Hot Process Superfat Question

[cpacamper]

Hi all.

Lets' say I have a tallow and coconut oil soap recipe run through soapcalc with 5% superfat. Lets's say I want to superfat only the coconut oil.

Can I simply saponify all the tallow with all the lye called for by soapcalc first, then add the coconut oil to get only the coconut oil superfatted?

 

[Meganmischke]

Absolutely, this is in my opinion the only reason to make hp soap.

 

[Obsidian]

You would cook all the oil except 5% of the coconut, thats what you add after the cook. No reason the with hold all the coconut, just the portion that will be SF.

 

[MagicalMysterySoap]

Hi all.

Lets' say I have a tallow and coconut oil soap recipe run through soapcalc with 5% superfat. Lets's say I want to superfat only the coconut oil.

Can I simply saponify all the tallow with all the lye called for by soapcalc first, then add the coconut oil to get only the coconut oil superfatted?

Of course. Do you just want the tallow to saponify or Co too? You can have co saponify also just sf at 0% on soapcalc and add the 5% sf after the cook.

 

[cpacamper]

Of course. Do you just want the tallow to saponify or Co too? You can have co saponify also just sf at 0% on soapcalc and add the 5% sf after the cook.

I'm thinking like this (and please correct me).

1. Melt tallow and co separately.

2. Mix lye and water.

3. Add lye water to melted taloow, hp to saponify. I'm thinking this would leave lye excess.

4. Add melted co to step three and finish cooking the soap.

My thinking is since tallow is already 100% saponified by the time I add co, the remaining co will saponify plus 5% left over as "superfat".

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Not quite - how it works depends on a couple of things such as what you define superfat as........................

Put your recipe in to soap calc. Switch over to % amounts (if you already work in % then fine) and reduce the CO % by 5 and put in 5% of any other oil not used in your recipe. Switch to weight. You now have the amount of oil that makes up 5% of the total. Make a note of this. Remove this "holding" oil and you now have your recipe minus this extra oil amount - so your CO is less than you had originally. Set the SF to 0% and calculate.

Make your soap with this amount of oil, keeping that other 5% amount to one side. You put the rest in and cook and all that good stuff. Then you put in this 5% amount at the end.

My point on the definition of superfat is that this does not mean that you have a 5% Lye Discount, but rather a 5% superfat. There is a difference in the maths because of the SAP values that make up your recipe, but what you end up with here 5% of your oils by weight are not saponified.

Your method will work, but will take longer and result in a very long cook for tallow

 

[reinbeau]

I just calculate my recipe at 1% (that's just a safety thing) and then calculate whatever I want my superfat to be - so to 50 ounces of oils (already at 1%) I'd add 2.5 ounces of oils after the cook to bring the SF up to 6%. Yes, I'd have 52.5 ounces of oils in the soap but so what? Negligible difference. There's a convoluted way to calculate it so you stay at the same weight oils, you can find it here. Way too much work for me - my method works just fine as far as I'm concerned