Mediterranean Blend ?

[David Gregory]

I haven't been making much soap the past few months but have gotten back on it.

There is an oil blend I found at Big Lots that I jumped on. It is a blend of 34% Virgin Olive Oil, 33% Sunflower Oil and 33% Canola Oil. $3.99 for 33.8 oz and seemed like a great premixed combination for soapmaking.

However [of course]... it's not a good combination as a single trio to make soap in those percentages right out of the bottle it appears: too soft, not cleansing, etc etc.

I'm lost at how to use it as an "oil" as there is not an entry for a "Mediterranean Style Blend" for this combination of oils in the lye calculator.

Would it be an even swap for Olive Oil alone?

If not, how does one calculate it ?

Thanks in advance. This was too good to pass up @ 11-12c an oz and I've wanted to use sunflower oil as a soaping ingredient in the past.

If no use for soap, there are always marinades....

BTW: 30 oz of Coconut Oil at Big Lots $7.50 as well as Extra Virgin Olive Oil 16.9 oz: $2.99. I got those as well. They seemed a very good deal.

I need to stop it. Palm Oil on the way and just bought cocoa butter this morning both via eBay. I'll be buried in soap by spring....

 

[gww]

I would put 3.4 oz Virgin Olive Oil, 3.3 oz Sunflower Oil and 3.3 oz Canola Oil into the calculator, and that would give me ten oz of oils to add with some other oils to round out the recipe. I am too new to listen too though.

30 oz of Coconut Oil at Big Lots $7.50

My brother just bought me a two pack of 30 oz for a total of 60 oz at walmart for ten bucks. The organic 56 oz is 17.9 cents per ounce there also.
Cheers
gww

 

[David Gregory]

I would put 3.4 oz Virgin Olive Oil, 3.3 oz Sunflower Oil and 3.3 oz Canola Oil into the calculator, and that would give me ten oz of oils to add with some other oils to round out the recipe. I am too new to listen too though.
My brother just bought me a two pack of 30 oz for a total of 60 oz at walmart for ten bucks. The organic 56 oz is 17.9 cents per ounce there also.
Cheers
gww

Nice.
Great prices. My Walmart was short on oils when I went in the other day.
Thanks for your response. I appreciate you taking the time GWW.
Wrote it down.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

That blend by itself indeed would make soap of questionable quality. Or at least only in the hands of the audacious. (Let's find out if you are ).
There are (roughly) two types of sunflower oil (high-linoleic and high-oleic), and only one of them makes good soap all by itself. Does the label help you, with telling you about poly-unsaturated fatty acids? If you're around 16%, then it should be fine to make a soap with a high percentage of this oil blend (more later), but if it's more around 38%, then you can still use it, but at lower usage rates.

It was a good “reflex” of you to invest into coconut, and hard oils (palm/cocoa). These two types of oils bring in abundance what your blend is missing.

First, decide for the amount of oils you want to make soap of. For simplicity's sake say 10 oz.
Then go to your favourite soap calculator. Sunflower, olive, canola make up effectively for the same amounts in your blend (forget about that 1% difference). Enter 1 oz of each.
Then fill up to 10 oz, e. g. with 4 oz palm oil and 3 oz coconut. You'll end up with an “all-green” recipe (for which the “longevity” number really is the most important one IMHO). You can use up 1+1+1=3 oz of the Mediterranean blend per 10 oz of soap oils (30%). That's about the typical usage rates of soft oils in balanced recipes.
Much higher percentage is difficult when you don't know if the sunflower oil is high-oleic – otherwise you might have increased risk of rancidity over the months of cure & usage.

If no use for soap, there are always marinades....

No bad usage either, but heh, this is a SOAP forum!

I'll be buried in soap by spring....

Yes, I'm afraid. (No, I'm not afraid, lol)


ETA: @gww was faster than me, but with the same idea!

 

[gww]

Resovableowl
I was just about to type, wait for someone smarter like you to answer and not jump just on my newbie response.
Cheers
gww

 

[David Gregory]

Thanks for that.
The label says the entire mix is 5% saturated fat. 14g of total fat 18%.
"Refined" sunflower and canola oils
My recipes are always for 2 pound batches, about 10-12 bars.
Much appreciated.

'Or at least only in the hands of the audacious. (Let's find out if you are ).'

Audacious ? No. But my brother called me eccentric once. Plus the NSFW stuff.....

 

[dibbles]

Thanks in advance. This was too good to pass up @ 11-12c an oz and I've wanted to use sunflower oil as a soaping ingredient in the past.

Just for future reference, if you have a Trader Joe's near you, I buy my high oleic sunflower oil there - 32 oz for about $4.00. Happy soaping!

 

[David Gregory]

Thank you, GGW and Resolvable Owl both. I have generated what looks like a decent recipe on the calculator.

Using palm and vegetable shortening.

Just for future reference, if you have a Trader Joe's near you, I buy my high oleic sunflower oil there - 32 oz for about $4.00. Happy soaping!

Excellent. Thank you.

 

[Dawni]

I'm late then lol but I also fiddled with the calc a bit using what's in this oil and what you said you have and what's on the way lol

I suck at math though so I just played with percentages

These are comfortable enough numbers for me personally, assuming the sunflower isn't high oleic

 

[gww]

David
Good luck, be nice to hear how it goes for you.
Cheers
gww

 

[David Gregory]

I'm late then lol but I also fiddled with the calc a bit using what's in this oil and what you said you have and what's on the way lol

I suck at math though so I just played with percentages
View attachment 62450
View attachment 62451
These are comfortable enough numbers for me personally, assuming the sunflower isn't high oleic

Nice!. Thank you so much.
I like those properties numbers too.

David
Good luck, be nice to hear how it goes for you.
Cheers
gww

Thanks. I am fighting the urge to do a batch today.
Just learned about room temp soaping and did it just the day before yesterday .... not sure how well though. It went from trace to jellied slop after I added fragrance but it's in the other room curing for a few weeks. We'll see.

 

[Dawni]

You're welcome!
Now as to how you're going to calculate how much of your oils will amount to these percentages...... Ugh, math.. I hope you don't suck at it like I do coz I tried but nope, not gonna anymore LOL

Figuring that should curb your urge to soap this today haha

 

[Johnez]

Is that the daily value percentage for what we "should" be consuming? Just asking as I'm curious to know the grams saturated fat against the total grams of fat.

 

[Johnez]

Alright, scratch my previous reply, I actually found this oil and became intrigued at this challenge. I've had to do something similar twice before when the oil I had did not match the soap calc's description. So here it goes:

To begin, head over to soapcalc and fill in the blanks. The particularly important details to fill in beside your oils are A) 0% superfat, B) 100 grams for your "batch" size, C) KOH for lye. Don't worry about water options.
Should look like this:

Hit Calculate Recipe" and then "View or Print Recipe" Below a pic with what your results should be with my highlights of the important details:

Now we have a profile of the oil you have, from here we can go to SoapMakingFriend calculator and start a new "recipe." Scroll down to the oils section, and right after the available oils you'll have the option to add your own oil, complete with fatty acid profile, SAP, INS, iodine, the works-all of which was provided by the results from soapcalc. Where that's at:

Now after hitting "Add new" you'll be presented with this screen:

Now fill in the details you've pulled from soapcalc. The fatty acids (oleic, linoleic) are straightforward. For Sap we will take the amount of KOH required and move the decimal point 2 places to the left. This is the reason we have selected to use 100 grams of oil by the way. Don't worry about anything after "Sap."

Should look like this:

Once that's all filled out, you can hit save and congrats you've now a new oil to add easily to whatever soap recipe you want. It takes a bit of legwork, but once you have this in your oils library you can add this to your recipe just like any other oil without having to do any additional math-with a fatty acid profile to boot.

Your (and my!) new oil in the oils list:

Now a few notes, SoapMakingFriend needs KOH sap to be entered for sap. I did not use "90% KOH" on the soap calc, but the regular KOH option. This is because SoapMakingFriend will derive the correct NaOH value from the 100% KOH when NaOH lye is selected.

Also, I've made the assumption that the oils used (Sunflower and Canola) were not High Oleic, but of the regular kind. I think this is a safe assumption to make for a few reasons, however I may be wrong here and if you find otherwise you can adjust accordingly. I would also like to know so I can edit the pics to be more accurate. SoapMakingFriend calc will let you edit an oil as well if you happen to figure this out after going through this process.

Now I did all this on some downtime at work so if there are any mistakes or anything at all wrong with the process please let me know so I can edit it for future visitors. Thanks all for making it this far!

 

[earlene]

Good job, @Johnez. That's one of the great things about this calculator that I truly enjoy, being able to customize soaping oils! I've only done it twice so far, but what a valuable feature.

 

[Johnez]

Good job, @Johnez. That's one of the great things about this calculator that I truly enjoy, being able to customize soaping oils! I've only done it twice so far, but what a valuable feature.

Thanks, and yes it's an amazing tool. One of the reasons I am a supporter. Without this function using "stearic acid" would be a headache lol.

 

[Vicki C]

FWIW the 102 ounce jars of coconut at Big Lots are the cheapest source I have found - $12, plus they often have 20% off coupons, and you can pile on a $10 off coupon too ( I think the minimum purchase is only $20?). Again, thanks @AliOop for that pro tip!

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Without this function using "stearic acid" would be a headache lol.

Gosh, you're lazy! AAA

 

[David Gregory]

Alright, scratch my previous reply, I actually found this oil and became intrigued at this challenge. I've had to do something similar twice before when the oil I had did not match the soap calc's description. So here it goes:

To begin, head over to soapcalc and fill in the blanks. The particularly important details to fill in beside your oils are A) 0% superfat, B) 100 grams for your "batch" size, C) KOH for lye. Don't worry about water options.
Should look like this:

View attachment 62473

Hit Calculate Recipe" and then "View or Print Recipe" Below a pic with what your results should be with my highlights of the important details:

View attachment 62467

Now we have a profile of the oil you have, from here we can go to SoapMakingFriend calculator and start a new "recipe." Scroll down to the oils section, and right after the available oils you'll have the option to add your own oil, complete with fatty acid profile, SAP, INS, iodine, the works-all of which was provided by the results from soapcalc. Where that's at:

View attachment 62469

Now after hitting "Add new" you'll be presented with this screen:

View attachment 62470

Now fill in the details you've pulled from soapcalc. The fatty acids (oleic, linoleic) are straightforward. For Sap we will take the amount of KOH required and move the decimal point 2 places to the left. This is the reason we have selected to use 100 grams of oil by the way. Don't worry about anything after "Sap."

Should look like this:

View attachment 62471

Once that's all filled out, you can hit save and congrats you've now a new oil to add easily to whatever soap recipe you want. It takes a bit of legwork, but once you have this in your oils library you can add this to your recipe just like any other oil without having to do any additional math-with a fatty acid profile to boot.

Your (and my!) new oil in the oils list:

View attachment 62472

Now a few notes, SoapMakingFriend needs KOH sap to be entered for sap. I did not use "90% KOH" on the soap calc, but the regular KOH option. This is because SoapMakingFriend will derive the correct NaOH value from the 100% KOH when NaOH lye is selected.

Also, I've made the assumption that the oils used (Sunflower and Canola) were not High Oleic, but of the regular kind. I think this is a safe assumption to make for a few reasons, however I may be wrong here and if you find otherwise you can adjust accordingly. I would also like to know so I can edit the pics to be more accurate. SoapMakingFriend calc will let you edit an oil as well if you happen to figure this out after going through this process.

Now I did all this on some downtime at work so if there are any mistakes or anything at all wrong with the process please let me know so I can edit it for future visitors. Thanks all for making it this far!

Thank you. I appreciate all the time you spent.
This really blows me away.
I looked at some of my old stuff packed away in a closet last night after posting this. It was ugly, fragrance discolored, shrunken. Got completely bummed and grated a bunch to rebatch. As a soaper, I weave a helluva potholder.
That was discouraging, but reading this and all of the posts gives very valuable encouragement. Many thanks.
You have saved a fellow soap maker from tapping out I think..
I will work on this again today. Very useful.

 

[David Gregory]

FWIW the 102 ounce jars of coconut at Big Lots are the cheapest source I have found - $12, plus they often have 20% off coupons, and you can pile on a $10 off coupon too ( I think the minimum purchase is only $20?). Again, thanks @AliOop for that pro tip!

That's right! The coupons I have been printing out and taking in every time they pop up in my email !
Yes.