Alternative to beef fat/tallow AND palm oil?

[Rah]

Hi,
I'm a relatively new soap maker and have recently been trying to make soap with my housemate. We are both vegetarian and live in a communal house with 6 other people, all of whom try our best to live in an environmentally conscious way.

I made a coffee soap recipe a few years ago (before I turned veggie) that contained tallow. It was my first ever soap and it came out really well - the bar was very hard, had lots of bubbles, lasted ages and got any smell off your hands. I would like to recreate that recipe, however I do not want to use tallow this time around. I've heard palm oil is the closest vegetable substitute, but we don't want to use that either because we disagree with the methods used to obtain it. I don't think we want to even go for "sustainable" palm oil. Is there anything else we could use that would have similar results in terms of bar hardness and longevity?

The recipe also contained olive oil and coconut oil. Could I just skip out the third oil altogether and just make the bar with those two? Or should I add another oil to give it that same hardness as before?

Any advice is welcome! I'm sure many of you love to use palm oil and have great results, but for us it's just not an option we're willing to go for.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Do you remember the amount of tallow that you used? Shea butter is similar to lard and palm in soaps, but as a butter it can make lather more difficult in large amounts. Plus, it's expensive!

You can make bars with a mix of those two - mostly OO, some CO (maybe 20%) and it's called a Bastile. You can also make 100% OO - a Castile. You can also make a 100% CO soap, but you need a large lye discount to make it usable.

However you decide to go, make sure to use a lye calculator to make sure it is safe!

 

[dixiedragon]

There's a reason that most soaps contain either lard, tallow or palm. If you don't want to use those, you're sacrificing some hardness and longevity in your bar.

You can some cocoa butter or beeswax for hardness. I wouldn't go above 10% on the cocoa butter or 5% on the beeswax. Using these, you will lose some bubbles.

Coconut oil makes a bar that is hard, but not a long-lasting bar. Plus, too much can be very drying. The general rule for coconut oil is 20%.

This page has a lot of good all veg recipes:
http://www.millersoap.com/soapallveg.html

You'll notice that her recipes are rather large, I think about 7 pounds, so you probably want to downsize them.

I've made this one, and it's nice:
Sherry's Fantastic Soap [SIZE=-1]( Contributed by Sherry Wersing, who wrote the poem at the top of the "Soapy Success" page)[/SIZE]

24 oz canola 18 oz coconut oil 6 oz cocoa butter 6 oz castor oil 16 oz olive oil (pomace or pomace/olive blend is fine) 9.8 oz lye 21-23 oz water Fragrance Oil or Essential Oil of choice Temps: Water/Lye 105-110 degrees / Oils 110-115 degrees
While this is nice, I've never found an all veg recipe that was as good as my recipe with lard.

 

[Seawolfe]

One of my first (and hubbys still favorite soaps) is just 30% coconut and 70% Olive oil - though I have convinced him to let me use one with castor now: 25% coconut, 5% castor and 70% olive oil and 10% superfat with a bit of sugar in the water before the lye for bubbles.

I find the bars above plenty hard after a good cure, I especially like them with a bit of clay. If you want really really hard bars, why not try a salt bar thats all coconut, or maybe add a little olive or almond or shea butter.

I am also worried about palm. Plus I don't think I actually like my soaps with palm as well as my other soaps. I've made one lard soap, and its quite nice, but I like veggie oils.

For your purposes there are LOTS of ingredients that work nicely besides palm and animal fats.

 

[neeners]

I can't find lard of any kind nor palm oil where I live (nor will I use palm...). I use cocoa butter and/or shea butter for hardness. it works really well. I use about 10-17% in my recipes and they've all turned out quite hard.

 

[Twiggy]

I think you should not make any pressure on you to create a prefect sop at the first time. Use the advises from posts above and just play with the soap. I’m producing vegan soap with no palm oil, and it took me 2 years to create bar that I like – so is trial and error process. None of them was a failure though They were little softer, little more soluble or little drying – but I was never unhappy with them – all depend how you will like it My personal advice is to go for it, play with soap.calc, keep record of what you do, to make some changes for next time and just enjoy making soap!

I think there is no such thing as an alternative for those 3 oils, you must find the balance between all other oils you use, to create PO, tallow or lard soap like properties. Babbasu oil, cacao butter, castor oil, OO – they all play a role

 

[lsg]

Coconut, Castor and olive will produce a hard bar after it has cured several months. You can include some sodium lactate to help make the bar harder, but don't overdo it.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFI4WlM85SI[/ame]

 

[Obsidian]

What about steric acid? How much would you have to use to make a difference in hardness? I know it would mean doing HP but it might be a option.

 

[Hazel]

Here are a couple of links to palm free recipes.

http://www.gracefruit.com/palm-free-soap-recipes.html
http://www.soap-making-essentials.com/palm-free-soap-recipe.html#.U4DLUCimUUQ

 

[PinkCupcake]

My basic bar is similar to Soaping 101's bastile recipe, although I do use about 1 TB of sodium lactate per 2# of soap. After a good cure (never skimp on curing time!) it's a very nice soap. It's also fairly inexpensive to make, and if I run out of ingredients when I'm not ready to place an online order, the ingredients are all easily available at the supermarket.

 

[Rah]

Hey everyone, thanks for all the tips. You've given me some good ideas to take away! I'm thinking I might try cocoa butter and castor oil in our next batch. But I'll definitely keep a record and just experiment until I find something that works! I wan't to keep it fairly bubbly too. I'll keep you all updated on this forum.

Oh also, what sort of time do you mean when you say a "good cure"? I tend to cure mine for 4 weeks. Would you recommend longer than that?

Thanks!

 

[seven]

longer cure won't hurt, in fact it will only make the soap better. take a 4 weeks old soap and an 8 weeks old one, i'm sure you'll be able to feel the difference.

 

[Twiggy]

I’m with Seven Longer cure is only better, whey your OO is not higher than 50% cure it 8 weeks, for soaps with over 50% I prefer 12-16 weeks cure time – but that is soooooo personal choice

 

[seven]

don't overdo the cocoa butter. too much of it can make brittle soaps (15-20% max)

 

[neeners]

Here's a recent thread about long cure - http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=45680

 

[sososo]

75% olive, 20% coconut, 5% castor - but you have to cure this for 5-6 months