though it be really amazing! I’ll write a report once the curing is done.

Great trick for the sugar, I didn’t know about that. Will try removing castor oil and use the sugar trick instead then.

 

[Dawni]

I recall another post of yours where you mentioned sunflower oil is common there.. Do you know if it's high oleic or not? If it's not you can still use up to 15% to decrease chances of DOS but if it is you can go higher... I think mango butter isn't very expensive too?

Anyways, with what is cheap there I'd try this, but I've not soaped with soybean, kokum nor sesame (be sure it's NOT the toasted cooking one) so I have no idea what the soap will be like, only that the numbers are ok.

Coconut 20%
Pomace 30%
Kokum 30%
Soybean 10%
Sesame 10%

If you have the high oleic sunflower, that can replace all the soybean and sesame and even maybe 10% from the olive. If it's the regular kind I think it could still replace soybean and sesame, just try eliminating all other factors that could lead to DOS as best as you can. If mango butter is ok, I'd split half the kokum with it.

I'd research the oils available extensively (if you haven't already) to see if others like em in their soap so at the very least it's a starting point.

I'm one who doesn't always use castor oil, especially if my coconut is high enough and I don't have many lather inhibitors (lot of salt, lot of butters, etc.).

 

[Arimara]

I recall another post of yours where you mentioned sunflower oil is common there.. Do you know if it's high oleic or not? If it's not you can still use up to 15% to decrease chances of DOS but if it is you can go higher... I think mango butter isn't very expensive too?

Anyways, with what is cheap there I'd try this, but I've not soaped with soybean, kokum nor sesame (be sure it's NOT the toasted cooking one) so I have no idea what the soap will be like, only that the numbers are ok.

Coconut 20%
Pomace 30%
Kokum 30%
Soybean 10%
Sesame 10%

If you have the high oleic sunflower, that can replace all the soybean and sesame and even maybe 10% from the olive. If it's the regular kind I think it could still replace soybean and sesame, just try eliminating all other factors that could lead to DOS as best as you can. If mango butter is ok, I'd split half the kokum with it.

I'd research the oils available extensively (if you haven't already) to see if others like em in their soap so at the very least it's a starting point.

I'm one who doesn't always use castor oil, especially if my coconut is high enough and I don't have many lather inhibitors (lot of salt, lot of butters, etc.).

That recipe is a good one. However , if Deanna had success with her butter soap (which does stink to high heaven), give the ghee a try anyway, if you can source mint on the cheaper.

 

[momoha]

If you have the high oleic sunflower, that can replace all the soybean and sesame and even maybe 10% from the olive. If it's the regular kind I think it could still replace soybean and sesame, just try eliminating all other factors that could lead to DOS as best as you can. If mango butter is ok, I'd split half the kokum with it.

You are right! I forgot about sunflower oil. We seem to have access to high oleic one, but they are all mixed with some anti-foaming agent. Would that be a problem?

 

[Dawni]

You are right! I forgot about sunflower oil. We seem to have access to high oleic one, but they are all mixed with some anti-foaming agent. Would that be a problem?

Don't think so

In that case I'd use the oils this way:

Coconut 18%
Pomace 22%
Kokum 30%
HO Sunflower 30%

It's not that high on longevity though.. And if I'm not using castor on this one I'd cure it longer than normal.

 

[DeeAnna]

Another option to the ghee would be neem oil. Yes, I know neem has a strong odor, but I'd argue it's not any worse than the butyric acid smell from butter/ghee, especially if a neem soap is given a generous cure time. The fatty acid profile of neem is surprisingly close to lard and palm. It adds a nice hardness and longevity to the soap.

I've used neem at 85% with the rest being coconut oil, and I've used neem at 20% with the lard, coconut, HO sunflower, and avocado blend I've been using lately. At 85% neem, the soap is mild and refreshing to use for regular bathing. That much neem tastes incredibly bitter, however, so it's not a nice soap to use on the face. At 20%, there is very little bitterness -- no worse than bath soap without neem.

I'm a bit concerned about children using a high-neem soap because some kids chew on soap. A neem soap is considerably less of a hazard to children at a 20% neem or less.

edited for clarity

 

[momoha]

Another option to the ghee would be neem oil. Yes, I know neem has a strong odor, but I'd argue it's not any worse than the butyric acid smell from butter/ghee, especially if a neem soap is given a generous cure time. The fatty acid profile of neem is surprisingly close to lard and palm. It adds a nice hardness and longevity to the soap.

I've used neem at 85% with the rest being coconut oil, and I've used neem at 20% with the lard, coconut, HO sunflower, and avocado blend I've been using lately. At 85% neem, the soap is mild and refreshing to use for regular bathing. That much neem tastes incredibly bitter, however, so it's not a nice soap to use on the face for that reason. And I'm a bit concerned about children using a high-neem soap because some kids chew on soap. At 20%, there is very little bitterness -- no worse than bath soap without neem. It's considerably less of a hazard to children at that lower dosage.

Sounds very interesting. Which type of fragrance/EO would go along with the neem smell?

And, wouldn’t it actually be better if the soap has a very unpleasant taste to actually prevent children to eat them? Why is it better if the soap tastes fine?

 

[THANDO]

what can i add to my soap to make it hard.

 

[shunt2011]

what can i add to my soap to make it hard.

You may want to start a new thread rather than utilize someone else's post so you get answers specific to your question. Posting your recipe would be a good thing to do as well. And since it's your first post please go to the introduction section and tell us a bit about yourself.

Thank you! Welcome!

 

[DeeAnna]

...And, wouldn’t it actually be better if the soap has a very unpleasant taste to actually prevent children to eat them? Why is it better if the soap tastes fine?

I have rewritten my previous post to eliminate this perception. I had two points to make --

My first point is the 85% neem soap is very bitter so it is not pleasant to use on the face because if you get even a tiny trace of the lather in your mouth, it's unpleasant. A 20% neem soap does not have that bitter taste.

My second point is is unrelated to the first. Children put anything and everything into their mouths. Until a kid puts something in their mouth, they won't know that it tasted good or bad, right? There are some things you don't want a kid to put in their mouths even once, and a soap high in neem is one of those things, in my opinion. A 20% neem soap is going to be safer for kids than an 85% neem soap.

 

[momoha]

So in the end I got pretty curious about all these smell talks, and I thought before being able to design a "cheap soap" I might as well just do a test to see how it turns out. So I took whatever I had on hand, finished a bunch of old bottles, and made a soap for the purpose of face wash to fight with my constant pimples problem. I’m quite though with bad smells so I went all the way through with stinky oils to see how it’d turn out.

Oven hot process
Lye: 27%
Superfat after cook: 5 %

Neem Seed Oil 32%
Almond Oil 11%
Olive oil 13%
Coconut Oil 15%
Mustard Oil 10%
Kokum Butter 10%
Ghee 9 %

After cook
Rosehip oil 18 g (superfat 5%)
Charcoal ½ tsp
Sandalwood 4 g
Vitamine E 3.6 g
Geranium EO 5 g
Lavender EO 5 g
Palmarosa EO 5 g

So with the ghee, mustard and neem I was expecting something pretty nasty. It traced and gelled REALLY fast! Only 15-20 min. in the oven to reach gel with no zap. While mixing my after-cook ingredients, the smell was alternating between vomit-nausea-inducing to nice neem-roasted fragrance.
I unmolded them today and the soap is extremely soft, very mushy, I should have waited another day. Now the smell isn’t unpleasant at all, for me and husband’s standards at least. I feel that the neem smell is overpowering mustard (didn’t smell it at all) and vomit-ghee (had a glimpse of it), and the EO smell has been annihilated. But it’s not the raw neem oil type of smell, it got a bit more depth and less harshness to it. Now let’s see after a few months of curing what this will evolve into.

That gives me a better idea how to design my cheap soap. I think to first try out these numbers:
Olive Oil pomace 40%
Coconut Oil 20%
Neem Seed Oil 20%
Ghee, any bovine 10%
Kokum Butter 10%

After cook
Coconut oil superfat 5%
Maybe some turmeric powder depending on the colour
I’ll use cypress EO as fragrance because that’s the cheapest oil I have access to. I hope the scent won’t fade away... I read we can mix it with a bit of cornstarch to help anchor it, will try that.

 

[DeeAnna]

The neem odor will mellow even more as the weeks go by into more of a black tea scent. I was expecting to dislike the smell, but I'm pretty okay with it. A lime fragrance is a nice addition to a neem soap, although the lime fragrance I tried is only a light accent to the black-tea neem odor; it's not a dominant note.

 

[Mariam Hanif]

What about Kalonji Oil. I think you might get it cheap in India.