Superfatting Liquid Soap.. Help pls

[egirlxx7]

Hi Everyone,

I have some liquid soap that I made with 0% superfat. I wanted to superfat the soap with the sulfinated castor oil.

I have a mental block as to how to calculate the extra oil into the soap when diluting. if I were to have 2lbs of paste and wanted to superfat 6% how would I calculate that. Also what is the basic standard percentage for superfatting liquid soaps.. if there is one?

Thanks E.

 

[VanessaP]

Standard superfatting of liquid soap is up to 3%. I would think if you used more than the standard 3%, you run a higher risk of it separating, plus some recipes may generally not be superfatting friendly and separate the superfat oil out anyway. Some people use polysorbate 80 to help keep their superfat oil mixed in with the liquid soap. I've not made liquid soap, but I believe it is 3% of the weight of your paste, so before dilution.. so 2lb of paste is 32oz. 32 x 0.03 is 0.96 oz of superfatting oil that you will need.

 

[egirlxx7]

Thank you so much for the explanation. I appreciate that very much.

 

[IrishLass]

I'm one of those that Vanessa mentioned that uses polysorbate 80, but only when I superfat my liquid soap over and beyond my normal superfat of 3%. At this point, I should mention that the kind of liquid soap I make is the glycerin version (i.e., I dissolve my KOH in glycerin instead of water), and I calculate it with a 3% superfat right up front using Summer Bee Meadow's calculator (their advanced version).

I'm new to making liquid soap, but for what it's worth, in the short 5 months that I've been making it, I've never experienced separation in my liquid soap with the 3% 'up-front' superfat, which I put down to the way Summer Bee's has their lye calculator configured (they take into account lye purity and all that). But, whenever I've decided to superfat beyond that when I'm diluting, I do get separation, especially since I don't use turkey red oil as my superfatting oil - I use avocado oil or HO sunflower oil instead. That's where the poly 80 comes in handy for me, because not only have I chosen to add a non-water-soluble superfat at dilution time, I also add it at a rate of 1.5% over my normal 'built-in' 3% superfat, for a grand total of 4.5% superfat.

The rate at which I use the poly 80 is 3% of my extra superfat amount that I add when I'm diluting (I don't take into account the 'up-front' superfat %). After 5 months down the road, I'm happy to report that my jars of 4.5% total superfatted liquid soap with the addition of poly 80 are still intact and have not separated. The jars without poly 80, however, all have a layer of oil on top.

IrishLass