Your Standard Recipe

[Carly B]

So many experienced soapers here have a standard recipe. How do you even do that? I've been soaping since September, and I think every batch I've made has a different recipe. I take notes, of course, but it's so much fun experimenting and coming up with all the variations, and then it's weeks, if not months, until you can try your latest recipe inspiration to see if it's as wonderful as you planned, but by then, you have made dozens more batches that could be "the one."

So for those that have a standard recipe, or a couple standard recipes, when did you realize certain recipes were "keepers"?

 

[Obsidian]

It took me a couple years to come up with my base recipe. I probably made at least 200 batches in that time.

I would put multiple soaps in the shower and see which ones I reached for the most. Some I just didn't care much for so I didn't make those again.

 

[cmzaha]

It took me almost 8 yrs to come up with my vegan and non-vegan base recipe. I still tweak the liquid oils depending on what I get for the best price. I also have a few specialty bars in the mix. Guess I am little slower than most or much more picky. But I got it now. At least until I decide to change things up again!

 

[Susie]

It took me almost 2 years. And I still had to change it when I moved where there was hard water.

 

[shunt2011]

Took me over a year closer to two to finally settle on my basic recipe.

 

[Dawni]

Took me about a year as well.. With constant tweaks and constant testing by me, my mother n sister, several cousins..... Haha

 

[Rick Potter]

Took me about a year as well.. With constant tweaks and constant testing by me, my mother n sister, several cousins..... Haha

What did you come up with for a standard CP recipe?

 

[LBV]

I am a relatively new to soap and I found my standard recipe pretty much immediately. Having said that I did a lot of research before I even started. I am experimenting with essential oils tho.

 

[cmzaha]

I am a relatively new to soap and I found my standard recipe pretty much immediately. Having said that I did a lot of research before I even started. I am experimenting with essential oils tho.

Don't count on a recipe you make when you first start to be one you still make a few years down the road if you are still making soap. Like anything you want to grow and progress in what you do. There is always something new to learn and try.

 

[Dawni]

What did you come up with for a standard CP recipe?

It's tweaks of the one here, although I've since tweaked some of the numbers to allow for castor oil. Felt it needed it since there's not much coconut to begin with.

Any new recipes I make, I just switch out stuff, but I like those numbers (bubbly, cleansing, longevity, etc.) where they're at so I don't steer too much from that unless I'm making a completely different soap, like high lard, or triple butter or whatever..

 

[KiwiMoose]

It probably took me about 6 months to settle on a fairly standard recipe, but to get to the point where I had 'the one' was more like 8 months ( after about 80 batches of soap). In the past few months i have developed a further 'one' that i use for swirly soaps, and I also use @Zany_in_CO's No-Slime castile regularly too. Also in the past four months I've started using additives in my soap such as aloe, oat milk, coconut milk, beer, cider, etc to the point where I can't make a soap unless it has 'something in the water'.

 

[Emmanuel]

I'm actively doing reasearch on soap base , I worked 6 month on it as for today and I have more than 30 different tests.
Since my goal is to create a vegan/local/organic receipe , it can be quite challenging. I also have a very simple yet very effective receipe that use coconut oil unfortunately.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

After 11 months of testing, I’m getting closer to a having a few recipes that I like enough to use as base recipes with only minor adjustments in oils or additives. Developing/tweaking recipes got easier when I began to understand how the many fats, fatty acid profiles and cure time affect a soap’s qualities. To get there, I made many, many batches with slight to major variations. I’m another one that has dozens of soaps at sinks around my house. I know I’m on the right track with a recipe when I find that I’m preferentially using a particular soap over and over. Even with what I consider to be satisfactory base recipes, I expect to be tweaking forever. I’m getting ready to try 5% KOH in my harder soaps and it will be months before I know what I think of them. From handing out a lot of soaps to testers, I’ve learned that many respond first to scent and color/design. Some can further resolve differences based on how bubbly versus creamy a soap is, whether it’s drying or how it rinses off. They’re also learning, which is helpful.

 

[amd]

It took me about 9 months to find a recipe that I liked. I made that recipe for another 9 months, opened a business with it, and then a year later I made changes due to costs and performance (after a lot of test batches). My base recipe continues to be tweaked slightly for costs for my business, but I try to keep it with the same performance and shelf life that my customers expect. Finding the right recipe requires patience, small batches, and a bit of research.

 

[Sue Fliss]

I have been making soap for over 12 years, and got my sister started shortly after as well. Between us we have made hundreds of batches using many different oils and a multitude of recipes. Oftentimes the recipes depended on what oils we had on hand or wanted to use up. We started soaping using a lot of different oils and have now pared down to more basic oils that we can buy at brick and mortar stores except for castor and shea that we use occasionally. All the recipes were created on soapcalc, paying attention to the numbers and soap qualities we wanted. But thru all of this and even now, we agree that we really didn't notice a lot, if any difference in our soap. We always (except for maybe a few cases) ended up with a nice hard, smooth bar that lathers well, feels nice on our skin, rinses off well, lasts a decent amount of time and is not drying. We really didn't prefer one over the other except for maybe the fragrance. I can't understand when I read about people changing out one oil for another, or maybe changing %s and noticing a difference in the resulting bar. What am I missing?

 

[Dawni]

Yknow @Sue Fliss I can agree with you. Many of my test batches feel the same whether I up this or lower that BUT one difference I do notice is the lather. They may all feel more or less the same on my skin after a shower, but while showering I can feel the differences in lather, even if they all do lather well...

And I really think the butters make a big difference. To me, at least.

 

[bookreader451]

I am too new to have a standard recipe yet but I have found certain oils and butters I really like and have experimented with them in combination with different oils. I love sweet almond and cocoa butter, but I just did a lard and shea that seems promising...........

Still searching for the holy grail but at least I have narrowed the territory of the hunt.

 

[amd]

I can't understand when I read about people changing out one oil for another, or maybe changing %s and noticing a difference in the resulting bar. What am I missing?

I don't think you're missing anything! You're probably fortunate enough to have skin accepting of most soap formulations.

 

[IrishLass]

It probably took me roughly two years to come up with my 2 regular mainstay formulas- a veggie formula and an animal fat formula. I have a handful of other different formulas that I make as well (i.e., salt bar, super-sudsy bar, facial bar, etc...) but the 2 aforementioned are the ones that I make most often.


IrishLass

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I have been making soap for over 12 years, and got my sister started shortly after as well. Between us we have made hundreds of batches using many different oils and a multitude of recipes. Oftentimes the recipes depended on what oils we had on hand or wanted to use up. We started soaping using a lot of different oils and have now pared down to more basic oils that we can buy at brick and mortar stores except for castor and shea that we use occasionally. All the recipes were created on soapcalc, paying attention to the numbers and soap qualities we wanted. But thru all of this and even now, we agree that we really didn't notice a lot, if any difference in our soap. We always (except for maybe a few cases) ended up with a nice hard, smooth bar that lathers well, feels nice on our skin, rinses off well, lasts a decent amount of time and is not drying. We really didn't prefer one over the other except for maybe the fragrance. I can't understand when I read about people changing out one oil for another, or maybe changing %s and noticing a difference in the resulting bar. What am I missing?

It sounds like you were aiming to produce soap with specific qualities. My approach has been a little different. I aimed to produce soap recipes with distinctly different dominant qualities. Doing that has helped me to understand what specific fats bring to soap in the context of mixtures, rather than as single fat soaps. For example, I’ve made very hard bars by giving up some (or a lot) of soft oils, but I now know that I will like a hard bar better if it includes a fair amount of linoleic FA (maxed out at 15% for now) rather than mostly oleic. I’ve also compared bars with 0, 5 of 10% castor, and bars with lard vs. palm vs. butters vs. soy wax as the main source of palmitic & stearic FAs. I’ve also made 100% olive oil soaps and soaps across a range of OO concentrations. I just recently started testing a tallow/lard combo as a base and can tell already that it’s different from a lard based soap of the same age, even when the stearic and palmitic numbers are similar.