Should I be making Christmas soap now?

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chibi-soap

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Hi,


I've just been posting about making a harder bar of soap and it occurred to me that one thing that makes soap harder is curing time. I have a bar from the very first batch I ever made and that it almost a year old now, and has got quite hard.

So if that's what I like, should I be making my soap for Christmas presents, and our own use next year, now?
 
If your recipes are high oleic, such as 100% Olive Oil Castile soap, then absolutely!

For me, I do prefer most of my soaps to have a longer cure, no matter what the recipe was that I used. My favorite bars of soap are always the ones that are older because they have usually become much better than when they were younger. Age seems to provide a more luxurious lather, that if it weren't for that fact that we can't claim soap is nourishing or moisturizing, it still feels as if it is.
 
Would you call 70% OO high oleic?

Yes, if you look at the fatty acid profile of OO, it is 69% Oleic Acid. Even if the other 30% of the oils in the soap were very low in Oleic, you'd still have a very high Oleic soap. I think the lowest you could get with any combination where 70% is OO would be if the other 30% was straight Stearic Acid, and I am not even sure you'd be able to manage that even with HP.

But your question probably boils down to is a year enough time to cure a 70% OO soap, and I think the answer is probably yes, given the other oils are also high oleic oils. You can see that by looking at your lye calculator as you choose the oils.
 
OK, so if I put my recipe in soap calc it's 55% oleic acid, so I guess I should get soaping!
 
And... if I'm curing these soaps for months and months, does that whole time have to be out on the airy curing racks? Or can I wrap them and put them away after, say, 3 months? Or, say, can I weigh them once a week and when they stop losing weight/moisture, wrap them and put them away?
 
Others may have a different perspective, but I leave them unwrapped as long as I have room. With my Castiles (100% OO) I leave them unwrapped pretty much for 12 months, sometimes longer. But once I wrap my soaps in shrink wrap, I don't leave them out because what would be the point?
 
Once wrapped and labeled, they go into baseball card storage boxes. I like to have them well cured before wrapping and labeling. Though they still shrink some.
 
I make soap all year long, however, I only sell at 4 shows during October and November, so yes, I start making my Christmas/season supply of soaps early in the year.
 
After running out of all but 3 bars of soap last Christmas, I started soaping for Christmas 2018 on January 20th (plus, I've found some great Christmas scents on sale - yipee!!)
 
If you're still perfecting your recipe, you might be better served by waiting a bit. Six months is a long cure time for most anything not high oleic, giving you a few more months to experiment with recipes.
 
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