Beginner questions

[RoseMarie]

I haven't made a batch yet but am going to really soon. I've got everything together now that I need and I have a couple questions. I want to use some fresh rosemary in it along with some mint. This will be cold process soap that I want to make. It's vegetable shortening, coconut oil, and olive oil. I've read you can make a strong tea and add that as your water. I have some 100% spearmint tea that I want to use in place of my water. I'm wondering how many bags of it I will need to use for a batch of soap. This recipe was on a DVD about soap making that I watched. I have watched it like 4 times now.

The recipe I have calls for....

4 cups water
48 oz. vegetable shortening
32 oz. coconut oil
16 oz. olive oil
12 oz. lye

Also I am drying my fresh rosemary. Do I put it through the coffee grinder so it will grind it all up? And how much would I need to put of the rosemary in my soap? I have some peppermint essential oil but from what I have been reading it doesn't hold it's fragrance long. I might have that wrong. I have read sooooo much and I can't remember it all. But I'd like to just add the rosemary and the spearmint tea water. Would you also tear the tea bag open and use the spearmint that is inside it, in the soap? I'm wondering IF that would mold and mildew in it?
Sorry so many questions!

 

[edree]

go to soap calc 1st and get your recipe in weights maybe cut it down in size abit the eo will hold scent but the tea will not (i tried that)

 

[reallyrita]

Beginner's questions

This is going to make a really large first time batch. Better to cut this recipe down a bit. Put everything into soapcalc and see what they tell you about the lye and the water (tea) amounts. When you get the percentages you can reduce the size of the batch proportionally. Then, recheck everything on soapcalc. You can do this now way before you actually start to make the soap. You need a good scale that measures in ounces and fractions of an ounce and grams too if possible. It is absolutely critical that you measure in weights, even your liquid, and not in cups or teaspoons or eyeballing or whatever. You can certainly use the tea and the contents of the tea bag after you have steeped the tea. You might have trouble cutting up the fresh rosemary in the spice grinder or blender. Snipping it with scissors might work better. Remember that the tea leaves and rosemary will eventually turn a bit brown in the finished soap. The scent of the tea will not survive its lye bath. I would suggest taking a good look at the Millers site before you start and get that scale too. You might want to consider heating some olive oil to just warm, and adding a big bunch of rosemary to it and allowing it to steep like that for several days. Then measure out what you need after straining away the clumps of rosemary. This is an infusion and you can get nice scent this way. Be careful, rosemary gets really strong smelling. I have a huge rosemary bush and have been planning on doing this as well, but I have not tried it yet!! I think every seasoned soaper on this forum would tell you one huge piece of advice (oh, we have mostly learned this the hard way) never take a recipe you have found on a web site (even this one) book, dvd, magazine, tv show or where ever and trust it. Always run it through soapcalc first. My first soaping book was highly recommended to me and guess what? Every single recipe in it was lye heavy. I don't just mean not superfated enough...just plain old big time lye heavy. Do your own checking each and every time. That and getting a good (yeah, they are expensive) scale are the best pieces of advice I can think of to give a new soaper....oh, and always wear those gloves and goggles...always...

 

[honor435]

ouch, just remember that herb addictives may be scratchy. I added straw, seeds, which are very tiny and my son in law said it hurt. Why dont u add some rosemary eo for the smell? im not sure tea will smell at all in soap. good luck.

 

[ewenique]

I ran your recipe through www.soapcalc.net and 12 oz lye makes it an18% superfat, which is pretty high. The soap itself should be pretty nice, but I would suggest using a bit more lye to bring the superfat up to the 5-8% range that is more typical for that type of soap. For 6% you need 13.7 oz lye.

I would also suggest starting with just a one or two pound batch. Here are the numbers for one pound with 6% superfat:

8 oz Crisco
5 oz Coconut oil
3 oz Olive oil

6 oz water/tea (tea will make the soap turn tan)
2.3 oz lye

Take the safety precautions seriously - use rubber gloves & goggles, and an accurate scale is essential.

 

[RoseMarie]

oh you guys are just awesome! THANK YOU!!!
I did that with the rosemary and it's been steeping all day in olive oil.
Also I did get me some digital scales as well.
Even got a stainless steel pot for doing it in so I wont have to use my kitchen ones. Oh yeah, got the googles, the gloves AND the long sleeves to!
I am going to take your advise on downsizing the recipe for my first batch to because I know you all know what you are talking about!!
It doesn't matter to me that the tea water turns it a tan color. But I do appreciate ALL your advise!!!
ok so I think I have some e.o. in the rosemary scent so I can add that instead of the rosemary itself.
On the DVD I watched they kept their plastic container the shortening came in to stick theier utensils in to keep from getting all the caustic stuff all over the place. They even rested the stick blender in it to when they weren't using it.
I have double windows in my dining room so my plans are to cover my table with papers really thick and get all my things ready on the table and that way I can have the table in front of the windows so I can open them if the lye fumes get too strong. I even have a window fan handy if I need to stick it IN the window to draw the smell out of the dining room.
I'm really not understanding the soap calculators!
Wonder why the tea doesn't survive the lye bath? Is it the heat that makes it lose its smell?

Thank you all again! I'm sure I will have more questions!

UGH just thought of one! When I went to get my Crisco shortening, all walmart had was their brand. On the container it says partially hydrogenated soybean oil, and fully hydrogenated cottonseed oil. WHICH one of those do I put in the calculator?

 

[RoseMarie]

? about a book

Do any of you have the book, The Everything Soapmaking Book, by: Alicia Grosso? I was looking at it the other day at Books A Million and I really liked it. So I checked on Ebay and they had one on there and I bought it and I got it today.
Was just wondering if any of you have this one and is it a good reference book? I really like it but since I haven't made any soap yet, I can't say it's a really good one. I plan on getting the SoapMakers Companion for sure! I have one checked out from the library now.

 

[madartist]

Re: ? about a book

Do any of you have the book, The Everything Soapmaking Book, by: Alicia Grosso?

When I first started, I bought 5 books. This was the one I used, pretty much, for all of my first recipes. After discovering SoapCalc, I ran some of these recipes through it and they were pretty accurate on amount of lye needed. I like it because they broke the amounts of materials needed into several batch sizes. Made it easy for a newbie to find just the right batch size for his/her molds.

 

[carebear]

I never got a book until AFTER I'd been soaping for a year or so.
Then I found some at work (yea, at work LOL) and thought "meh - not much information compared to the forums."

 

[RoseMarie]

Ok now I feel better knowing I got a good book. I have been reading for about 3 or more weeks now everything I could get my hands on. When I found this one at Books A Million (BAM) I hadn't read some of the tips and info before. She seemed to put it in terms I could understand better. I'm not an idiot, but I didn't get to get as much schooling as some folks got. My mom was sick and she moved us around a lot when I was young. So needless to say, that meant we went to different schools all the time. Saying that to say, I love learning something new and reading what I can so I CAN learn.
Thank you Carebear and Maddie!!! I really appreciate your advise! And yes Carebear this forum is just awesome I will have to agree 100%. I LOVE IT!

 

[RoseMarie]

I think, and HOPE I have found a calc. I can use. Someone posted on the Soap/Lye Calculators; A guide, link. (1.) I wanted to run this by you and SEE if I have it right just to be sure? I did half the soap recipe that I posted above.

vegetable shortening- 24 oz.
coconut oil- 16 oz.
olive oil- 8 oz.
lye- 6.93 0z.- superfatted by 5%
water or liquid- 17.9 oz.
2.2 oz. essential oils (if I used those)

(2.)ALSO let's say I wanted to use 2 essential oils, is this 2.2 0z. the total amount in essential oils or do I use 2.2 0z. of each essential oil?
(3.) Would that actually make a 3 pound batch of soap?


I really like this calc!
http://www.maplesprings.com/soapcalc.html


I'm sorry ONE MORE question..... (4.) If I wanted to figure this out for myself and not use a calc. how would I go about doing that?

 

[carebear]

I'm not so fond of that calculator. Just because it doesn't offer much flexibility, not that anything is wrong with it. I like soapcalc.com mostly, although it's a bit of a pain having to flip back and forth between pages.

Anyway, your questions.
1 - the numbers look right, lye-wise.
2 - how much EO you use will depend on what it is, for starters. but the general guideline are between 0.5 oz ppo (that's PER POUND OF OILS) and 1.0 oz ppo. You have 1.5 pounds of oils, so you will use .75 oz - 3.0 oz of EO. Same goes for fragrance oils, where I TYPICALLY use 0.7 oz ppo (2.1 oz in this case). But it really depends on your exact fragrance material. and yes, that's TOTAL FRAGRANCE (not per component)
3 - it'll make a bit more than a 3# batch because you have the weight of the oils + the weight of the lye, plus some of the water won't evaporate out.

 

[RoseMarie]

Thank you Carebear! Yeah I thought about that to with that calc. after I got to thinking about it. But it sure is simple to use.

I FINALLY made my soap! Oh man I love it to! lol I am hooked! My sister and I finally got together today and made the small batch. I used ground up oatmeal in it as well as the rosemary steeped in the olive oil. Also added eo rosemary and eo mint. I didn't put the rosemary in it that I had steeped in the olive oil though. Anyway we put it in a microwavable muffin pan I had for it's mold. Then we made another batch and we made a larger one and put it in my wooden mold this time. It didn't fill up my mold but I had the block that we had made so it would be moved to the size mold you needed. Anyway the first batch we made, (had the windows (3) open) It took awhile for it to come to the trace. When I added the olive oil to it before it came to trace, the color changed to a redish color and then it turned pink and now it's a beige color. It was really cool! It looks soooo pretty and creamy in it's mold!!!
THEN the second batch we did, I just wiped the pot down with some paper towels and we made the second batch. I'd forgotten to wipe down the sppon we used. And my sister stuck it in the water and lye and started stirring and little small things started floating to the surface and I was like WHAT IS THAT? Then it dawned on her we hadn't cleaned the spoon to and it was the little bit of soap that was left on the spoon. This batch was plain with nothing added to it. It went to trace so fast I was worried we wasn't going to get it in the mold fast enough. I had turned the central heat up because we were getting chilly with the windows open. So after the fumes went away we closed a couple of them. So I'm wondering WHY this one traced soooo fast. Was it because it was warmer in there?
OHHH I just happen to think of something else that may have happened with that one! The first one had all great value shortening it in. The second batch we didn't have enough of the shortening so I added some of another brand to get it up to it's amount. The second batch had cottonseed oil in some of the shortening. The first batch had soybean vegetable oil.
any ideas? I took pix of the soap in their molds. We were soooo excited! It was FUN!

 

[carebear]

sounds fantastic.
I'll think about the time to trace thing when I'm awake tomorrow, but wanted to say good choice on not adding the rosemary itself to your soap - it can be pretty sharp and abrasive.

 

[oldragbagger]

Re: ? about a book

Do any of you have the book, The Everything Soapmaking Book, by: Alicia Grosso? I was looking at it the other day at Books A Million and I really liked it. So I checked on Ebay and they had one on there and I bought it and I got it today.

That is a good book. So is The Soapmakers Companion by Susan Miller Cavitch. I don't use any of her recipes as is, and I wouldn't use ANYBODY's recipes without running them through Soapcalc first. But all of the other information in the book is excellent as far as techniques, ingredients and just helping to understand the process.

 

[RoseMarie]

Re: ? about a book

Do any of you have the book, The Everything Soapmaking Book, by: Alicia Grosso? I was looking at it the other day at Books A Million and I really liked it. So I checked on Ebay and they had one on there and I bought it and I got it today.

That is a good book. So is The Soapmakers Companion by Susan Miller Cavitch. I don't use any of her recipes as is, and I wouldn't use ANYBODY's recipes without running them through Soapcalc first. But all of the other information in the book is excellent as far as techniques, ingredients and just helping to understand the process.

Oh yeah, I'm hearing that here and at all the other forums as well. I wouldn't want to try one without running it through the calc. because I don't want to waste my ingredients. But I do appreciate your advise.
I have that one checked out from the library. It IS a good book!

 

[Dahila]

Who needs a book, having you guys)
Just kidding..
Soapcalc is probably the easiest to use and I learned all the oils properties or butters from it.

 

[Susie]

I'd forgotten to wipe down the sppon we used. And my sister stuck it in the water and lye and started stirring and little small things started floating to the surface and I was like WHAT IS THAT? Then it dawned on her we hadn't cleaned the spoon to and it was the little bit of soap that was left on the spoon. This batch was plain with nothing added to it. It went to trace so fast I was worried we wasn't going to get it in the mold fast enough. I had turned the central heat up because we were getting chilly with the windows open. So after the fumes went away we closed a couple of them. So I'm wondering WHY this one traced soooo fast. Was it because it was warmer in there?
OHHH I just happen to think of something else that may have happened with that one! The first one had all great value shortening it in. The second batch we didn't have enough of the shortening so I added some of another brand to get it up to it's amount. The second batch had cottonseed oil in some of the shortening. The first batch had soybean vegetable oil.
any ideas? I took pix of the soap in their molds. We were soooo excited! It was FUN!

A few thoughts on your soapmaking:

Congratulations! And welcome to the addiction!

It always speeds trace when you add some at least partially saponified soap or soap batter to the mix. Would I suggest you do it again? Not really. You need to get used to how soap comes to trace without cheaters first.

You only need to be sure you have really good ventilation until you get the lye water into the oils.

Any time you do not have enough of the oils you put into the calculator, you must re-run it through the lye calculator.

Get into the habit now of printing out every recipe every time from the lye calculator. Put the date you made the batch on it, and write down any additives you used, as well as any notes regarding how fast it came to trace and what you think about it when you try it 4-6 weeks later. This way, you don't repeat mistakes.

Make a little card to go with the batch of soap with the date and name of the soap. This way, when you have 6-8 batches all curing at the same time, you will know which is which.