Please check my recipe..

[jodym]

Any in put is appreciated! I have been using this recipe and it has worked fine but wanted to run it past you guys!! Thank you!
10oz olive oil (284g)
8oz coconut (227g)
6.5oz palm (184g)
3oz canola (85g)
1.5oz caster (43g)

9.6 h2o (271g)
4.09 lye (116g)

This recipe is superfat at 5%
can i cut down on the water a bit to cure faster?
Thank you!!!!

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Less water will decrease the time in the mould and make it physically harder sooner, but less water != less cure.

 

[newbie]

That percentage of coconut oil would be too high for many people (27+%) because it would make the soap too cleansing and thus too drying for them. If you are looking for tweaks, you could drop that percentage back to 18-20% and add to the palm, which would give you a bar that lasted a bit longer and is a bit less stripping of oils. However, it never hurts to make a small batch of any recipe (500 grams or so) and cure it just to test it and compare. I wouldn't go higher on the canola as it's more prone to rancidity/DOS than the other oils in the recipe.

I wanted to clarify what I think EG meant to say, which is that less water does NOT equal shorter cure time. Cure time is only partly about the water. There are a lot of molecular changes that happen in cure which makes the soap better and that is not dependent on the amount of water.

 

[MySoapyHeart]

Less water will make soap harden faster in the mould yes, but not speed up what we call curing time.
I *think* that is what TEG meant to say.

Curing time for soap will always be something between 4-6 weeks, depending on the oils and recipe (i.e a castile soap takes months to get to become a good piece of soap)

Curing is so much more than water evaporation. It is what makes the inside of a soap become more solid and form "crystals" within itself, which makes a soap last longer, become a milder and really a much better piece of soap.

Simply put, Curing time amps up the quality of a soap and makes it a proper piece of soap (if you have a good recipe run through a soap calk + good oils)

It`s sort of like like this: You can eat cookie dough, and it will taste good! Would you hand over cookie dough to your guests as a snack? Probably not. But if you actually bake the dough it will make awesome cookies you can serve people as a tasty treat because it is made acording to principle in cooking.