I want to like salt bars. I REALLY want to like them. I love the idea of them. I love the slight scrubby feel of them. However, my skin does NOT love the high coconut oil content, even with a high SF. I tried a bar again last night after a 6+ month cure. Made my skin feel almost rubbery for some reason. I know the coconut is supposed to help the lather which the salt kills. But lather isn't all that big of deal to me. Has anyone ever made a salt bar without all the CO? I know it's possible, but does it create a product worth using? Or is it just nasty and a waste of good oils? Any suggestions on this?
I'm trying to figure out how to say this...Please take it with the respect that I intend it to have, not as a criticism, but is there any chance you could be ... well, imagining the problem with CO because you know in your head that's what it's "supposed to" do? Confirmation bias is extremely powerful.
I only ask because I imagine that you have been able to handle lower "doses" of CO in other soaps before - or you wouldn't have bothered trying the 100% in the first place (or 80% or whatever you used). If that's true, that should mean that you're not actually
allergic to it, shouldn't it?
Any way you could arrange a blind test with another soaper?
And lest you think, in spite of my protestations, that I'm questioning your judgement, I have a story:
I once brewed a schwartzbier for competition at the Indiana State Fair which won 1st place. (A schwartzbier is a German beer that is as black as Guinness, but should taste and smell just like a good German Pils, say Beck's.)
After the fair was over we used the beer in a beer judge class to test conformation bias. When we gave this black beer to judge students
without telling them what it was, the tasting notes mentioned things that apply to stouts and porters - roasty, coffee, chocolate, burnt toast, etc. Mind you NONE of those flavors and aromas were actually present in that beer; their minds put them there because they assumed from the black color that they were being given a stout or porter.
Later in the evening after judging several other beers to confuse things, we blindfolded the same, trained judges and gave them my same beer again. Guess what? All those stout/porter descriptors were gone from their notes and they described it like a German Pils.
Then to drive the point fully home, the following week we tested them again without blindfolds, but this time
told them it was a schwartzbier. Again no stout/porter stuff.
So the point is that they found those flavors in the black beer only because they expected them to be there. It might be possible that you're finding high levels of CO intolerable because you expect to find it intolerable.
To get the scrubby and still have it be good soap I have to use the coconut oil. The brine bars look interesting, and I think I'll give them a go, but they won't have the exfoliation I like. Maybe another mild exfoliant instead? Can you use sugar in a soap bar for exfoliation? Maybe like a cross between a soap and a sugar scrub? Would that help with the lather? Has anyone tried this?
