Recipe Check please

[luckysoap]

What do you think of this recipe? Am I too high with my mango, shea, and castor?

Olive - 25%
Coconut - 20%
Palm - 18%
Mango - 15%
Shea - 12%
Castor - 10%

 

[Arimara]

If you allocate 5% from the castor oil to olive oil, you may have less of a chance not liking the soap. Generally, most of us try to cap the castor oil at 5% or risk having a weird soap. It's a lot of hard oils you have there but it could still make a nice soap.

 

[luckysoap]

Thanks! That's totally what I was worried about. I usually cap castor at 5 also, but I was reading that you can go up to 10 with castor, so I was playing around a little bit.

 

[Arimara]

If you're curious and you want to do it, by all means, sate your curiosity. Experience is one of the best teachers in soaping and while 5% is the recommended cap norm, you can get away with 10% castor depending on your recipe. Were you trying to increase bubbles?

 

[luckysoap]

Yep, exactly. I like to see the bubble amount over 20 in soap calc if I can, but with butters I'm usually sacrificing that.

 

[Arimara]

Keep us posted then.

 

[IrishLass]

Looks quite nice to me.

In regards to the castor, I'm guilty of being one of those that love using it at the higher end of the spectrum, from 8% to 11.5%, depending on how many hard butters/fats are in my formula. Personally, I'd have no qualms about using 10% castor in the recipe you posted.


IrishLass

 

[doriettefarm]

I've never gone higher than 10% on butter content because I worry about it killing the lather but don't be afraid of 10% castor at all. Most of my recipes use a decent amount of hard oils (lard/tallow/palm) and I always go with 10% castor unless I want something that doesn't trace so quick. I've never had the sticky soap issue with 10% castor probably because it's balanced with the hard oils and butters like IL mentioned.