# Salted out "Aleppo" Soap



## engblom (Feb 10, 2014)

Yesterday I made salted out "Aleppo" soap with 20% Laurel Berry oil. 

I begun like with CP. I poured at trace into silicone molds and let it set for some time.  Then I put it into oven and forced gelling. 

That soap I dissolved into _a lot of water_. It looked like a slightly green juice more than soap. After that I saturated with salt so the soap would rise. This I spooned into a strainer. The remaining brine had a bit of brown color. Again I dissolved the soap and salted out. This time the brine was clear. 

After the crud has been in a strainer for some time stabilizing I spooned it over to a textile bag and into the laundry machine it went for centrifuge. 

After the centrifuge,  the soap mass was dry enough to form into soaps.  This I did with a PVC pipe and two wood pieces. I pressed one at the time. 

Here is the result!  So much work for 4 pieces of soap,  but nice soap it is!  The hands are so soft after!


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## Lion Of Judah (Feb 10, 2014)

few questions to help me understand this better . did you rehash a bar of soap or you made it from scratch? the original soap contained the 20% laurel berry oil or you used raw laurel berry oil ?


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## engblom (Feb 10, 2014)

I first made from scratch a 80% EVOO, 20% Laurel Berry Oil soap superfatted at 7%. Technically, I would not have needed to superfat as any excess lye would have been washed away later.

At trace I poured everything into silicone cavity molds. Once they had been gelling, I put 4 of the soaps into boiling hot water and by spoon mashed (they were still soft) them until I just had a very loose fluid looking like tea. This took quite some time. I used 1.5 litre of water to those 4 soaps (besides the 38% water the soaps already contained).

Once earlier I made a fully boiled soap by having excess fluids from the very beginning. I will never do that again as that took a lot of stiring and time to do. This is why I decided to first do CPOP and then later disolve it into more water to get the excess fluid.


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## Lion Of Judah (Feb 10, 2014)

very very interesting ! i never heard of this before . isn't the laurel berry oil expensive in your country [ i take it that you are not in the U.S ] . at the end of your process do you end up with a soap that has a very mild ( low ) ph ?


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## engblom (Feb 10, 2014)

Lion Of Judah said:


> very very interesting ! i never heard of this before . isn't the laurel berry oil expensive in your country [ i take it that you are not in the U.S ] . at the end of your process do you end up with a soap that has a very mild ( low ) ph ?



I bought the Laurel Berry oil for about 30EUR/kg and shipping was 9 EUR. There are different suppliers with different price. Yes, it is more expensive than the typical olive oil, but on the other hand you do not make a 100% Laurel Berry Oil soap either. If even 5% of what is said about Aleppo soap on wikipedia is true, it is well worth. Regardless of if it is true or not, I like the smell and how the soap feels.

Any excess of lye (by mistake or not) gets washed away together with the glycerin and other impurities when you salt out. Some salt (which binds moisture) will remain in the new soap making it really nice on the skin. It is a bit less lather because of the salt, but the lather is very soft and a bit creamy. After washing, the skin feels more soft than from any other soap I have been trying.


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## Seawolfe (Feb 10, 2014)

Wow pretty soaps. I've heard that the green color fades, which is a real pity. Maybe your method with the salt will make it last.

I'm quite new to soap making, and I dont understand why you dissolved your soap in salt water after it was made? Was that to get rid of the impurities that washed out in the brine?

Theres a post here recently about someone "washing" out fats with salted water, and someone else washed out their soaps made with old cooking out with salt water. Now Im all confused.


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## cmzaha (Feb 10, 2014)

I have also salted out soap and it does make a very nice gentle soap, but as mentioned it is a lot of work. Have to admit I never thought about the washing machine trick. Will have to try that next!


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## seven (Feb 10, 2014)

Seawolfe said:


> Wow pretty soaps. I've heard that the green color fades, which is a real pity. Maybe your method with the salt will make it last.
> 
> I'm quite new to soap making, and *I dont understand why you dissolved your soap in salt water after it was made? Was that to get rid of the impurities that washed out in the brine?*
> 
> Theres a post here recently about someone "washing" out fats with salted water, and someone else washed out their soaps made with old cooking out with salt water. Now Im all confused.



i also want to know why, pretty please..


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## engblom (Feb 10, 2014)

Every single soap I have been salting out has been milder than the original soap. That is the only single reason for salting out for me. I would not want to do all that extra work unless I had this single reason.


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## SoapMakingTommy (Feb 10, 2014)

Very interesting topic, I am very interested in aleppo soap and in the salting process, I understand it , but want to learn more how i can apply it to making soap. If i can remover certain impurities by salting maybe i can do this with some other oils, sure would be interested to try it out with neem oil.
If you superfat you said salting would make the soap rise to the top of the water, but what about the not so soap, will it still rise?


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## engblom (Feb 10, 2014)

The soap will rise regardless if it is super-fatted or not. Usually you even have excess of lye, which you wash away.  Salting out allows you to make soap out of unknown oils.  For example rendered oils from big kitchens. 

With normal CP you should never have excess of lye as the lye would remain in the soap. This requires knowledge about the fats and their SAP-values.


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## Seawolfe (Feb 10, 2014)

So salting out can fulfill several objectives, but for you the advantage is the milder soap at the end?
I think that using your washing machine as a centrifuge is very clever, I'd love to see a tutorial of this with pictures.


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## Obsidian (Feb 10, 2014)

Salting out soap removes all the glycerin along with any excess lye. I tried it with a few bars and the resulting soap was extremely harsh and I ended up having to throw it out. 
I would suggest trying just a bar or two until you know if you'll like the finished product.


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## engblom (Feb 10, 2014)

Seawolfe said:


> So salting out can fulfill several objectives, but for you the advantage is the milder soap at the end?
> I think that using your washing machine as a centrifuge is very clever, I'd love to see a tutorial of this with pictures.



Yep! So far I have been using soapcalc and known oils so the only advantage for me has been milder soap. 

But even with known oils,  it could be nice if you want to use oils that could go rancid.  By having excess of lye you get all oil to react so nothing should be left. Then you wash away that excess.


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## Lindy (Feb 10, 2014)

Obsidian said:


> Salting out soap removes all the glycerin along with any excess lye. I tried it with a few bars and the resulting soap was extremely harsh and I ended up having to throw it out.
> I would suggest trying just a bar or two until you know if you'll like the finished product.



 That was my thoughts entirely.  In the homesteading days they used to salt the soap to get it rise but it was because in essence they were making KOH by running water through wood ash rather than NaOH.  So by salting it they were able to get a solid soap but the glycerin was left behind and it was a harsh soap.  Think of all the stories about Grandma's lye soap.  If they had access to NaOH then they were able to make a much nicer soap leaving the glycerin intact. 

 It is one of our biggest complaints about the larger companies, how they remove most if not all of the glycerin in order to sell it to cosmetic companies or make 'glycerin soap'.....

 So I am truly at a loss as to why you would want to go back in time removing the glycerin?  It is not an impurity but one of the most gentle components of soap and very conditioning.


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## engblom (Feb 10, 2014)

Lindy said:


> That was my thoughts entirely.  In the homesteading days they used to salt the soap to get it rise but it was because in essence they were making KOH by running water through wood ash rather than NaOH.  So by salting it they were able to get a solid soap but the glycerin was left behind and it was a harsh soap.  Think of all the stories about Grandma's lye soap.  If they had access to NaOH then they were able to make a much nicer soap leaving the glycerin intact.
> 
> It is one of our biggest complaints about the larger companies, how they remove most if not all of the glycerin in order to sell it to cosmetic companies or make 'glycerin soap'.....
> 
> So I am truly at a loss as to why you would want to go back in time removing the glycerin?  It is not an impurity but one of the most gentle components of soap and very conditioning.



At the same time glycerin is removed, salt is added. Salt is also binding moisture. You even put salt on dusty roads to bind the dust with moisture.

Personally, I have noticed you can be glycerin addicted. If you provide too much, your skin will not make own. Also, from where is the glycerin pulling the moisture? Not from the air at least in this dry country during the winter.

All I know is that my hands quit to be dry when I begun experimenting with salted out soap

As you wrote, salting out served some special purposes earlier:
1. Making solid bar
2. Washing away excess lye as you had no exact scales, no clean lye etc. You always added enough of lye to ensure all of the oils got consumed.

The reason it many times was harsh was because salt was so expensive so they often did not wash properly. For laundry, they only once salted out the soap, leaving much lye in it.

Also, now we get so many different of oils easily. Earlier you took whatever fat you could get and from that you made a 0% superfatted soap. Even with CP you can make very harsh soaps if you do not properly pick your fats.


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## SoapMakingTommy (Feb 10, 2014)

Just curious engblom but you said that ""The remaining brine had a bit of brown color."" Does the remaining brine liquid have any odor to it besides salt? I am curious if there are any other potential things that the salting removes besides just lye and glycerin? Like terpenes or tanins


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## Lindy (Feb 10, 2014)

Engbloom we are going to have to agree to disagree...


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## engblom (Feb 10, 2014)

Lindy said:


> Engbloom we are going to have to agree to disagree...



I agree. :wave: 

And thanks for your arguments!


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## Obsidian (Feb 10, 2014)

SoapMakingTommy said:


> Just curious engblom but you said that ""The remaining brine had a bit of brown color."" Does the remaining brine liquid have any odor to it besides salt? I am curious if there are any other potential things that the salting removes besides just lye and glycerin? Like terpenes or tanins



The bars I salted out were coffee bars I added way too much coffee and grounds to. They started as super dark brown and when I was done, they were a light creamy brown and probably around 80% of the grounds were gone.

They looked really nice and the lather was creamy but it was just too drying. I even tried rebatching and adding back some glycerin and SF but it just didn't help.


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## engblom (Feb 10, 2014)

Obsidian said:


> The bars I salted out were coffee bars I added way too much coffee and grounds to. They started as super dark brown and when I was done, they were a light creamy brown and probably around 80% of the grounds were gone.
> 
> They looked really nice and the lather was creamy but it was just too drying. I even tried rebatching and adding back some glycerin and SF but it just didn't help.



How were the bars before salting out?  You said they were harsh even though you added back glycerine while rebatching.  This should have canceled any effect of the glycerine wash.


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## judymoody (Feb 10, 2014)

I found this thread very interesting but a little confusing.  I am glad that this method produces a soap that works well for you.

However, I'm having a hard time grasping the idea that a soap which is effectively not superfatted (I'm assuming that the free oils would be washed away in the process you describe) and has the glycerin removed, would be a mild, gentle soap.

Maybe I will have to try it and see for myself.


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## Obsidian (Feb 10, 2014)

They were ok bars, lower on lather but not drying. The salt out completely ruined them, I was surprised that adding back glycerin didn't really change anything. Maybe the salt out process removes or adds something beside glycerin. I know its not the salt making it drying, I use salt bars daily.
It would be interesting to see if there has been any scientific testing done on the before vs after.


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## AtraGarden (Feb 14, 2014)

engblom said:


> Yesterday I made salted out "Aleppo" soap with 20% Laurel Berry oil.
> 
> I begun like with CP. I poured at trace into silicone molds and let it set for some time.  Then I put it into oven and forced gelling.
> 
> ...


Hello, 
Thats going to be a creamy and skin friendly soap. I was wondering if it was made with Cold Pressed oil or not? Here is a picture of Laurel Soap that I recently made.


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## engblom (Feb 16, 2014)

I have no idea if it is cold pressed or not. At the point when I bought the oil you did not yet ship small quantities and with no prior experience of "Aleppo soap" I did not want to put really much money into it.

Which is better,  cold pressed or "normal"?


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## AtraGarden (Feb 16, 2014)

engblom said:


> I have no idea if it is cold pressed or not. At the point when I bought the oil you did not yet ship small quantities and with no prior experience of "Aleppo soap" I did not want to put really much money into it.
> 
> Which is better,  cold pressed or "normal"?


It really depends on which one you like better. I personally like the smell of traditional but maybe the idea of being made ancient ways make me feel that way. I really get happy when someone post a product made with what I like and sell It really does not matter where you buy it, I am here to help with it and let people know about it. The product you purchased probably came out of our facility. 

I certainly wait for your feedback after you use it. You should try making a bar or two of high percentage like 70-80% Laurel or 100% Laurel to see how great it is Cheers


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## Miha Engblom (Feb 16, 2014)

AtraGarden are you selling oil to manske-shop in germany? It was from there that he bought it.

One more question... how old is the soap in the picture? Our soaps are still pretty green, and I think it has been passing a few weeks since we made our first.


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## AtraGarden (Feb 16, 2014)

Miha Engblom said:


> AtraGarden are you selling oil to manske-shop in germany? It was from there that he bought it.
> 
> One more question... how old is the soap in the picture? Our soaps are still pretty green, and I think it has been passing a few weeks since we made our first.


I know manske but I do not directly sell to manske. There are only couple first hand suppliers of this oil beside me so maybe manske's supplier might be one of my customer. This is the reason I started doing retail because I can't control where my product goes. I want suppliers go through me not the middle people.


The soap in the picture is just came out of curing area which is 3 months old and contains 50% of Laurel Oil. The color fades away, it wont stay green or brownish, the color of 100% laurel soap even fades away. Yours probably going to turn cream color.


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## ilovesoap2 (Feb 16, 2014)

I wish the only thing the salting removed was any excess lye.  The idea of losing the glycerin, not so good.


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## engblom (Feb 17, 2014)

ilovesoap2 said:


> I wish the only thing the salting removed was any excess lye.  The idea of losing the glycerin, not so good.



Before pressing the bars, you could add anything you want to a salted out soap. This includes super-fatting oils, fragrances, colors and even glycerin, if you so want. Just put everything into blender and blend in whatever you want.

I have not felt any need to add back the glycerin, as my skin is having significantly more moisture from the salt content in the salted out soap. This could be something that some are reacting in another way to than how I am reacting.


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## TheVelvetLeopard (Feb 18, 2014)

I have never heard of Aleppo or salting a soap (although I have heard of salt soaps).  I'm going to have to look this up now


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## engblom (Feb 18, 2014)

TheVelvetLeopard said:


> I have never heard of Aleppo or salting a soap (although I have heard of salt soaps).  I'm going to have to look this up now


The salting out is not specific for "Aleppo soap". It can be used for any soap. Also "Aleppo soaps" could be made without the salting out part.

Laurel Berry Oil has quite a bit of Lauric acid which, while nice for generating bubbles, is a bit drying on the skin (far from what coconut is allthough). This was my main reason for salting out the soap.


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## sephera (Aug 11, 2014)

Can you make Aleppo soap with just normal Cold Process, Olive oil and Lye water and add Bay Laurel oil after trace? 

Do you think the Syrians went through that convoluted process just because they could measure the Lye percentages very accurately? Or none perfect measures.


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## DeeAnna (Aug 11, 2014)

"...Can you make Aleppo soap with just normal Cold Process, Olive oil and Lye water and add Bay Laurel oil after trace? ..."

Yes, but why add the bay laurel oil after trace? That will not work to ensure the BL oil is the superfat -- the lye is still very active at trace and will saponify what it wants. If you specifically want the BL oil to be the superfat, you will need to hot process the soap and add the BL oil after the cook.

"...Do you think the Syrians went through that convoluted process just because they could measure the Lye percentages very accurately? ..."

Do you mean "...because they could ~not~ measure the Lye percentages..."?

If so, the answer is "yes" and "no". It's more complicated than that -- and here is a very simple but still complicated answer:

There are two types of "salting" as used in soap making. 

Originally, only soft soaps could be made because the lye used for soap making was collected from ashes harvested from the burning of certain types of plants. The ashes contained mostly potassium salts, and these ashes were leached with water to dissolve the potassium salts and form a potassium lye. 

The soaping fats were warmed in a large kettle, the lye solution was added, the mixture was stirred and boiled over a fire, more water and lye were added as needed, and the mixture was allowed to saponify. When the saponification was complete, common salt was sometimes added to the soap paste to force some of the potassium soap to convert into sodium soap. This paste was poured into containers for use. The salting step made the soft soap somewhat firmer and easier to handle and use, although the soap was still soft and paste-like. The sodium soaps in the paste were less soluble in water, so the soap would last somewhat longer. This type of soap was probably something like modern-day soft shaving soaps or "cream soap".

Later on in the early 1800s, soap was made with a sodium lye rather than a potassium lye. This changed the "normal" type of soap from a soft paste soap to a hard bar soap, similar to what we are familiar with today. This occurred when people figured out how to make sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) from soda ash and lime, so soap makers weren't limited to using the potassium lye from ashes. 

This sodium soap was made pretty much as described above -- the difference comes after the soap is mostly or fully saponified. At that point, the soap is a hot,  liquid mass partly mixed into and partly floating on a watery solution of glycerin, salt, impurities from the soap ingredients, and spent (used up) lye. Believe it or not, adding salt to this mixture will cause the soap to become almost completely insoluble in water, and the soap would form curds and float to the top of the soap kettle. This was called "graining" the soap. After a settling period, the water layer underneath the soap curds was drained off. This washing and draining procedure could be repeated several times, depending on what kind of soap the soapmaker wanted to make. The "grained" soap was poured into molds to cool and harden, and then cut into bars for sale.

Actually, commercially produced soap is still made today with a "boiled" method where lye is gradually added until the fats are just saponified. Only handcrafters make cold-process or hot-process soap using a superfat as "insurance" against the error in our calculations. In some respects, the boiled method has advantages, because no one can truly predict exactly how much lye is required to saponify fats and the boiled method allows for this fact.

Handcrafted soaping is actually more prone to error because the saponification values we use to create our recipes are basically estimates. These values may be very good estimates, but are still not precise measures of the fats actually in our soap pots. We just design recipes in a way that usually forces any error to be extra superfat, rather than extra lye. 

Henry Gathmann, author of a commercial soapmaking text written in the late 1800s, talked a lot about the alternatives to the boiled soapmaking method. He described the cold process method and the half-boiled method (basically a hot process method). He felt these methods made soap that was less desirable in some ways than a fully boiled soap, because the impurities from the soaping fats were not removed. He wrote: 

"...cold-made soap, therefore, contains—like half-boiled soap—all the impurities that may have been introduced with the stock, all the water used for making the lye, the foreign salts that may have been contained in the caustic, the glycerine formed during the formation of the soap, and also more or less of the raw materials in an uncombined state...."

He went on to explain the cold and half boiled methods were easier to do when making small batches, so small commercial (and home) soap makers were pretty much limited to using these methods versus the "full boiled" method. Gathmann went on to say:

"...The boiling of soap requires apparatus, labor, and time, which are too expensive to apply except for a fairly large batch, to say nothing of the practical impossibility of properly finishing a small batch of soap by boiling. In connection with this there is the further advantage that by the cold process a batch of soap can be turned out on very short notice, and certainly much more rapidly than by boiling...."

Probably too much info to answer such a short question ... but there ya go!


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## sephera (Aug 12, 2014)

Yes they didn't have access to pure lye and couldn't measure it correctly that's why they had to do the boiling method. Now that we have pure NaOH that could make it faster with CP. It's the same with Black African Soap.


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## DeeAnna (Aug 12, 2014)

I'll repeat myself -- just because we have high purity NaOH and KOH today doesn't mean the boiled method is obsolete. High purity NaOH and KOH have been available and used in soap making for well over 100 years. Commercial soap makers today generally do not use the CP or HP processes that we do -- these methods are actually more error-prone than the boiled method.


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## smeetree (Dec 3, 2014)

AtraGarden said:


> Hello,
> Thats going to be a creamy and skin friendly soap. I was wondering if it was made with Cold Pressed oil or not? Here is a picture of Laurel Soap that I recently made.



did you make your bar with hot or cold process?

Also, the bar looks brownish instead of green. has it oxidized? when you cut it open, is the inside green?


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## Raf (Nov 28, 2018)

Sorry about my ignorance, but I know how to make soap in 2 different ways: the cold process, and the hot process with the crock pot. You are talking about the "boiled method" could anyone tell me how that works?


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## Saponificarian (Nov 28, 2018)

https://classicbells.com/soap/saltOutTut.html

Here ya go.

ETA: This thread is old. It’s better not to resurrect old threads. Read the forum rules.


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## DeeAnna (Nov 28, 2018)

Raf said:


> ...You are talking about the "boiled method" could anyone tell me how that works?



A general answer is already in this thread. Re-read my Post #34, especially the paragraph that starts "...The soaping fats were warmed in a large kettle, the lye solution was added, the mixture was stirred and boiled over a fire..." 

Saponificarian is right, however. If you want to start a new discussion about this, please do it in a new thread. You can give a link to this old thread in your new thread if you like.


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