Slimy soap - any thoughts?

[kimomo]

Hello! I somewhat recently used avocado oil in a batch of soap for the first time. The results were nice and moisturizing, but kind of slimy when in use.

The bars have been curing now for 6+ months and although when pressed the bars are firm, they still feel wet on the surface and (as I mentioned) slimy when in use. Do you all think it is the avocado oils that created this effect? Here are the ingredients:

Lavender-Peppermint Soap

avocado oil 5.10 oz
castor oil 1.02 oz
coconut oil 10.88 oz
olive oil 17.00 oz

lye 4.73 oz

liquid (coconut milk) 11.22 oz

1tbsp lav eo
1tbsp peppermint eo
1tbsp ground dried peppermint leaves
1tbsp kaolin clay

Thank you very much for any feedback!

 

[shunt2011]

How long has your soap cured? You also have a lot of liquid oils so it may have a slimy feel if it's relatively fresh. The longer it cures the better it gets. 6-8 weeks minimum. I Avocado oil up to 15-20% and I love it. However, I also use lard or palm in the mix too.

You may want to tinker with your recipe and add some Lard/Palm/ Tallow and drop the Coconut a bit as you're at 32%. I wouldn't go any higher than 25% though I like it a bit less. It totally depends on your skin. Some love higher CO.

 

[Jstar]

You may want to tinker with your recipe and add some Lard/Palm/ Tallow and drop the Coconut a bit as you're at 32%.

^^ This

My personal preference would be to replace some of that olive oil with a harder oil as mentioned above, unless you prefer high amounts of it. {I personally do not care for OO in my soaps, but to each his/her own} and drop the CO a bit. You also have kaolin clay, which provides some slip as well.

 

[kimomo]

Great, thank you both for your replies. I will give it another try with more solid oils in the formula. I appreciate the insight!
Take care!

 

[julieanne]

I agree with all the responses. Olive Oil and Avocado are similar and can easily replace each other. Put your recipe in SoapCalc and switch your Olive with Avacado and see how the numbers minimally change. I also made a high olive low hard butters/fats and got a very slimy soap. I feel sure if you balance the bar more -see the ratio posted in soap calc, to as close to 50/50 oils (olive, avocado, castor) and hard butters/fats (cocoa butter, kokum butter, palm oil, coconut oil, etc), the problem won't present itself again.

 

[soapmage]

Yep like stated above, drop the CO and lower the OO and replace with a nice hard butter or solid oil. I've been experimenting with replacing some and even all of the OO with RBO or AO in my recipes with other butters and oils, and I've loved the results. Cheaper too.

 

[cmzaha]

I do not find Avocado causing the slime like olive oil does which is why I very seldom use OO over 20% otherwise I have to give them a 6 month cure and I do use Avocado up to 35% in some soaps. Avocado soaps are my best sellers. I would use some lard, tallow, palm or palm Kernel oil at the min of 20% replacement for some of the OO and leave the Avocado alone, it make wonderful soap. I am not one for adding expensive butters since, in my opinion, they really do not add much to the feel of the soap and deter from lather. I save butters for leave on products, unless I use a small percentage for leave-on. Shea I will use more of because I get it for a decent price but again I can detect no difference in the soap. Avocado and lard I do notice a difference, and when I tell my hubby I think a new soap is exceptional I check and notice it is a lard / avo soap. People come back for rugulary for my avocado soaps but really have never come back just for a soap with shea, coco butter, mango etc.

 

[topofmurrayhill]

Hello! I somewhat recently used avocado oil in a batch of soap for the first time. The results were nice and moisturizing, but kind of slimy when in use.

This doesn't change the answers you got, but for a bit of extra technical detail the slime is sodium oleate and water. Oleate is the soap you get from oleic acid, the primary fatty acid of olive and avocado oils. It doesn't dissociate into the components that normally make soap lather, but it does readily dissolve in water. The result is that slimy gel. Ironically it might be increasing your lather by helping disperse all that coconut oil. I would appreciate if you could report on that.

 

[kimomo]

Hi topofmurrayhill, thank you for your response. Yes, this soap does seem to have a very nice lather. It is nice to wash with, but it helps to use it in the shower or bath (as opposed to hand washing) just so it has time to dry out between uses.

This soap also sweats a lot. I'm assuming that is also a side effect of having too high of a percentage of liquid oils, but I am not sure about that. I do live in a humid area, but my other soaps do not sweat so much.

Oh, other folks have asked how long this batch has cured. At this point, it has been 7 months.

Thanks again to everyone for the insight!