... Another one that works well is sodium citrate. It's used at only a small % ...
How/when is the chelator added? Any reactions that I need to be prepared for? Is the usage rate pretty standard for all chelators? Just so you know, I'll probably use the sodium citrate because there are other uses for it in the kitchen. The possibilities for a "sour salt" are fascinating!
I use sodium citrate (or citric acid that I convert to sodium citrate) as my preferred chelator.
(EDTA does not readily biodegrade and is considered an environmental pollutant - there's more, but suffice to say, it is not on my list of included ingredients).
Citric acid can be dissolved in the water used for lye at about 1% of oil weight. I adjust the superfat down by 1/2 a percent (for every 1% of citric acid) to account for the extra superfat left when citric acid reacts with some of the hydroxide, if I'm calculating the amounts manually.
The SoapmakersFriend
lye calculator has the calculations for Citric Acid built into it
https://www.soapmakingfriend.com/soap-making-recipe-builder-lye-calculator/
OO? Olive Oil? It's just not an option for me.
This is just a curiosity question (it is in no way an attempt to change your mind), but can I ask why you can't use Olive Oil?
I know of two people who have trouble with it (one doesn't like the smell of the final soap - olive oil soaps have a distinctive scent that isn't present in other, high-oleic, soaps, and the other doesn't like the feel of it). I'm always curious to know why a person would move away from a particular oil in soap (even if it's just to help me formulate soaps that would better suit a person with those preferences or needs
).
Hi Ralph- just regular white granulated sugar. Basically, I use 5% sugar by weight as per each pound of oils in my batches, which roughly = 2 tablespoons by volume. When I make my honey/beeswax soap, instead of the white sugar, I use 5% honey by weight as per each pound of oils in my batch, which equals out to 1 tablespoon by volume as per pound of my oils (it weighs more than granulated sugar).
For what it's worth, I do my honey soaps differently than many people......I add the honey directly to my cooled-off lye solution before adding it to my oils. Adding the honey to my lye solution first eliminates all the weird drama that can happen to soap when adding honey to it. Fellow member Salted Fig has a great post somewhere on the forum explaining from a chemical standpoint why adding honey to the lye instead of to the batter produces drama-free results. I'll try and see if I can find it and post a link here. Anyway, I had been adding my honey like that for years with awesome drama-free results before Salted Fig came along and explained the why of it.
I looked over your original recipe in SoapCalc and wow- that would be some drying soap....and that's coming from someone whose skin (and whose family's skin) is fine with higher amounts of coconut and PKO than several folks here, even though the climate is crazy dry where I live. Go figure!
For what it's worth, this is how I tweaked your original formula so that it would be quite compatible with me and my family. The fatty acid profile is very much the same as my tallow/lard soap which is a fave of my hubby and son and is super bubbly and non-drying to us, only the tweak is 1 percentage point more conditioning than mine. I normally add .5% tetrasodium EDTA to it as per the total weight of my soap, as well as 2 tablespoons granulated sugar as per each pound of the oils in my batch, and also 2% sodium lactate as per pound of oils:
View attachment 36305
Everyone's skin is different in what it likes/hates, but the above fatty acid profile is what we happen to like.
IrishLass
Edited to add: I superfat mine @ 8%
Thanks IrishLass
... I haven't been on the forum a great deal (busy busy!), so I missed your post
I think this might be the honey post you were referring to
From:
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/cant-beat-the-heat-of-honey.71962/#post-725098
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Irishlass wrote a post back a few years, on her technique for taking the heat out of honey.
The concept is to make your lye solution and dilute your honey separately, then combine the two once the lye solution has cooled.
Effectively, the idea is to pre-react the honey so the extra heat is not added during saponification.
The details:
There are three main exothermic (heat producing) reactions that occur when you make a honey soap.
1/ The first exothermic reaction occurs when you add your hydroxide to your water/liquid to make your lye solution (let the lye solution cool before step 2).
2/ The second exothermic reaction occurs when you add your diluted honey to your cooled lye solution (let the honey-lye solution cool before step 3).
3/ The third (and final) exothermic reaction occurs during saponification.
Currently you are grouping the second and third exothermic reactions together, and the combined heat is speeding up the reaction, so the soap is getting hotter, faster. Note: Grouping the first and second exothermic reaction can lead to a lye volcano, so please don't do that.
By separating the three exothermic reactions from one another, you are reducing this compounding effect ... and stand a greater chance of making the ungelled honey soap you are aiming for.
Finally, if you use an ice bath and a fan directed over the top of the soap, or place the soap mold on a cooling rack and direct a fan so the air flows over and under the soap, you will get a greater cooling effect than you do in the still air of the freezer (the air around the soap can warm up and act a little like a blanket).
If you would like to read
@IrishLass's experiences with this technique, the original post from 2010 can be found
here (complete with a volcano story
)
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*edited to add citric acid calculations, link to SoapMakersFriend and expand honey post.
