Solid Superfatting Experiment

[Blufuz]

Yesterday I started a new experiment: is it possible to add solid butters at trace so they don’t turn into soap?

As Kevin Dunn explains in the Science of Soapmaking, superfatting leaves roughly 5% of your oils unsaponified, but pretty much in the proportions of the oils you started with, and it’s no good to add your fancy Shea or whatever at trace, because it gets saponified anyway.

But I thought it might be possible to get around this by making sure that the butter added at trace is left solid.

I used the following oils for the base:
55% coconut oil
20% palm oil
20% olive oil
5% castor oil

3% superfat

I also added 10g of citric acid and 6 g more of lye out of 400g of oils to combat soap scum.

This soap was intentionally high cleansing with all that CO, to better capture the benefits of solid superfatting.

Here are the soaps:

I made 100g of batter for each type, then added the following:

Peach (top left): control with nothing
Red: 10g of melted cocoa butter, mixed at trace
Orange: 10g of cocoa butter shavings
Green: 30g of cocoa butter shavings
Turquoise: 30 g of cocoa butter “chocolate chips”
Purple: 30 g of shea butter shavings. (Shavings turned into blobs when mixed).

I mixed the lye with oils when they were both close to room temperature (20 and 30 C respectively) so they wouldn’t melt the butters, and added the various shavings at a medium/thick trace so they wouldn’t sink.

My only concern is that the batter ended up having little discolored spots, which is maybe from the citric acid?

I’ll see in several months how it goes!

 

[lsg]

I suggest that you try hot process soap in order to control superfat.

Hot Process and Superfatting

 

[Blufuz]

I suggest that you try hot process soap in order to control superfat.

Hot Process and Superfatting

That’s good to know, but I don’t have the equipment for it yet

 

[Blufuz]

I went ahead and tested the soaps, 4 months after I made them.

First, using solid cocoa chips is a bad idea, the soap ends up looking like it caught the bubonic plague:

In general, cocoa butter doesn’t really dissolve fast enough to keep up with the soap, however, using the shavings was interesting, because this then gives it a bit of roughness that improved cleaning and reduced slipperiness without actually sandpapering your skin like other additives.

The Shea butter was a much better match to the soap in terms of dissolving rate, although if anything it dissolved too quickly, so maybe some butter in between would work even better. It did counteract the harshness of the soap a bit, but…

… final conclusion, the solid superfatting won’t do miracles. Better to formulate a gentler bar to begin with.

 

[KiwiMoose]

I went ahead and tested the soaps, 4 months after I made them.

First, using solid cocoa chips is a bad idea, the soap ends up looking like it caught the bubonic plague:
View attachment 74199

Bubonic plague!

 

[Babyshoes]

Interesting experiment! Thank you for sharing your conclusions.

 

[AliOop]

That’s good to know, but I don’t have the equipment for it yet

You don't need any special equipment. For HP, I melt my oils in a stainless pot on a stove, and then cook the soap on low for about 20-30 minutes until it is zap-free. That's a lot easier on my hands than using a heavy crockpot.

If you want an even faster process, you can use the microwave for HTHP. In that case, I recommend following the process outlined in the Ultimate Guide to Hot Process Soap.