superfat in hp

[jnl]

What I dont understand is how to superfat properly for HP soap.

Which of these is the proper way?

1. add all my oils in to the calculator and set my superfat to 5% and calculate the lye/water. Then when I make the soap, withhold the superfatting oils and add them in when the HP soap is ready to pour.

OR

2. add in ONLY my oils that will be used to saponify to the calculator and set the superfat to 0% and then add in 5% of oils when the HP is ready to be poured?


Or are they both the same?

Will the Soap Qualities in the calculator be more accurate with step 2 or step 1? Or will neither be accurate because the soap calculator assumes all fats are being added at the beginning and all fats will be saponified with 5% remaining...?

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Hi - I pulled this out of the sticky as I feel it deserves more discussion and it would not be good for the sticky.

If you make your recipe with a 5% superfat but then withhold the superfat oils until after the cook, the issue is that the lye amount is based on saponifying all but 5% of all of the oils - not all oils have the same sap value, so 5% of all of the oils might well need more or less lye than the actual oil that you keep back, even though it's 5% of the recipe.

The second option is my preferred method. As I keep my recipes in % and not grams, to make sure that I get my batch size right I calculate the full batch size with all of my oils so that I have the actual grams needed - take out my superfat oil(s) and then set the lye discount to 0%. This way my weights are spot on.

Bear in mind, with this second method we get a distinction between lye discount and superfat - while you do have a 5% superfat (5% of the oils are not saponified) it might not be a 5% lye discount, as the amount of lye used was calculated without this extra oil being in there - so we need to watch the terminology when we do this.

Eta- soapcalc does not take in to account the lye discount % when calculating the numbers - try it, change the % number a lot in a recipe and you'll see that it doesn't do anything to the property numbers

 

[jnl]

Thanks, exactly what i was looking for.

I had already seen that the superfat % did not affect the soap qualities, but removing the superfats from the calculator does.

Which is more accurate? The "Soap Qualities" when the superfats are in the calculator, or when the superfats are not in? If those qualities are based on a saponified fat, then having the superfats in the calculator might distort it. But if its based on unsaponified fats, then its probably accurate to have the superfats in the calculator. Or maybe the qualities are the same for an oil whether or not its saponified....? Or does it really not matter too much.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

I would say, based on the second method that we spoke about (True superfat) then I think the numbers aren't accurate - this is because the numbers are based on the salts (soap is a mixture of different salts), not the oils. The numbers we get are based on sodium lardate rather than for lard. This is important because how these salts perform can be a lot different from how the oil performs.

My prime example is always Coconut oil. As an oil, it is very moisturising. As a soap it is usually very drying - so much so that people use a low amount. If you try to see what the numbers look like, the cleansing will go up with CO in the recipe. The best way to see what your superfat will do is to look at the topical effects of using the particular oil