Recent content by AlexanderMakesSoap

I've done 20% superfat WITH a stick blender and it took quite a while to trace my 100% coconut oil soap. I can't imagine trying to mix this by hand, especially with a 30% superfat...

Luckily for us that are concerned, it is easy enough to go palm-free...

+1 on what Kamahido says - if nothing else has changed aside from the lye and texture of your soap, it must be the lye!

As long as the two are both pure almond oil, they should be the same thing. The only other kind of almond oil you can get is bitter almond essential oil which you definitely do not want to use in soap! Now if one of those is not a pure almond oil...than who knows.

Yes, this can definitely be said of many oils. We do pay more for cold pressed, unrefined, and organic, for the most part. It's really up to us as individuals to decide what's 'safe' to use. Soy wax is certainly considered perfectly safe by most. But we cater to, and are ourselves in, a very...

Except for salt bars, I typically don't check my soaps till around 24 hours, so I don't even know what's normal for a 12 hour wait. I'd just give it a bit more time and see. Your recipe looks like it will be somewhat soft, but should harden (unless some measurement went wrong!).

I've never used that company before, but our red raspberry seed oil, which is unrefined, has a fairly pungent but pleasantly sweet scent to it. As for the sea buckthorn, keep in mind that it's sometimes produced from seeds, sometimes from pulp, and sometimes from both. In general though, we...

+1 on way too much beeswax. You can also make perfectly awesome soap with just oils and butters - this is what all my soaps are. I like to use cocoa (often deodorized), shea, and/or mango with percentages that range from 0-55. I use coconut oil or babassu oil. I made a soap with beeswax once...

There should be adequate circulation, though I suppose it could always be improved, and I do live in a fairly dry climate. This is the first time it has happened to me out of many batches, so I'm blaming that 9%! I don't quite follow your year-plan. You're saying one should test batch each new...

No contact with metal and very little sunlight as they're in a dark cabinet which I only open every once and a while. I did use several essential oils, but didn't notice any discoloration until just today. It looks pretty much exactly like I'd expect very light DOS to appear. No big loss...

Interesting read on the topic: https://www.soapguild.org/how-to/make-soap/superfatting-lye-discount.php

So, with my 24th batch (or so), I decided to experiment with a non-super high coconut oil mix with a 9% SF, and my beautiful white bars are starting to show faint little orange circles after about a month of curing. Oh well, lesson learned and I'm sticking to my usual 5-6% from now on!

Our customer base tends to ask questions and likes to know exactly what's in the products they're applying to their skin. We've had many questions about our ingredients from our customers over the years - though nothing about the soap just yet as we've just been selling that for a few weeks...

Interesting Todd and thanks for the input. I just used whole leaf powder. A super-fine brownish/green powder not the 100x type stuff. I added it to the mix (about 27oz of oils) at light trace. The soap seems to be hardening up ok now and I imagine it would have been ok if I just let it sit...

Have you looked into using Babassu oil - it's pretty much a direct replacement for coconut oil and you can purchase it from New Directions Aromatics (based in Canada). Assuming you're talking about making your own here...