# So i wanted to make a liquid soap..



## rosetown (Mar 15, 2015)

Hi fellow soapers. I will tell you about my liquid soap testing.
recipe:
100% organic oils.
coconut 30%
olive 30%
castor 15%
sunflower 15%
apricot kernel 5%
sheabutter 5%
almond. 5 %
KOH (1%lye discount) 224,4g
water 680,6

oils:1000g
+680g water/or ml.

1: melt oils on crocpot on high to about 150-160F
2: mix KOH and water, was about 140-150F 
3: mix lye and oils in the crocpot.
4: mix with blender about 10-15 mins.(much longer than cp soap)
5: reach trace. still not full trace. mixing mixing mixing mixing.
6: liquid.....liquid.... after 1 sec hard as rock..
7: mixing with a spatula for 1 min.
8: lid on (crocpot on high)
9: soap looks like hp soap stage 1-2.
10: lid on (high on crocpot)
11: mixing every 20-30 mins for about 2.5-3 hours.
12 very hard soap,not so easy to stir, still light brown/custard colour.
13: after about 3 hours the soap is very hard and hard to swirl around.
14: put the paste on a scale, about 1,x kg.
15: measure the double weight of water(room temperature)
16  put the water and the paste in crocpot and start breaking the paste and  making smaller pieces of it, I could touch the paste with hands(gloves  on)
and squishing it into smaller and smaller pieces.
17: mix with spatula every 15-20 min for about 1-2 hours.(crocpot on high)
18: turned the crocpot of, and went home(the lid was on)
19: came back after about 13-14 hours, the soap was liquid and 1-3 very small chunks left,haven't been dissolved.
20: the soap is very liquid, maybe like a very thin oil, 
21: soap is cloudy like a castille soap,looks pretty good.
22: I put the crocpot on high, after about 20-30 min (with lid on) 
i go to mix a little bit, the soap have skin on the top. like the one on gravy when it gets cold,but harder, chunks are forming.
23: i mix the soap a bit and remove some of the chunks and put the soap in a
pot and in a cold water bath to cool it down.
24: cool it down because I read the soap should not be warm if I wanted to add salt to thicken it.
25: the soap is now room temperature. and I don't know what to do now (haha) 
26: I tried to wash my hands with the soap, feels ok and lathers ok maybe(4.5/10). pretty drying somewhere between 6.5-7/10.
27: I have some citric powder for lowering the pH but my pH tester is coming soon.I will wait until then.

28: should I just leave it now. should i thicken it with salt if yes then how?
29: I think I did wrong adding room temperature water.
I should add it when I boiled it first and directly add it to the paste.
Could I add 20% salt to the diluting water?

30: I will leave it to rest now If you don't tell me otherwise 
and we will see how it turns out, what pH should I aim at?
do I dissolve the citric acid in water first or pour it directly in the soap?

/That's all for now folks. I will keep you updated, I hope that you could help me with the final stages


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## Susie (Mar 15, 2015)

I am going to try to go through your process using your numbers from above.

Recipe:  Please give actual weights of all ingredients.  I can't run your recipe through a lye calculator to check safety without those weights.  Why so many oils?  Did you run this through a lye calculator?  If so, which one?  If not, you needed to. 

1-3: Those are good.  Temperature is much less important in liquid soapmaking than bar soaps, so checking the temperature is unnecessary.  Won't hurt anything to do it, but not required if you don't want to.

4-5: Yes, KOH soap takes longer to trace than NaOH soap does.  I use either half glycerin for the water or grated bar soap to speed trace.  Either one cuts the trace time about in half.  Soaping warmer also helps. 

6:  Yep, it is often startling how fast that transition is.  You sort of learn the warning signs so you can pull the stick blender out right before it is solid. 

7:  Why?  Once it is paste, it is paste. 

8-12:  OK

13:  Why did you cook it so long?  Most soaps require no more than 1.5 hours cook time.  I don't even cook mine at all any longer.  But if you are cooking for longer than 1.5 hours(stirring every 20-30 min), you need to have a valid reason why.  Did you zap test?

14-19:  OK, typical dilution process.  I would not have added quite so much water on the front end, but it seems yours was pretty close to what you needed.   Did you zap test before dilution?

20-25:  Liquid soap is normally very thin.  This is typical.  There are things you can add to thicken.  You can NOT, however, thicken with salt, as you have more than 20% CO in there.  The undiluted chunks and the skin on top are both telling you to add more water.  You lose some in the process of taking the lid off to stir and such.  I guess the volume of the chunks/skin I have, and add approximately half that amount in water to finish dilution.  Or, if I am in a hurry, I will pull the solid stuff off to the side and dilute after I finish the rest of the soap.  What to do with it?  Use it, it is soap. 

26:  Sounds about average for liquid soap.  Did you zap test?  Are you sure this is not lye heavy?

27:  A pH tester is unnecessary unless you are adding a preservative.(which is not required for liquid soap you use yourself)  They are often incorrect, so be sure you get one that you can calibrate and the liquid to do so.

28-30:  Leave it alone for now.  We need to know the actual weights of each ingredient of the recipe to even begin to know if it is lye heavy or not, if you did not zap test.  If you zap tested, and it was not zappy, then it is soap.  And you can then explore the wonderful world of thickeners if you simply don't like the consistency.  I thin mine down a bit more and put it into foamer bottles.  I do use EOs to scent mine.  The citrus EOs that fade so badly in bar soaps are wonderful in liquid soaps.


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## rosetown (Mar 15, 2015)

*reply*

the weights are 300,300,150 50.
30%=300 of 1000grams


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## The Efficacious Gentleman (Mar 15, 2015)

But then you have 300x2 150x2 and 50x3 which is 1050


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## rosetown (Mar 15, 2015)

*here we go again *

Sorry I was in a hurry
ok here it is
coconut: 300g
olive 300g
castor 150g
sunflower 100g
sheabutter 50g
apricot kernel oil 50g
sweet almond oil 50g.

I didn't zap because it was on high temperature a long time and I assumed it was finished..


I used soapmaker 3 for calculating recipe.
but usually i use soapcalc.net

soapmaker tells me that I need 223,1g KOH (2% lye discount)
and 683 g water.

I have a company in Sweden making handmade organic soaps, so I wanted to try some liquid.
And I was just experimenting with oils and recipe for now, just to get the hang out of it.
And I already learned a couple of things making the first batch.
My soap isn't that bad, just a little bit drying and thin, but I will regulate that with salt in the first water I add or in the diluting water.
And I think that the pH level is pretty high now.
If my soap paste was 1 kg I would put 1 kg of water. but it seams that I could need 1,1 or 1,2. 
but as you said I could always dilute it later on.

Can I regulate the pH now with some citric acid? How to know the amount of citric acid,or alcohol? And is there any rule
about the water amount and amount of citric acid to add? 
I could also try reading somewhere about it 

About the thickness I will just regulate it with salt or borax,

Thanks for going through my process!


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## Susie (Mar 15, 2015)

You can't thicken liquid soap made with more than 20% CO with salt. 

You do not need to neutralize if you used a lye discount.  If you add much more acid(citric acid), you can break your soap into fatty acids floating on an alkaline liquid.  

You need to zap test your paste before diluting.  It is the only safe/not safe determination you need.


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## rosetown (Mar 16, 2015)

Susie can I do it without the zap test?
What is it I'm looking for at the zap test, the pH level?
so I could also just measure it ?


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## The Efficacious Gentleman (Mar 16, 2015)

If you do measure the pH, what pH level would tell you that the soap is safe or not safe?  There is no real answer to that as each recipe has a different pH when it is made correctly, based on the oils used.  That is also factoring in accurate measurement of pH using the 99:1 water to soap ratio with a properly calibrated and correctly used device.

The most important is that there is no excess lye - pH can't always tell you that, but your tongue can.


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## rosetown (Mar 16, 2015)

The Efficacious Gentleman said:


> If you do measure the pH, what pH level would tell you that the soap is safe or not safe?  There is no real answer to that as each recipe has a different pH when it is made correctly, based on the oils used.  That is also factoring in accurate measurement of pH using the 99:1 water to soap ratio with a properly calibrated and correctly used device.
> 
> The most important is that there is no excess lye - pH can't always tell you that, but your tongue can.



So no mater what I have to try the zap, every time I make a batch of soap of the rest of my soap carrier? haha


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## The Efficacious Gentleman (Mar 16, 2015)

Do you want to be sure that the soap is safe?  If so, then it would be a good idea to do so.  What else do you suggest would work?


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## rosetown (Mar 16, 2015)

The Efficacious Gentleman said:


> Do you want to be sure that the soap is safe?  If so, then it would be a good idea to do so.  What else do you suggest would work?



Thats the problem I dont have any suggestions except for making the exakt recipe and time and everything 100% the same every time, that should work I think.


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## The Efficacious Gentleman (Mar 16, 2015)

I really suggest the zap test - it is safe and accurate.  I do it it every batch, as do a lot of people.


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## Susie (Mar 16, 2015)

rosetown said:


> So no mater what I have to try the zap, every time I make a batch of soap of the rest of my soap carrier? haha



Yes.  You zap test every batch of paste before dilution.  

You are human, I am human, Craig is human.  If we were machines that are not prone to "oops", it would be different.  But stuff happens, and you zap test before dilution of every batch of paste.  If you do get zapped, it won't cause any damage to you, I promise.  It will let you know to start figuring out what happened to fix it before you have a whole bunch of lye heavy liquid soap.

If you get zapped, let us know, and we will help you troubleshoot.


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