Need help with my palm oil-free, vegan cold processed soap recipe

[Jyoti Maloo]

Hi Experienced Soapers,

I am new to soap-making and this is my second batch of soap. My first batch of soap was 95% OO and 5% CO. After a 4 week cure, the soap turned out to be reasonably hard, conditioning and lathery, but I did not like the slime and the gel that accumulates on the soap. It also seems to dissolve quickly and I am sure it will not last long. With my second attempt, I am aiming at a harder, long-lasting, non-drying bar without using palm oil and animal fat. After lots of reading and research, I've come up with a recipe using SoapCalc. I need your help with validating my recipe, if the % of hard and soft oils chosen is right for the kind of soap I am targeting. Here's a snapshot of my recipe from SoapCalc. Thanks in advance.

 

[lsg]

There are several threads on making vegan soap without palm. Some members like adding soy wax. Your recipe is fairly high in oleic acid, which means it probably won't be a long-lasting bar.

 

[Jyoti Maloo]

Thanks lsg. I checked out other threads and most of them use soy wax. I am not really keen on using soy wax. Also, thanks for pointing out that my oleic number was high. What I did was reduced the OO to 25% and replaced sweet almond oil with a lighter sunflower oil. I had to up my shea butter by 10% to make it harder. Here's the new recipe. Your thoughts?

 

[earlene]

This soap won't last long either, but it will probably last longer than the high Oleic soap you made already.

Hardness is not an indicator of how long a soap will last in use, but if you deduct both the lauric & myristic numbers from the hardness number, you'll get an indication of longevity. But that means nothing if you don't know the range to look for. See this lye calculator or this one where the longevity number is included. With a range of 25-50, longevity range, you will see that your soap is in the low end of the longevity range.

You can increase longevity by adding or increasing oils lower in myristic and lauric and higher in palmitic & stearic, such as your cocoa and shea butters, or illipe, mango, sal butter. Soft oils that would be a good choice to increase palmitic & stearic while decreasing lauric & myristic are Avocado Oil and Rice Bran Oil.

So my suggestion if you have access to avocado oil, is to replace both the olive and sunflower oil with Avocado oil. Or Rice Bran Oil, or a combination thereof. I would reduce the Coconut oil to 15-20% and increase the Cocoa Butter and Shea to 20% & 25%. You can increase your longevity of the bar this way.

Lauric & Myrsitic both increase the cleansing number, but for some a very high cleansing number feels very drying to the skin, because it also tends to strip away the oils from the skin at the same time it is used to clean away the stuff we want to clean off of our skin. Not all soap formulas with high cleansing numbers do this for all people, though. The specifics within a formula itself can create a non-drying soap even with a high cleansing number and a low superfat, but finding that formula perfect for your own skin, can be a lot of trial and error, which is complicated when limiting what oils can be used (whether by geography or by choice). As a vegetarian, believe me, I have been there.

 

[penelopejane]

Your first recipe print out is ok but I'd reduce the coconut oil to no more than 10% and add that to the olive oil. You will need to cure it for 12 weeks before you can tell what its properties will be. Coconut oil will dissolve quickly regardless of cure time. Some find it drying on their skin.

Your 95% OO soap needs a year to cure. Add 3.5% sea salt to the water component and you can reduce the cure time with your next attempt.

 

[Jyoti Maloo]

@earlene Thanks a ton for the detailed explanation. It really helped clear a lot of my doubts and helped me understand the factors on which the hardness and longevity (I now know are two different characteristics) depend upon. I used the lye calculator you linked to and checked the longevity range. It was pretty low and you saved me from another soaping disaster!

I like your suggestion of reducing the Coconut oil as it helps me reduce the Lauric and Myrsitic acid and bring that number down. Also, thanks for introducing me to Avocado oil and RBO as I hadn't really thought about using them in soap making. Avocado oil and RBO both increase the Palmitic Acid number; they do increase the Oelic Acid but far less than Olive Oil (I earlier thought that it's the gold standard for every soap)

Now, my new recipe is a complete turn around from the first and second recipe I posted. I have incorporated your suggestions and I am happy with the longevity and hardness numbers.

And yes, I am a vegetarian so animal fat is an absolute NO-NO. Regarding Palm oil, I choose to stay away from it considering its unsustainable production. So, formulating the soap within those limitations was a bit tricky.

I am attaching the updated recipe here and would like to know your thoughts. I also have a few questions pertaining to working with butters.
-Does a high Shea and Cocoa butter soap mean that I have to cure it longer than 4 weeks?
-Do I need to temper my butters? If yes, are there any resources I can refer to learn how?
-Do high butter soaps crack? (I read in a SoapQueen blog that cocoa butter at higher than 15% leads to soap cracking)
-Do butter soaps have high unsaponifiables? Will it cause me any trouble? I have deliberately kept superfat low at 2%.

Thanks for your support!

 

[Jyoti Maloo]

@penelopejane Thanks for shattering my illusions about my first soap batch. I was thinking a month more and it would be good to use. I really have to wait a year and it makes sense considering the high percentage of olive oil I used.

A twelve week cure also sounds a bit too long so I am rethinking my Olive Oil recipes altogether and gravitating towards Avocado and RBO as suggested by @earlene. But whenever I do attempt another high olive oil soap I will keep your 3.5% sea salt hack in mind

 

[KiwiMoose]

Now it kinda comes down to personal preferences - and all of us will have different opinions. I would probably add a further 5% back to the CO and reduce the cocoa butter by 5%. SO you will have 20, 20, 20,20 CO,Shea, Cocoa Butter, and RBO respectively.
I think I would try to gel that soap - cocoa butter can go brittle in my experience if not gelled.
Maybe give it a go and let us know the outcome? Ultimately you will settle on what's right for you.

 

[earlene]

@earlene Thanks a ton for the detailed explanation. It really helped clear a lot of my doubts and helped me understand the factors on which the hardness and longevity (I now know are two different characteristics) depend upon. I used the lye calculator you linked to and checked the longevity range. It was pretty low and you saved me from another soaping disaster!

I like your suggestion of reducing the Coconut oil as it helps me reduce the Lauric and Myrsitic acid and bring that number down. Also, thanks for introducing me to Avocado oil and RBO as I hadn't really thought about using them in soap making. Avocado oil and RBO both increase the Palmitic Acid number; they do increase the Oelic Acid but far less than Olive Oil (I earlier thought that it's the gold standard for every soap)

Although the calculators don't seem to indicate it, high olecic soaps do harden quite a lot, but they do also contribute to a sort of sliminess that some folks really don't like, while others don't mind or even notice.

Now, my new recipe is a complete turn around from the first and second recipe I posted. I have incorporated your suggestions and I am happy with the longevity and hardness numbers.

And yes, I am a vegetarian so animal fat is an absolute NO-NO. Regarding Palm oil, I choose to stay away from it considering its unsustainable production. So, formulating the soap within those limitations was a bit tricky.

I am attaching the updated recipe here and would like to know your thoughts. I also have a few questions pertaining to working with butters.
-Does a high Shea and Cocoa butter soap mean that I have to cure it longer than 4 weeks?
-Do I need to temper my butters? If yes, are there any resources I can refer to learn how?
-Do high butter soaps crack? (I read in a SoapQueen blog that cocoa butter at higher than 15% leads to soap cracking)
-Do butter soaps have high unsaponifiables? Will it cause me any trouble? I have deliberately kept superfat low at 2%.

Regarding unsaponifiables:

Below are some links that address unsaponifiables in oils. It may be useful for background information, and may lend some insight as to what these are expected to do in soap. Basically, I'd say that encouraging/speeding up trace is one thing that they do, but also, they bring to the soap some properties that are said to nourish the skin (in spite of the fact that soap is not intended to provide nourishment.

http://www.original-asu.com/what-is-an-unsaponifiable.html
https://www.newdirections.com.au/Ar...ur-Vegetable-Oils-The-Unsaponifiable-Fraction
US7435424B1 - High unsaponifiables and methods of using the same - Google Patents - This one includes the percentages of unsaponifiables in a variety of oils, a useful source that might help answer your question, as does the one below:

Saponification value - Wikipedia - You will notice the unsaponifiables percentages seem to differ in some cases with the same oils from these two sources (this one & the one above.)

https://www.naturesgardencandles.com/mas_assets/theme/ngc/pdf/soapoils.pdf

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Thanks for your support!

I would definitely try that recipe as a CP soap, however, I'd change the lye concentration to 33%, and be cautious to keep temps warm enough to avoid false trace and using only one color (or none) and avoiding any FO known to accelerate trace. One color with a well-behaving fragrance should give you enough time to pour into a block mould, then make sure to gel by covering to insulate the soap, as KiwiMoose suggests. If you do pour into individual molds, make sure to insulate and encourage gel, which may require CPOP (cold process/ oven process) or set the mold(s) on a heating pad & insulate to encourage gel. Check occassionally to be sure the top doesn't crack, which I doubt it will, but if it starts to, simply lift the mold off of the heated surface using a cooling rack (like a trivet) to encourage air flow below the mold - that will stop further overheating which leads to cracking.

If new to soapmaking, I probably wouldn't attempt this via HP, though, as it could turn to soap on a stick quickly.