Superfat and Coconut Oil

[MellonFriend]

So I'm currently trying to formulate a recipe using the oils I have. I like the numbers I get in my lye calculator when I add higher amounts of coconut oil, and I have a lot of it to use, but I don't like that I know that coconut oil can be too stripping. Can I just combat this by making my super fat higher? I know that's done with 100% coconut oil soap, so can I just apply that to other recipes with higher percentages of coconut oil? Here's what I have going on:

Oil	%
Olive Oil	42
Coconut Oil, 76 deg	20
Shea Butter	20
Castor Oil	7
Cocoa Butter	6
Almond Oil, sweet	5

Can I make this with a superfat of 7% for a more moisturizing bar?

 

[TennisGirl]

That's not really a lot of coconut oil. With all those butters, I'd superfat that recipe at 3% and call it good. Soap doesn't really moisturize anyway.

 

[violets2217]

That's the amount of CO I use in my recipe. I don't find it stripping or harsh in ant way. And I also use a 3% SF.

 

[dibbles]

Agree, 20% coconut is fine

 

[KiwiMoose]

Yep and count me in! I use CO at 20% with a 4% superfat and it's all good.

 

[MellonFriend]

Oh wow. That's good to know. I must have gotten the wrong impression from someone. That's great news. My first bar I made with 20% coconut oil and 6% superfat and it turned out really nice albeit maybe a bit sticky. Maybe I'll do 5% with this recipe.

Any idea at what levels of coconut oil you'd want to up the superfat?

 

[ResolvableOwl]

I'm not aware if there are many soap recipes at all, that have a CO content

• above 40% (rarely seen in balanced soap recipes, much more than 5% SF doesn't add much to the bar, even less so when oils high in unsaponifiables are involved, e. g. olive or shea), but
• below some 75% (where/above many salt bars are located, SF recommendation at least 15% to counteract the harsh action of lauric/MCT soaps)

My guess is that in “balanced” recipes (hard + soft + lauric oils), CO cannot be increased arbitarily without the soap either dissolving too fast (CO instead of hard oils) or losing conditioning/emollient properties (CO instead of soft oils), so besides the irritating properties of high-CO, there are other practical issues.
Super-high-CO bars, though, (including salt bars), have a different internal structure (don't rely on palmitic/stearic/oleic acid for lasting hardness), so the limitations are somewhat inverted. But the lauric soap is no less irritant, so you need to counteract this with high SF.


ETA: Just browsed the Soapee.com recipe database (sort by property: Cleansing) for some data of questionable representativity:
0–30% CO: 42 pages of recipes
30-40% CO: 8 pages
40-70% CO: 7 pages
70-100% CO: 5 pages

 

[Peachy Clean Soap]

So I'm currently trying to formulate a recipe using the oils I have. I like the numbers I get in my lye calculator when I add higher amounts of coconut oil, and I have a lot of it to use, but I don't like that I know that coconut oil can be too stripping. Can I just combat this by making my super fat higher? I know that's done with 100% coconut oil soap, so can I just apply that to other recipes with higher percentages of coconut oil? Here's what I have going on:

Oil	%
Olive Oil	42
Coconut Oil, 76 deg	20
Shea Butter	20
Castor Oil	7
Cocoa Butter	6
Almond Oil, sweet	5

Can I make this with a superfat of 7% for a more moisturizing bar?

If you SF too much you can end up w/ mushy soap in the shower & thats just yucky. My usual standard of SF is 2-3% depending on the recipe. Happy Soaping

 

[MellonFriend]

If you SF too much you can end up w/ mushy soap in the shower & thats just yucky. My usual standard of SF is 2-3% depending on the recipe. Happy Soaping

I might try my first recipe with a lower SF then, it did turn a bit mushy at our high traffic sink.

 

[TennisGirl]

I'd be surprised if your 6% SF made the bar sticky. Too much castor oil is a more likely culprit. I like to keep castor around 5%. Some folks do ok at 8-10%, but my bars are sticky if I use that much.

As for the mushy part, make sure the bar can drain well in between uses, and that it was cured for at least four weeks before using. I prefer curing for six weeks myself.

 

[MellonFriend]

I'd be surprised if your 6% SF made the bar sticky. Too much castor oil is a more likely culprit. I like to keep castor around 5%. Some folks do ok at 8-10%, but my bars are sticky if I use that much.

As for the mushy part, make sure the bar can drain well in between uses, and that it was cured for at least four weeks before using. I prefer curing for six weeks myself.

My first bar actually only had 5% castor. This above recipe I was thinking about trying a higher level to see how I felt. I also did cure it for four weeks. As I said, it's only got mushy at the sink in our house that is used most often. We do have soap savers in all of our soap dishes. We are now trying a bar that was cured for six weeks so we will see if it's any better.

 

[cmzaha]

Years ago I found lowering my superfat to the 2% range, this was before folks found it acceptable, it cut my plumbing bills considerably in my house with old plumbing. I simply adjusted my soap formula so it lathered well with the lower cleansing factor and was quite gentle. As mentioned soap is meant to get us clean not moisturize but not strip all our natural oils.