Water/lye ratio adjustment needed when adding eggs?

[Unlimabun]

I am new to soap making and I am officially obsessed! I have gone on a frenzy of reading and learning and trying every recipe and technique that I can. I just attempted my first shampoo bar and so far 3/4ths of the family has tried it only once and been absolutely thrilled with the results! Our extra curly, extra dry, long-haired member, will be trying it today. I formulated the recipe mainly with her in mind so we'll see if it is just as fantastic for her before I declare it a complete success!

The only downside we have encountered is the soap being extremely soft. I HP'd it (patience is not my virtue) and I am going to try tweaking it a bit after DD tries it. I can certainly credit much of the softness to some of the oils I put in but before I do too much messing with it I thought I would ask the experts if the 2 eggs I added (for 25 oz. soap weight) should be taken into consideration. Logic is telling me that runny eggs should be taken into account somewhere.

According to Soapcalc, the hardness was only a 23. I did add 1 tsp. of sodium lactate ppo and will try upping that next time too. I really don't want to mess with it too much more since it was so wonderful. We are all in agreement that we will gladly deal with a soft soap for the results we had.

I apologize if this has been addressed in the forum but I am unable to find an answer here or anywhere else. Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer!

 

[LBussy]

I have no earthly idea why you would want to add an egg, but I suspect patience not being one of your virtues, that it is most likely your issue. Even though it is HP you do need to let it harden up and that occurs with time as the bar dries a bit.

ETA: Here's a thread on it from 2010:

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=18164

Here's one from 2012:

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=29168

That one also gives the SAP value as 184.4-190.2 but no source.

And some quick digging:

A large egg has ~ 50g of fats (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, 2010. USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 23, Nutrient Data Laboratory Home Page: http://www.ars.usda.gov/nutrientdata)

Composition of fats is:

Unsaturated fatty acids:
Oleic acid, 47%
Linoleic acid, 16%
Palmitoleic acid, 5%
Linolenic acid, 2%

Saturated fatty acids:
Palmitic acid, 23%
Stearic acid, 4%
Myristic acid, 1%

(National Research Council, 1976, Fat Content and Composition of Animal Products, Printing and Publishing Office, National Academy of Science, Washington, D.C., ISBN 0-309-02440-4; p. 203, online edition http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?c...Specified+Page.x=0&Jump+to+Specified+Page.y=0)

All in all I'd say that yes you would want to adjust your recipe depending how much you use.

 

[Obsidian]

Shampoo bars are generally soft, make sure it never sits in water and can dry out between uses. I've used egg yolk in shampoo bars before, I used one yolk per pound of oils, make sure you temper your egg before adding to your warm oils or it will cook and leave little eggy bits behind. I don't adjust anything when I add the yolk.

Lee, in theory, egg will add protein to the shampoo bar which can be good for coarse or curly hair.

 

[LBussy]

 

[DeeAnna]

I'm certain that saponification value of "...184.4-190.2..." has to be for KOH. Divide the numbers by 1.403 to get the range of NaOH sap values.

 

[Unlimabun]

Thank you both for such quick responses!

Lee- The first post you referred to is actually the one that reinforced my idea of adding eggs in the first place! I wanted to use them to give more of a creamy lather and for the protein as Obsidian mentioned. The lather on the one I made was phenomenal so I'm glad I added them. Thank you for the information regarding the composition of fats. When I looked at other oils on Soapcalc I noticed duck fat actually is fairly close to the values given for an egg, although the SAP value is not as close. I'll try plugging that in to see if it makes much of a difference.

Obsidian-How soft is soft? I have actually made several batches HP and several CP so far and every batch turned out much harder than this one after unmolding, and more so after curing. Three days later, this batch still has a rubbery play-doh/string cheese texture on the outside and is gooey in the center. I've never used or seen a shampoo bar so I wasn't sure if they should be this soft.

I was worried about cooked egg, especially since it was HP, so I actually used some advice I found in this forum. I stick-blended the eggs into the OO used in the recipe and added that with the rest of the liquid oils to the melted solids once they had cooled. My lye mixture was also cooler since I used frozen beer and coconut milk.

Thanks for the suggestion of the 1 egg ppo. I used 2 eggs in this batch with 16 oz, oil weight. I thought I remember calculating the ratio you suggested when I initially formulated the recipe but I ended up cutting my recipe in half and must have mistakenly kept the original 2 eggs in. I'll definitely try decreasing them in this next batch.

Thanks again for all the helpful suggestions!

Thanks, DeeAnna! That makes more sense and now brings duck fat very close to the egg in all values!

 

[LBussy]

I'm certain that saponification value of "...184.4-190.2..." has to be for KOH. Divide the numbers by 1.403 to get the range of NaOH sap values.

Si! I had that thought driving home. Here's what I calculated based on the fatty acid profile from above:

 

[DeeAnna]

The saponification value is in grams (or milligrams) of KOH per gram of base material. If we're talking about whole egg yolks, then the sap value would be based per gram of whole yolk. There is such a thing, however, as egg oil which is just the oily matter from the yolk, and I think the sap values we're finding are based on egg oil, not whole egg yolk.

The sap values of 184.4-190.2 in the Lee's first post may come from this source: The Dispensatory of the United States of America, 1918. Joseph P. Remington, Horatio C. Wood, et al., editors. http://www.henriettes-herb.com/eclectic/usdisp/gallus_ovi_oleu.html

Another researcher found sap values for egg oil that ranged from 192 to 196 depending on the breed of chicken. Source: ON THE EGG-YOLK OIL, by Kozo Suzuki. 1927. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03758397.1927.10856820

....my geeky contribution for the day....

 

[LBussy]

I like geeky contributions! Keeps my brain nimble, that's why I dive in deep on questions like this even if the OP doesn't want/need that much info. It's sort of me putting my best guess out there for others to shoot holes in. The "tutorial" by which I learned about SAP values was based on studying SoapCalc which (incorrectly I found out) calls the NaOH saponification value SAP. Ya learn something new every day!

 

[DeeAnna]

The centuries-old convention in the soapmaking literature is to always state saponification values based on KOH. So if NaOH is not specifically called out, it's the KOH sap value by definition. The conversion to an NaOH basis is simple:

NaOH sap value = (KOH sap value) / 1.403

In the handcrafted soap circles, this convention is often overlooked or unknown, so there is plenty of room for confusion. That's why I try to be careful to explicitly say NaOH or KOH when I talk about sap values.

Thanks for your patience, OP, with our geeky ruminations!

 

[Obsidian]

Obsidian-How soft is soft? I have actually made several batches HP and several CP so far and every batch turned out much harder than this one after unmolding, and more so after curing. Three days later, this batch still has a rubbery play-doh/string cheese texture on the outside and is gooey in the center. I've never used or seen a shampoo bar so I wasn't sure if they should be this soft.

Thats quite soft, I've never had my shampoo bars feel rubbery. Once cured, my bars are just about as hard as a regular bath soap. They are soluble though and I'll go through a bar in about 2 weeks.

 

[Unlimabun]

Thanks again for all the advice. The information I have learned from this forum is absolutely priceless!

I ended up doing another small batch. This time I took out one of the eggs, increased the SL, tweaked a couple of the oils and adjusted a little bit for the egg.

It is considerably harder, just like the other HP batches I have done. According to my other kid, it performs just as well as the first soap. He's a boy though so I don't hold much stock in how much attention he actually gave it! I'll make the decision myself after I actually use it!

Since I changed several things on the second batch I'm not sure if I did much to help answer my original question. However, just getting the feedback I have regarding eggs in soap was well worth the post. Thank you all!