Rejigging my recipe...

[Babyshoes]

My first recipe was based on a kit I was given. I realised after a couple of batches that it really wasn't a great recipe - the high CO made it suitable for folks without a stick blender, while the sunflower oil keeps the price down to allow them to include some Shea butter. Now that it has cured for ~6 weeks and I'm using it, it's fine, and smells great but it's definitely not great soap.

My next few batches had less CO, and I decided to add in 40% lard. It traces slowly and the first tester piece that I'm using feels lovely on my skin.

I now want to replace the sunflower oil with light olive, to reduce the likelihood of DOS. It is significantly more expensive per litre, but given the quantities of soap that I'm able to make, the difference is minor, and a bottle is not an expensive addition to the grocery trolley.

I also want to try pushing the lard amount up a little higher - if some is good, more must be better, right? I've dropped the CO right down and increased SF slightly, as the hard water here dries my skin a bit, and I don't like to aggravate it.

Anyway, I've plugged my idea into soap calc, and was wondering if anyone has any thoughts about this recipe? I'm not bothered by low amounts of lather & bubbles, as long as it's not slimy, since my partner absolutely hates that, and I'm not a huge fan myself. I'll be adding sugar to increase the bubbles a bit too.
(I bought some Castile before I started soaping, and she described it as washing with handfuls of snot...)

 

[Kcryss]

I think it looks pretty good. I will leave it up to the more experienced soapers to provide detailed feedback on your recipe. However, I wanted to put in a plug for rice bran oil. I stopped using oo and started using rbo thanks to all the input from @Dawni. My soaps are much better for having made that switch.

Also, you did the right thing in lowering the co.

 

[Babyshoes]

I think it looks pretty good. I will leave it up to the more experienced soapers to provide detailed feedback on your recipe. However, I wanted to put in a plug for rice bran oil. I stopped using oo and started using rbo thanks to all the input from @Dawni. My soaps are much better for having made that switch.

Also, you did the right thing in lowering the co.

Thank you, I appreciate the suggestion.

I did look at rice bran oil, couldn't find any that wasn't either a blend, or a luxury, organic brand at a silly price in my local supermarket.
Part of my rationale for switching to olive vs another oil is that it's easily available in my area, and likely to always be in stock in some form.

Once I finish my big tub of Shea butter, I'll likely test a batch of two without it, before deciding if I'll order more, as that's definitely not available in the supermarket!

 

[Obsidian]

It's a nice recipe, will be gentle and not super bubbly.
I'm a huge fan of lard, my base recipe has 50% lard but I do use more at times.
A very simple, gentle recipe is 80% lard, 20% coconut.
It makes a extremely long lasting bar, long enough I get tired of looking at it in the shower lol.

 

[AliOop]

It's a nice recipe, will be gentle and not super bubbly.
I'm a huge fan of lard, my base recipe has 50% lard but I do use more at times.
A very simple, gentle recipe is 80% lard, 20% coconut.
It makes a extremely long lasting bar, long enough I get tired of looking at it in the shower lol.

I use a very similar recipe with 5% castor added. It's my favorite, as well.

ETA: If you have hard water, I'd recommend adding citrate to help combat the scum, OR use vinegar as a partial or whole water replacer. I have a lot less soap scum in our semi-hard water if I use either of those. The nice thing about citrate is that it doesn't require any lye adjustment; just dissolve it in your lye liquid before adding the lye.

 

[Babyshoes]

I use a very similar recipe with 5% castor added. It's my favorite, as well.

ETA: If you have hard water, I'd recommend adding citrate to help combat the scum, OR use vinegar as a partial or whole water replacer. I have a lot less soap scum in our semi-hard water if I use either of those. The nice thing about citrate is that it doesn't require any lye adjustment; just dissolve it in your lye liquid before adding the lye.

Thank you, I assume you mean that's in addition to using distilled water to mix with the lye?

I would expect vinegar to neutralise a lot of the lye! We do use cheap vinegar as a limescale cleaner.

I'll see if citrate is available easily around here. Is it known by any other names?

 

[AliOop]

Thank you, I assume you mean that's in addition to using distilled water to mix with the lye?

I would expect vinegar to neutralise a lot of the lye! We do use cheap vinegar as a limescale cleaner.

I'll see if citrate is available easily around here. Is it known by any other names?

You can use vinegar as a partial or complete water replacer to mix with the lye - in other words, it replaces some or all of your distilled water. Cheap vinegar is great for this! The SMF soap calculator will calculate the extra lye needed for you, or you can search the threads on here for the manual calculation.

The other name for citrate is sodium citrate. It is often available on restaurant supply sites since it is often used in cooking (makes fantastic cheese sauce).

 

[dibbles]

Thank you, I assume you mean that's in addition to using distilled water to mix with the lye?

If you are asking about the water for the sodium citrate, use some of your batch water. I use sodium citrate at 1.5% of my oil weight, and take about two times the sodium citrate weight, warm it a little in the microwave to help dissolve it a bit easier, and then stick blend it into the oils before adding the lye solution. So, if I need 15 grams of SC, I reserve 30 grams of water, dissolve the SC in that and mix with my oils.

 

[Babyshoes]

@AliOop and @dibbles thank you so much, both of you. I'll look into vinegar and citrate, as our water is really terribly hard.

 

[KiwiMoose]

I was also going to make a plug for RBO bit @Kcryss beat me to it. It soaps well and is very cheap. I'm also a castor fan @5%.
Aloe vera juice as the water makes great bubbles. I use fresh from my garden, but i think you can buy it bottled to drink. I have looked at the supermarket but there's too much other cr*p in there for me to want to buy it.

 

[Quilter99755]

I have a similar recipe except for the OO. It makes my skin itch so have switched to RBO also(thanks Dawni). My grandson (15yr old) said he liked my testors for FO's, not the FO's themselves but the soap which was 80% lard and 20% CO. And he loves bubbles! It was a little drying for me, but is pourable for a long time. I managed to get all 30 of my FO's into little cups and mixed before it turned into something I had to scoop out of the bowl. The testing was a bust (I lost my notes), but he had soap pucks for a long, long time!

 

[Obsidian]

I'm a fan a safflower oil, I use it or sunflower in place of OO now. Tried RBO a couple times but wasn't a fan, too similar to OO which I don't like.

 

[earlene]

Your recipe lists Fractionated CO, is that what you are using instead of regular CO (the solid Coconut oil that is white while solid and becomes clear once melted)? I don't know about in the UK, but FX CO is more expensive here.

The numbers you get from one versus the other are a little different. So if you are using the white solid CO and not the clear liquid Fx CO, you may have just accidentally chosen the wrong CO in soapcalc.

 

[linne1gi]

My first recipe was based on a kit I was given. I realised after a couple of batches that it really wasn't a great recipe - the high CO made it suitable for folks without a stick blender, while the sunflower oil keeps the price down to allow them to include some Shea butter. Now that it has cured for ~6 weeks and I'm using it, it's fine, and smells great but it's definitely not great soap.

My next few batches had less CO, and I decided to add in 40% lard. It traces slowly and the first tester piece that I'm using feels lovely on my skin.

I now want to replace the sunflower oil with light olive, to reduce the likelihood of DOS. It is significantly more expensive per litre, but given the quantities of soap that I'm able to make, the difference is minor, and a bottle is not an expensive addition to the grocery trolley.

I also want to try pushing the lard amount up a little higher - if some is good, more must be better, right? I've dropped the CO right down and increased SF slightly, as the hard water here dries my skin a bit, and I don't like to aggravate it.

Anyway, I've plugged my idea into soap calc, and was wondering if anyone has any thoughts about this recipe? I'm not bothered by low amounts of lather & bubbles, as long as it's not slimy, since my partner absolutely hates that, and I'm not a huge fan myself. I'll be adding sugar to increase the bubbles a bit too.
(I bought some Castile before I started soaping, and she described it as washing with handfuls of snot...)

I like this recipe - I would suggest adding some sugar to your lye water to boost bubbles (add the sugar to distilled water and make sure it has fully dissolved before you add the lye, or it won't dissolve). I usually add 1 teaspoon sugar per pound of oils and I prefer to use powdered sugar as it slows trace a little. Another fix may be to add citric acid, great if you have hard water, really increases the bubbles also. I also add a little extra NaOH to compensate, instead of increasing the super fat. Recommendation is 1-3% per pound of oils. I use 2%. The math is like this: 32 ounces of oils (I convert to grams for ease) - 907 grams X .02 = 18.14. Multiply that by 0.6 (10 grams of citric neutralizes 6 grams of NaOH) - so 18.14 X = 10.884. So I add 18 grams of citric and 11 grams of NaOH. I hope you understand, but by all means reply and I will try to explain better.

 

[Babyshoes]

Your recipe lists Fractionated CO, is that what you are using instead of regular CO (the solid Coconut oil that is white while solid and becomes clear once melted)? I don't know about in the UK, but FX CO is more expensive here.

The numbers you get from one versus the other are a little different. So if you are using the white solid CO and not the clear liquid Fx CO, you may have just accidentally chosen the wrong CO in soapcalc.

I think I probably chose the wrong one, thank you for pointing that out!

 

[linne1gi]

Good catch!