Why use a soapcalc for recipes?

[TuxedoKat]

I've found a recipe on a blog that I would like to try making. Now, I've used two different soap calculators to run the recipe through (as I've seen suggested on this forum), but I keep getting different lye/water amounts than the recipe calls for. Why is this? I thought maybe it was because of the superfat percentage (the recipe doesn't list one), but as I change it around, I still can't get the ratio the recipe calls for.

I'm just wondering why I wouldn't trust the recipe. Is it in case the author made a mistake & in this case I should use the soap calc amounts? Or, is it becasue I'm still new at this and I'm not using the calculators correctly?

This is the recipe I would like to try:

http://homemadebathproducts.blogspot.com/2007/10/peppermint-patty-soap-cold-process.html

When I used the 4:1 ratio in the recipe, soap calc said to use 9.2 oz. of water & 2.3 oz. lye. When I used the 38% water recommendation, it said to use 6.08 oz water & 2.3 oz. lye. The recipe calls for 8oz. water & 2 oz. of lye. As a beginner, I'm confused about the differences. I used the 5% superfat and left out the essential oil because the directions said it wouldn't affect the ratio's.

Should I just use the soap recommendations? The recipe? What am I missing that would make the recipe appear to be off?

 

[Soaplady22]

Well, a quater oz of peppermint EO is not nearly enough, even for a 1# batch. The difference in 2 oz lye vs. 2.3 is supperfatting amount. The 2 will give you more superfatting action. 2.3 will give you more lye hence less oils left over after saponification.

Use at least .5 oz peppermint. And if you have it, add some spearmint or eucalyptus to it to help it stick. Plain peppermint will fade in a couple of months (as a rule - not everything applies to everybody).

Personaly I don't care for this recipe - too much palm. Why not 33% coconut, 33% palm if you want, and 33% olive?? Or better yet, 30% coconut, 25% palm, and the rest olive?? At least it's a start.

I'm sure more will chime in here with helpful data.
But go with the lye calc calculations, and use full water for your first batches. You can start deducting water (water discount) after you get the knack of it.

Good luck!!

 

[Fragola]

This is what you seem to be missing: the recipe was calculated without including the 1 oz olive oil for the cocoa.

The original recipe seems to be perfectly fine. Or we can scratch our heads here and hopefully come up with an improvement.

About the water ... I am not positive about the cup to oz conversion, but the water does seem too much.

Your questions:

Why use soapcalc?
Using more lye than soapcalc says isn't safe (especially for a newbie). Using less lye or using more water (or slightly less), you can be more flexible there.

About trusting the recipe ... Trust is largely a personal thing. Personally: for me to trust a recipe, it would need to explain in more details what it's doing and why. In a manner that I can check and challenge what it claims.

Soapcalc is generally correct, but there can be a good reason for using different number in a special recipe.

For this specific recipe, I see that it contains a lot of cocoa powder. Maybe more water was used to account for the fact that the powder will absorb some of it. Still, I would guess that 3 tbsp cocoa absorb at most 3 tbsp water, and 1 cup seems a lot more.

When you use less lye than the usual, the soap will have less cleansing power, and if you use even less, it will feel oily. But certain soaps, like for more sensitive skin or facial soaps, often use this to their advantage.

 

[IrishLass]

I've found a recipe on a blog that I would like to try making. Now, I've used two different soap calculators to run the recipe through (as I've seen suggested on this forum), but I keep getting different lye/water amounts than the recipe calls for. Why is this? I thought maybe it was because of the superfat percentage (the recipe doesn't list one), but as I change it around, I still can't get the ratio the recipe calls for.

Lye calculators often differ slightly from each other because SAP numbers often differ slightly from each other due to where the oils/fats were sourced. Because of those slight differences, the SAP #'s that the calculators choose to go with are not exact, but based on an average range of the different SAP values for any particular oil/fat (some calculators calculate the average from a wider range, and some from a narrower range). That's why most good calculators suggest using a 5% superfat for our recipes. That 5% cushion of extra fat will cover over the differences and guard our soap against the possibility being lye heavy.

I'm just wondering why I wouldn't trust the recipe. Is it in case the author made a mistake & in this case I should use the soap calc amounts? Or, is it becasue I'm still new at this and I'm not using the calculators correctly?

Soapmaking rule #1 Never trust a recipe online, no matter how good the source. Always run it through a calculator. Yes- authors can and do make mistakes. I have run into at least 2 online recipes recently whose lye amounts are over-the-top- as in well beyond dangerous skin-your-hide-off lye heavy recipes. Trust me, if you want to save your hide, run it through a calculator. I was glancing through the reader feedback on one of the blogs that had a lye-heavy recipe, and a few of the responders were wondering why their skin was so red, irritated and extremely dry after using the soap they made using her recipe. It was a no-brainer for me. One look at that recipe on a good lye calculator said it all.

This is the recipe I would like to try:

http://homemadebathproducts.blogspot.com/2007/10/peppermint-patty-soap-cold-process.html

When I used the 4:1 ratio in the recipe, soap calc said to use 9.2 oz. of water & 2.3 oz. lye. When I used the 38% water recommendation, it said to use 6.08 oz water & 2.3 oz. lye. The recipe calls for 8oz. water & 2 oz. of lye. As a beginner, I'm confused about the differences. I used the 5% superfat and left out the essential oil because the directions said it wouldn't affect the ratio's.

I'm glad you posted the recipe and are asking these questions. The difference between the 2 oz of lye in this recipe and the 2.3 oz of lye on SoapCalc is the difference between a 5% superfat and a whopping 15% superfat. In this particular recipe, I don't see any potential problems with a high superfat other than these 2:

1.Your lather will probably not be as fluffy/bubbly as it would be with a 5% superfat. An over abundance of free oil tends to have a deflating effect on the bubbly component of lather- unless, that is, you were to increase the coconut amount significantly and decrease the palm in accordingly.

2. The water amount in this recipe is very high. I will even go so far as to say extraordinarily, unnessesarily, and extremely high (at least for me). That, plus the 15% superfat is just asking for a mushy soap at best at the beginning if you ask me, and a hard but warped soap after cure.

I'm with Soaplady- I personally don't care for this recipe. I much prefer her recommendation of 30% coconut, 25% palm, and 45% olive oil. And I'd go with a 7% superfat with it.

Also I'd go with much less water. The 8 oz of water is over and beyond even a 'full water' amount in my book. A 'full water' amount in my book is no less than 2.6 to 1, instead of 4 to 1.

Should I just use the soap recommendations? The recipe? What am I missing that would make the recipe appear to be off?

I would trust SoapCalc or else revamp the recipe using SoapLady's recommendations (making sure to run it through the calculator for proper lye/water amounts first).

HTH!
IrishLass

 

[Fragola]

Your lather will probably not be as fluffy/bubbly as it would be with a 5% superfat.

From my (limited) experience, powders eat bubbles. And 3 tbsp cocoa is a lot. Meaning that you probably shouldn't expect bubbles anyway with this recipe.

On the other hand, it so happens that I just made a chocolate soap (a different recipe, of course). Not much bubbles, but still interesting and nice creamy feeling.

Finally ... It depends on what your purpose is. Why have you chosen this recipe and what would you like to achieve ?

Keep in mind that your cocoa soap will smell and taste much differently from a peppermint candy.

We know already how you like your sweets, but question is how do you like your soap ?

 

[Sunny]

Keep in mind that your cocoa soap will smell and taste much differently from a peppermint candy.

I wouldn't personally recommend that you taste test the soap... ha.

 

[TuxedoKat]

Thanks for all the great feedback folks! After reading through all of your responses I've got a much better understanding of how the soap calc's work, how lye specifically affects the soap, and am starting to see that recipes must vary quite a bit according to the author's preferences and experience in the soap making kitchen.

I've been scouring the internet for recipes because I worried that I don't have enough experience to come up with something myself. But after playing with the soap calc's today for a period of time, and getting your feedback I think I might just dive in. Well. Sort of. Here's what I'm going to do...lol...I'm going to use soap calc with the ratio recommendations here (thanks soaplady22 and IrishLass) and use at least 0.5 oz. of peppermint. If I can find some eucalyptus and/or mint I'll blend some of that in too and I'll going to stick with a 5% superfat. The cocoa powder is out. Maybe I could add some dried mint instead. I will let you know how it all turns out.

Really appreciate the feedback. Thanks again.

 

[tlm884]

I personally never use a recipe I find online or in a book. I will use them as inspiration to get ideas then design my own recipe using SoapCalc. Getting to know the properties of oils and roughly what percentages to use in a soap can be much more rewarding in the end then using someone else s recipe. Experimentation is the cornerstone of soap making! Sure you will have a few crappy batches, but a failed batch will give you more knowledge then a perfect batch.

On another note, I don't find cocoa giving a real strong fragarance to soaps. The cocoa itself can bring some other properties to the table however. Such as a bit of fat (cocoa butter), color, label appeal, and a faint scent. For a peppermint patty soap I would try finding an FO of such a scent or using peppermint/spearmint EO and adding a chocolate FO.

Personally, I don't like using palm for the simple fact that you can use lard or tallow for similar properties and it can be easier to find for some people. I would use something like this

Olive Oil 35%
Coconut Oil 20%
Lard 40%
Castor 5%
.5oz peppermint EO PPO
.25oz spearmint EO ppo
1 TBSP cocoa PPO

Olive Oil and Lard can be found at the grocers. Castor in a pharmacy, and coconut can be found in some grocers, health food stores, ethnic stores.


Play around in SoapCalc and see if you can find a recipe you like. Do some research into oils and see what oils you want to incorporate into your recipe. For a beginner, I would recommend staying within the ranges suggested by SoapCalc and using no more that 4 oils.

 

[fiddletree]

A note on adding dried mint.... in one of my first batches of soap, I thought adding dry mint with be a wonderful addition to a mint soap.

I was very very wrong. The mint turns BLACK. And when I used the soap, the little black bits were pretty icky, and I would have to clean up the sink after washing my darned hands to get rid of the black bits (I also went a bit overboard and put too much dried mint in anyhow).

So unless you want that sort of experience, I don't recommend adding dried mint . Most dried herbs have a pretty drastic color morph (lavender ends up looking like rat poo, for example), and not in a good way. The only dried herb I add nowadays is calendula, because it keeps it's color!

A good resource for recipes you might want to look into are the website of soapmaking ingredient suppliers. Always run the recipe through soapcalc first, but the recipes generally work pretty well.

 

[TuxedoKat]

tlm884 - That's a great idea re: adding chocolate FO. I hadn't thought of that, and I have some enroute from the soap suppliers. I might give that a whirl and see what happens. And palm was a pain to find, so it's very helpful to know that lard has similar qualities.

fiddletree - I figured the mint would turn a different colour, and I was prepared to accept this, but black? LOL. That's icky! Thanks for the advice ... I will definitely leave it out of my soap.

I'm thinking a Friday batch (or two, or three)! I had my first dream about soaping last night ... this must be a symptom of possible future soaping addiction. Or, a result of all the research I've been doing lately! lol

 

[panzerakc]

I wasted 10 pounds of olive oil many years ago on a recipe I found in a book that turned out to be lye heavy. (I knew nothing of lye calculators at the time.) I made a five-pound batch which turned out lye heavy. I did another five-pound batch, being ultra-careful to make sure my measurements were accurate (I thought at the time that perhaps the first batch didn't turn out due to my error.). Nope, the second was lye heavy as well.

Try using dried parsley in your soap. For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to turn icky colors in soap.

Good luck with your soap. Just a warning, this is an extraordinarily addictive hobby!

Anita

 

[tlm884]

TuxedoKat, the reason I started soaping is because I was having dreams of it too!

 

[Fragola]

For herbs, I always powder them very finely. I never used mint leaves, but this recipe is already dark brown, any black in it doesn't seem too problematic.

I believe that green stuff should not be heated too much.

 

[soapypsychic]

But what about the concentration of the lye? I intend to make my own lye, and it may not match the concentration on the bottled ones sold. What should I do so that I know that the amount of lye I use is safe?

 

[dieSpinne]

But what about the concentration of the lye? I intend to make my own lye, and it may not match the concentration on the bottled ones sold. What should I do so that I know that the amount of lye I use is safe?

When you say "Make your own" ... do you mean extract the lye from hardwood ashes?

Or do you mean to blend the dry beads/crystals/powder with water?

 

[soapypsychic]

But what about the concentration of the lye? I intend to make my own lye, and it may not match the concentration on the bottled ones sold. What should I do so that I know that the amount of lye I use is safe?

When you say "Make your own" ... do you mean extract the lye from hardwood ashes?

Or do you mean to blend the dry beads/crystals/powder with water?

I intend to extract from hardwood ashes.

 

[dieSpinne]

But what about the concentration of the lye? I intend to make my own lye, and it may not match the concentration on the bottled ones sold. What should I do so that I know that the amount of lye I use is safe?

When you say "Make your own" ... do you mean extract the lye from hardwood ashes?

Or do you mean to blend the dry beads/crystals/powder with water?

I intend to extract from hardwood ashes.

then you are going to have to do it the hard way...
Generally, one can only get a very rough soap this way...
You keep running the water through more and more hardwood ashes until a raw chicken egg just barely floats just below the surface of the solution.
Then you mix it with fats and cook it (HP afaik) and keep rebatching with extra fats until it stops zapping.
Then add your superfats and fragrances and colorants.

Unfortunately, because of the primitive process associated with simple extraction, you are never going to know exactly how much lye is in the solution, because, depending on your hardwood, there may be more or less of various OTHER mineral salts and oxides in the ash as well.

In all, I believe that the primitive technique would be awesome for period recreationists and possibly for "works" of a metaphysical variety where you want to have all the raw materials from unrefined sources, but for general usage it is simply not practical.

 

[soapbuddy]

If you are planning to leach lye from wood ashes, I would strongly suggest that you get yourself a pH meter. There are too many variances with this method.

 

[soapypsychic]

I understand it will be more difficult but it is the best way for me. I don't know where else I can get it.

 

[tlm884]

Finding puring lye may be difficult, but I guarantee finding it will be easier then trying to make lye. And I would never plan on selling your product unless you know EXACTLY how much lye was added to the batch. This is for safety reasons.