Recipe Help

[Mish]

I haven't done this yet but thinking about doing 50% Coconut Oil, 35% Cocoa butter and 15% Safflower Oil. I saw online a suggestion of 60% Coconut oil and 40% Cocoa butter but I thought that bar might be too hard. When I put this recipe into the SoapCalc this is what it came up with as the bar quality of the soap. oap Bar Quality Suggested Range Your Recipe Hardness 29 - 54 69 Cleansing 12 - 22 47 Conditioning 44 - 69 27 Bubbly 14 - 46 47 Creamy 16 - 48 22 Iodine 41 - 70 35 INS 136 - 165 224
What do you guys think?

Also what does INS mean?

Mish

 

[danahuff]

Hi Mish,

That much coconut oil might be too drying. Most soapers keep coconut oil at 30% or less of oils. The soap recipe you shared falls outside of suggested ranges for cleansing and conditioning.

INS refers to the soap's all over ability to quickly reach trace and result in a nice bar. There some debate about what the initials stand for, but most people say it stands for Iodine and Saponification. It is only a guideline. You can make nice soap without it.

If I could make a suggestion—how about using some olive oil? It will add nice characteristics to your soap. It will make it more conditioning.

 

[Genny]

Like Dana said, that's going to be a really hard and cleansing bar of soap. Cleansing might sound good, but really what it means is the higher the cleansing number, the more oils it will strip from your skin.
For me, most soaps that are 20 or higher in cleansing, dry the heck out of my skin.

But more importantly, what's your superfat going to be? With recipes that are very high in cleansing numbers, giving them a high superfat will counter the drying.

 

[Mish]

Hi Dana and Genny,

Thank you so much for your replies

In the Soap Calculator I always put 5% for the super fat... but I'm not really sure if I understand what that means, if I enter the percentage in the calculator of what oils I want to use how does the internet calculator alter that for super-fating? I understand there is a whole mathematic equation for this but I usually just use the online calculator. (as I'm not really sure what the equation is)

What do you gals think about 30% Coconut oil, 30% Cocoa butter and 40% Olive oil - 5% super fat ( using the online calculator?)

I'm now trying to figure out the qualities of all the oils to make my own recipes...
The next batch I would like to do using Lavender/Lemon essential oils topped with lavender buds and lemon peel...

I ran out of Palm oil and due to all the controversy with palm oil right now I am looking to make recipes that do not use palm at all.

Thnx again for you help

Mish

 

[melstan775]

Superfatting means there is more oils in the mix then the lye can convert into soap. This is what you want - in case you accidentally use too much lye, you want there to be extra oil so you don't get lye heavy, which can render the soap unusable. Many people increase their superfat to 7 or 8%, which is enough to counter the drying effects of some oils and take the "bite" out of lye soap.

 

[danahuff]

What do you gals think about 30% Coconut oil, 30% Cocoa butter and 40% Olive oil - 5% super fat ( using the online calculator?)

That one sounds nice. I ran it through SoapCalc, and it looks good. You might want to adjust the superfatting to 6 or 7% just to ramp up the conditioning a little.

 

[danahuff]

I found a couple of links for you on the properties of soapmaking oils. I use these all the time to help me decide what oils to use in my soaps.

https://summerbeemeadow.com/content/properties-soapmaking-oils

http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/soapmakingoils/tp/qualitiesofsoapmakingoils.htm

 

[Mish]

Thnx again every one... I'm making a batch now... this is what I went with 50% Olive oil, 25% Coconut oil, 20% Cocoa butter and 05% sweet almond oil...

Dana, I really liked the info on the summerbeemeadow link... I now understand the fatty acides and thier resulting soap characteristics: ie: Lauric 1 Myristic 0 Palmitic 13 Stearic 8 Ricinoleic 0 Oleic 45 Linoleic 8 Linolenic 1 ( this is what came up in the calculator for my recipe)

The SoapCalc bar quality came out to thisfor my recipe)

Hardness 29 - 54 44 Cleansing 12 - 22 23 Conditioning 44 - 69 53 Bubbly 14 - 46 23 Creamy 16 - 48 21 Iodine 41 - 70 55 INS 136 - 165 170

I will make sure to share pictures of the final product. :-D

 

[Mish]

Hi Ya'll

Well here is my update... Everything was going well until I used some Magenta ultramarine powder colorant. It turned a mud brown immediately. The directions where to use it in the lye/water solution between temperatures 80-100F... I put it in at 100F even and it burnt on contact . I decided to try to add some more once I mixed the lye and oils but as soon as I put it in it immediately turned a very yucky mud brown color :???:. I'm not sure what went wrong because I used a Pink ultramarine powder colorant in a cake soap I made not to long ago and it came out beautifully... When I used the pink I did it the same way at the same temperature.... I'll attach some pictures to show you guys what I'm talking about... I will do a smaller batch as an experiment and try to use the same colorant at a lower temperature to see what happens... Maybe the magenta color is more sensitive to heat than that pink?

 

[danahuff]

Hmm, I'm afraid I'm not much help because I've never used that kind of colorant before. Perhaps someone else can chime in. I'm glad the website link was helpful!

 

[melstan775]

Were you suppossed to dilute the color in water or oil first? Some colorants require that. I can't be much help either because I don't know know a lot about those yet. Your new recipe looks good, plenty hard, but still high cleansing value. Did you increase your superfat to counter the high cleansing value?

 

[Mish]

Hi All,

I just wanted to share with you that I contacted the manager from Organic Creations re: the issue I had with the magenta colorant and it turns out it wasn't me... apparently she did the same experiment and the same thing happened to her, she said their vendor must have switched an ingredient on them, making it pH intolerant for color stability. she is going to reset her listing tomorrow... At this point this colorant is only good for cosmetics.. and she is refunding me... I'm happy to know it wasn't a me issue but it was a product issue.. Also I'm thinking I can be creative with my mud colored batch...

Cheers.

 

[danahuff]

Oh, that is good! I am glad you know what happened and that your supplier is issuing you a refund.