Anyone ever tried cow butter in soap?

[LuckyStar]

From what i've read if you go upward of 10% it smells like bad cheese or vomit; however, both articles i read about it said nothing about inhibiting gel or adding a FO or EO.

I was thinking of adding it at 10% with a mixture of red wine and blackberry sage FO then slapping it in the fridge. Sort of a tiny tribute to Julia child whom i adore.


"With enough butter, anything is good"

 

[summerflyy]

I used butter in my soap at 10% and it smells pretty good. I actually like the smell.

 

[DeeAnna]

"...bad cheese or vomit..."

Well, hmmmm, I'd say some people rather overstate these things. I did a soap with 16.5% butter fat. The butyric acid in butter gave the soap a kind of warm beery, yeasty, cheesy kind of scent. Different, yest, but hardly "vomit." Just like with beer soap, the scent fades with time.

The soap turned out a medium tan color, which I am pretty sure came from the butterfat. The other soaping oils in my recipe normally give my soap a lighter color (castor, lard, high oleic safflower, and coconut oil). The bars I still have on hand are well over a year old and still look fine -- no DOS.

The butyric in soap is like the myristic and lauric acids in coconut oil -- it lathers freely with big loose bubbles. Soapcalc doesn't account for butyric acid when it figures out the numbers for "bubbly", "creamy", etc.

Don't let the butyric odor turn you away from giving homage to Julia -- just use a fragrance that will accept some warm softening -- rosemary, citrus, mint, spice, woodsy, etc. I added "wild mint" (mentha arvensis) EO to my batch and called the soap "butter mint".

 

[DeeAnna]

PS: Use the nutrition label on the butter to calculate the actual butterfat (aka milk fat) in the butter. The butterfat goes in the fat portion and the rest (the whey) goes in the water portion of your recipe. If you put the entire butter weight as fat, you will definitely end up with a lye heavy soap.

 

[LuckyStar]

PS: Use the nutrition label on the butter to calculate the actual butterfat (aka milk fat) in the butter. The butterfat goes in the fat portion and the rest (the whey) goes in the water portion of your recipe. If you put the entire butter weight as fat, you will definitely end up with a lye heavy soap.

Thanks for the tip! I was thinking i would have to do something like that, as no butter is 100% fat, lol.

Does soap calc have butter hidden somewhere on it? I can't seem to find it if it does. I think the sage has butter on its list last i checked, so i guess i can default to that if worse comes to worse

 

[CanaDawn]

It has milk fat, bovine, I believe, on soap calc

 

[DeeAnna]

Wups, forgot to give you the synonyms. Look for milkfat or butterfat or ghee (clarified butter). Depends on the calc you use as to what it's called.

 

[reinbeau]

Well, with ghee, it's all butterfat, the moisture and other solids are driven off and/or removed. It says milk fat, any bovine, in SoapCalc.

 

[cmzaha]

I have tried several different brands of butter and ghee. They all left an off sour smell on my hands after using the soap so I gave up with using butter. Also a friend of mine sent me a bar of hers with butter and it had the same off smell

 

[DeeAnna]

"...Well, with ghee, it's all butterfat, the moisture and other solids are driven off and/or removed...."

Yes, that is correct. Either use ghee and the work is done for you up front ... or do the math using the nutrition label information and calculate the butterfat in the amount of butter you want to use. Either path will get the soaper to the same place. The data for milkfat and for ghee -- sap value, fatty acid profile, etc -- is identical in SoapCalc.

 

[reinbeau]

"...Well, with ghee, it's all butterfat, the moisture and other solids are driven off and/or removed...."

Yes, that is correct. Either use ghee and the work is done for you up front ... or do the math using the nutrition label information and calculate the butterfat in the amount of butter you want to use. Either path will get the soaper to the same place. The data for milkfat and for ghee -- sap value, fatty acid profile, etc -- is identical in SoapCalc.

I was referring more to the excess over and above the milkfat being calculated into the water portion. If you were to use ghee, there would be no addition to said water amount. Much easier to use ghee, fer sher

 

[summerflyy]

I have tried several different brands of butter and ghee. They all left an off sour smell on my hands after using the soap so I gave up with using butter. Also a friend of mine sent me a bar of hers with butter and it had the same off smell

I didn't encounter this. It smelled rather sweet and milky when I make it and use it. Hmmm...

 

[DeeAnna]

"...Much easier to use ghee, fer sher..."

Maybe it would if one could ~find~ it, but I live in the rural white-bread boonies of the Midwestern US. It's far easier and quicker for me to use some of our good, local creamery butter and do 30 seconds of arithmetic. Just me.....

 

[reinbeau]

"...Much easier to use ghee, fer sher..."

Maybe it would if one could ~find~ it, but I live in the rural white-bread boonies of the Midwestern US. It's far easier and quicker for me to use some of our good, local creamery butter and do 30 seconds of arithmetic. Just me.....

Yea, I'm up here in Massachusetts, with Trader Joe's and Whole Walle.....I mean Foods all over the place, ghee is fairly readily available. On the other hand, nice, fresh, real creamery butter is a hot commodity. I think I'd prefer the latter if I could get my hands on it.

 

[DeeAnna]

I have to say I would love to go to a Trader Joes or Whole Foods just to see what it's all about. Never been -- the nearest is 3 1/2 hours away. roblem:

But, okay, so envy this! There are micro breweries everywhere, even in the boonies where I live, but what about a micro dairy? We have our own just 10 minutes away. They do "cream line" milk all from local dairy herds with no r-BST use allowed. We can go right to the dairy and get milk, cheese, ice cream, and yogurt.

"Cream line" means the milk is pasteurized, but it is not homogenized to blend the milk to smithereens. The flavor is distinctive, because the cream globules in the milk are larger and the proteins are not damaged. It really does different -- sweeter, fuller flavored. The skim tastes like other dairies' 1%.

You have to shake the milk before pouring to mix the cream with the milk, but it is really worth it. Yum!

 

[LuckyStar]

Hm, the more i think about how i want to do this soap, the trickier it gets.

Was thinking about doing a 50 50 water swap with red wine, but i know from experience that lye added directly to wine or beer changes them both to a sort of unpleasant brown, and i would want the wine for some of its colour and natural scent. I'm thinking boiling the wine down to a syrup and adding it at trace to make up for my water discount would do the trick;however, the water portion of the butter would already be filling in said water discount....maybe i'll have to wait till i can get my hands on some ghee, lol.

 

[reinbeau]

Hm, the more i think about how i want to do this soap, the trickier it gets.

Was thinking about doing a 50 50 water swap with red wine,
snip

I'll be interested to hear how this turns out but I gotta say, wine soap already smells funky, I don't know how butter will be with it. Let us know.

 

[LuckyStar]

I'll be interested to hear how this turns out but I gotta say, wine soap already smells funky, I don't know how butter will be with it. Let us know.

Haha, yeah thats my though with adding it at trace instead of to the lye. As far as i've been able to tell most of the sort of "off" scent with water swaps comes from adding the lye directly to the liquid swap. Things added at trace tend to keep their natural scent better for me