How many different oils do you use in your soap?

[CelestialLizzie]

There's old engineering mantra that says something like "the more complicated something is, the more that can go wrong" and that can also apply to practically anything, like a large variety of oils you always use for soap. What if one of them isout of stock, you don't realize it's gone bad, the source you buy one of your oils from is getting their oils from somewhere else and you notice a difference in quality, etc. More of a variety of oils = more bad things that could happen.
I know the simple 30/30/30/10 recipe from brambleberry seems to be used almost universally, and I wanted something a little more complex than that - but it occurred to me that that may not be a great idea for the reasons above. I was looking at something with 7 different oils, which seems insane, but I figured I might ask to see if anyone else uses more than 3, 4, or even 5 oils on a regular basis.

 

[KiwiMoose]

I use 7 oils every time - each brings their own addition to my recipe. Some people only use 3 or 4 as standard.
I found this to be an interesting read early in my soaping journey:
What Fatty Acid Profiles in Soapmaking Are the Most Popular?

 

[Zing]

I started with 3 or 4. Now I use 6. Sometimes I like complexity with 100 colors and swirling techniques. Other times I love a simple one color or no color -- especially the easy clean up. Unlike superstar @KiwiMoose , I was years into my soaping journey before I read that article and truly understood it. Linolaywhat?!

 

[ResolvableOwl]

something with 7 different oils, which seems insane

7 oils is just as insane as making soap by oneself is in general.

One rarely does add oils just to lengthen the ingredient list and to increase the chances for errors (like measurement uncertainties, confuse bottles, running out of one ingredient, spilling…). One combines oils to have a soap that has particular properties (bubbly lather, hardness, cleansing/irritation potential, or clarity for liquid soaps…). These properties are most conveniently expressed in the fatty acid profile of the oil blend.

A mathematician would give you this answer: For a given FA profile, you need at most as many oils as you have FAs to consider. For all but the very most obsessed, this is the eight that are included in most soap calculators (saturated C12…C18 + unsaturated C18 + ricinoleic acid). So it is (superficially) proven that anything beyond 8 ingredients is just label appeal fuss (and/or masochism). And mathematicians are happy because they have reduced the formulation of soap recipes to the solved problem of matrix inversion.

In practice, strict adherence to a given FA profile is rarely a sensible aim for soapmaking, nor do FA profiles make up for complete properties of the soap. Consequently, it is neither possible nor necessary to adhere to a specific “school of thought” (be it 30/30/30/10, basic trinity, castile, …) to come up with a “personality” of your recipes – the best indication for the flexibility of the concept “soap” is the sheer amount of different recipe types and sub-types!

tl;dr: Use the oils that lend your soap the properties you want. You don't have to count them.



ETA: To address your actual question:

if anyone else uses more than 3, 4, or even 5 oils on a regular basis.

I refuse the “regular basis” part. I don't have one of a few “go-to” recipes, optimised over the years, to which I repeatedly return. My recipes can consist of anywhere between one and nine oils (IIRC). I love giving exotic components a chance. I love building recipes around the oddities of unconventional ingredients. Heck, it was a big thing for me (just a few months ago) when I first replicated a recipe for the first time!

 

[maryloucb]

I like to keep it simple, personally. I have 2 recipes that I generally use. One has 4 oils and the other has 5.

 

[Ugeauxgirl]

I use 4 usually. Never more than 5, a few recipes less than that. But I'm a simple girl, and prone to forgetting things so I keep it as simple as I can.

 

[lsg]

I think once you have found a combination you like, you usually stick to it. I like a combination or 4 or 5 oils/butters/fats in my soap.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Even if your favourite oil composition ends up to be complicated, you can make an oil masterbatch once in a while, and the number of oily ingredients suddenly reduces to 1.

 

[Zany_in_CO]

I know the simple 30/30/30/10 recipe from brambleberry

Better than Brambleberry's recipe is the BASIC TRINITY OF OILS that uses the 3 oils that form the 3 legs of a really good bar of soap for almost every skin type. This is a proven formula that I increasingly see in popular online natural soap bars like Dr. Squatch and others.

Once you get the "feel" of what each leg of the trinity brings to the end product, you can tweak the formula to your heart's desire.

 

[TheGecko]

I started with BB's recipe since I bought their Beginner's Cold Process Soap kit. And like every soap maker out there, I spent several months experimenting with different kinds of oils and butters trying to come up with a 'unique' bar that would become the 'it' soap. Fortunately I found this site a couple of months after I started making soap and discovered that 1) expensive oils/butters are a waste of money in soap because of the saponification process (save them for lotions) and 2) anything less than 5% just isn't worth it (IMHO), unless you are going for 'label appeal.

There is a reason why an equal amount of Olive, Coconut and Palm oils are called the "Holy Trinity"...as noted by @Zany_in_CO it ticks all the qualities of a good bar of soap. Now that doesn't mean that you can't use other ingredients...some folks don't like Olive Oil, some folks don't want to use Palm Oil, some folks find Coconut Oil to be too drying. And it doesn't mean that you can't add a little something-something extra. In addition to adding Sodium Lactate to make it easier to unmold my soap, I add Kaolin Clay. My husband likes an extra 'bubbly' bar so I add sugar to his loaf.

It also be noted that some folks, like me, pretty much just have just one recipe and some folks have multiple recipes. For my Regular Soap I use four oils (Olive, Coconut, Palm and Castor) and two butters (Cocoa and Shea). For my Goat Milk, I use the same four oils and just Shea Butter. I have a Mechanic's Soap that I make that is my Regular Soap w/Powdered Pumice. I also have a couple of folks who are allergic to Cocoa and Shea Butters so I just use BB's Recipe for them.

What it comes down to...it's a matter of personal preference; what do you like and how much are you willing to spend? If you want to make your soap with twenty different oils and butters...go for it. If you want to add clays, milk powders, silk, sugar, honey, salt, extracts, etc...go for it. One of the reasons why I got into Master Batching my oils was because it was such a PITA measuring out 1.65 oz of Castor Oil for every batch...so much easier to out 32 oz.

 

[CreativeWeirdo]

I am currently using 5; an adaptation from Katie Carson's Royalty Soaps recipe she provides for free in the description of almost all her YouTube videos (I use Apricot Kernel Oil instead of Sweet Almond).

But sometimes, using less variety of oils can lead to a more complicated recipe. For example, Zany's no slime castile uses only olive oil, but you'll need to make a faux sea-water solution to compensate for characteristics of a bar of soap using only olive oil.

You can also play with the SuperFat of a soap. A soap with 100% coconut oil and 0% Super Fat is so cleansing, it's used for washing dishes and can irritate if used to wash the skin. A soap with 100% coconut oil and 20-30% super fat would potentially not work as well on dishes, but might be lovely on someone's skin. (Some people can't use a soap with any coconut oil in it at all).

So, there are many different factors that go into the complexity of a soap recipe; not just the number of oils.

 

[Babyshoes]

I have 3 recipes I make fairly regularly, with between 1 and 5 oils/fats/butters.

Each is quite different and different people have their favourite, for various reasons...

 

[Zany_in_CO]

an equal amount of Olive, Coconut and Palm oils are called the "Holy Trinity

Great response! Just one minor correction - the amount of Olive, Coconut and Palm are NOT equal in the Basic Trinity of Oils starter formula.

Olive Oil 35% ~ for emollience, conditioning
Coconut 25% (or PKO* or Babassu) ~ for hardness, lather
Palm 40% (or lard, tallow, shea butter, GV* Shortening from Walmart) ~ for bulk

 

[MelissaG]

I use six. Sheabutter, olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, sweet almond oil and castor oil.

 

[Relle]

Six here, mine doesn't change, my recipe is in my head.

 

[KiwiMoose]

Six here, mine doesn't change, my recipe is in my head.

Mine is pretty much in my head now too Relle - as in I don't need to check the recipe each time. Only if I'm splitting in some oat or coconut milk.

 

[lenarenee]

There's no magic in the number of oils used. Soap - and good soap - is far more flexible than you think because it all depends on personal preferences. By all means - try recipes with any abundance of ingredients you want; see what you like and what issues you may or may not have sourcing ingredients. After months of 7, 10 or 12 oil recipes, you may then decide that simpler is better...or not.

That's what I did; started simple, then went for long recipes and fancy ingredients, and finally returning to mostly simpler recipes because of cost, ease...and lard. Lard is my best friend in soap. Olive oil is not. Enjoy the process of investigating all of those intriguing oils/fats, and you'll figure out what works for you.

Sounds like you may be gearing up to selling since you mentioned the possibility of supply issues. Supply issues will happen - pandemic or no pandemic. So with a history of experimenting with recipes - you'll have some backup recipes in mind when that happens.

 

[nebetmiw]

You get the best benefit of each oil if you keep it simple. 3 to 5 oils will give you the best of the oils benefits. Less than 10% is worthless in skin benefit. You must remember soap is a wash off product and only stays on a few minutes at most.

 

[lenarenee]

You get the best benefit of each oil if you keep it simple. 3 to 5 oils will give you the best of the oils benefits. Less than 10% is worthless in skin benefit. You must remember soap is a wash off product and only stays on a few minutes at most.

Are you talking about benefits such as vitamins, antioxidants, polyphenols and etc.? Oils and saponified oils are 2 different things. Saponified oils are deconstructed; soap is a salt of fatty acids. Vitamins are mostly or completely destroyed. I've read from chemistry papers that some flavonoids can resist high heat and alkali to a degree....but who knows how that transfers over to soap due to the dozens of process and temperature variables.

Like many other makers, I like to keep the special oils (like meadow foam, organ, etc) for leave-on times like body butters and lotions.

 

[TheGecko]

You get the best benefit of each oil if you keep it simple. 3 to 5 oils will give you the best of the oils benefits. Less than 10% is worthless in skin benefit. You must remember soap is a wash off product and only stays on a few minutes at most.

Except that the majority of the 'benefits' of those oils are destroyed during the saponification process, not to mention that soap is a wash on/rinse off product that is only your skin for maybe five to minutes.