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Bobbie.1960

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Question about olive oils. My first batch was made with extra virgin and the second just I plain oil. The soap color is different. The extra virgin made the soap a brown soap and the plain oil made a nice lite yellow.
Here is the question, has anyone else found this, or did something go wrong? What type does everyone else use.
 
Different oils will have different colors when turned into soap. Non-virgin OO is usually lighter colored which translates to a lighter colored soap. There's nothing wrong with your soap; it's just your use of the different grades of olive oil. EVOO is usually more expensive than OO and there's no particular reason to use it in soap -- IMO I'd save it for food use. Also if one batch had any ingredients that were different than the other batch or if you cooked one batch longer than the other, these factors can also affect the color of the finished soap.

A liquid soap that is 100% olive oil, whether it's EVOO or just OO, is often hard to dilute to a nicely pourable soap that stays that way. It often wants to revert back to a non-pourable jelly texture unless it's diluted a lot. This is due to the high oleic acid content. If you lower the oleic acid content in the soap to around 50%, you'll end up with a soap that's more likely to be easier to dilute to a consistent texture.

But other than the soap being more tricky to dilute, there's nothing wrong with making a 100% olive oil KOH soap. So if it's working well for you, don't fix what isn't broke. :)

edited for clarity
 
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