# Liquid soap recipe



## Cally (Mar 9, 2013)

I was hoping that someone could look over this webpage and let me know their thoughts. I'm having trouble finding a recipe or an explanation of liquid soap that is put across in a way that I understand. This comes closest but it seems to contradict quite a few things that I've found out so far, though it is starting to make sense to me.

http://ourlifesimplified.com/house/soap-recipes/homemade-liquid-soap-the-easy-way/#axzz2N05ZEAzq

Still, if I choose the more popular way of doing it can someone please tell me if the following steps would be correct.

Using soapcalc I would put in KOH 0% superfatting the oils of my choice (I am thinking 20% coconut and 80% olive oil for  dishsoap?).

Put the oil into the crockpot and start to warm it up, mix the lye and oil, add the lye mix to the crockpot and blend every 15minutes or so until it turns gel like.

I would then weigh the paste and use three times as much water to dilute it? This is the part that my brain sort of fizzes and I'm not sure if I'm correct, I'm also not sure how to do the citric acid/borax part of thing to take care of the lye excess. At 0% is there even an excess?

Thank you so much for anyone looking this over and giving me thoughts, I'm a bit huh? on the issue and it's not put forth as clearly as CP soap was.


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## Smee (Mar 9, 2013)

Funny, I was looking at that same site last night.  Hope someone that knows
what they're doing comes along here and answers your questions so I can
read over your shoulder and copy your notes!  Still haven't tried making
liquid soap because everything I've read is soooo confusing to me, too!


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## Hazel (Mar 13, 2013)

I'm bumping this thread so hopefully someone who is experienced with LS will be able to answer your questions. I've only made 3 batches of LS and only one turned out well. So even though I _think _I have some answers, I don't want to post inaccurate information. I might be wrong.


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## carolyntn (Mar 13, 2013)

Hello!
I was not able to access the link you provided, so I cannot comment on it.
I started making liquid soap using David Fisher's tutorial:
http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/liquidsoap/ss/basicliquidsoap.htm
I highly recommend learning liquid soap from his tutorial. It is also useful to read Catherine Failor's book Making Natural Liquid Soaps.

Here are the basic steps of Liquid Soap - Water Method:
1. Warm oils in crockpot.
2. Dissolve KOH into water.
3. Pour KOH/water mixture into warm oils.
4. Stickblend until trace - around 40 minutes.
5. Cook 3-4 hours, until paste passes the clarity test.
6. Dilute. Neutralize. Fragrance.
7. Sequester.

Follow David Fisher's tutorial to learn the technique of liquid soap making.  

You wrote: "Put the oil into the crockpot and start to warm it up, *mix the lye and oil*, add the lye mix to the crockpot and blend every 15minutes or so until it turns gel like."  No this part is not correct!   You do not put the lye directly into your oils.  First dissolve the lye into water - then pour the lye/water solution into the oils.

Carolyn


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## Hazel (Mar 14, 2013)

Good catch, Carolyn! I didn't even notice she had written lye into oil.


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## Mildreds.naturals (Mar 14, 2013)

I would like to contribute from my experience. 

I found that using glycerin in place of water to make liquid soap is better in that it takes literally 2-3 minutes to saponify the oil with the KOH. I don't know if the end result is any different in terms of how bubbly, emollient or drying the soap might be, however. Let me make a very clear point about water. It absolutely must be distilled. This means for the KOH mixture, dilution, EVERYTHING. Use tap water if you like, but chances are your soap will not be clear. Tap water has minerals that the soap will react with that your store bought liquid dawn or Palmolive does not.

The basics that I've come to find are as follows:

1. saponify the oils with water or glycerin
2. once it's time to cook, add in your superfat of no more than 3% or your soap will cloud (i'm a little unsure about when to add the superfat for liquid soap but this is what i've seen others do)
3. Depending on the oils you use they will 'neutralize' faster or longer. What I do is this: once the oils saponify, I keep stirring it manually for a few minutes and then let it sit on low for 1.5 hours. I do a clarity test after the 1.5 hours. If it passes I have a choice to keep cooking to bring down the PH or neutralize when I dilute. If it doesn't pass, cook for another 1.5 hours. If it never passes clarity you either miss-measured or used an oil that is not conducive to clear soap (tallow for example). In the article you linked to she said to put in on HIGH, but on low, the temperature in my crock pot reaches around 230+ degrees so I think that's pretty hot considering water only boils at 212 . I test the PH with Phenolphthalein drops. If it's dark pink, I put it in for another 1-1.5 hours. After this, testing again. If it's still dark pink (total cook time of 3 hours) and I'm absolutely sure i used the proper measurements, I move to dilution after weighting my paste and add some citric acid to neutralize.

A note about paste weight and dilution. I've found that if you have 25% or more coconut in your recipe, you should probably dilute it to about 20% or it will be drying to your hands. I don't know if this is everyone else's experience, but it has been this way for me. Both my boyfriend and his mom say that the soap I made wasn't drying to their skin at all but i found it left me wanting to grab the lotion bottle a little after sponging a few dishes in the sink.

4. Figure you what your dilution ratio is. The above mentioned link on about.com produces a dilution ratio of 18%. If you are using a recipe with a lot of olive oil like this, Dilution is not a problem because you will thicken with Salt after. Yes, Table salt. SO if you had a batch that weight about 22oz in paste, that would mean you'll put 66oz of water (22x 3=88. checking math: 88 X .25 = 22) for 20%, 22 x 4 = 88

5. Neutralize. Oh man did I have problems with this. The 20 mule team borax stuff never worked for me ever. No matter how much I added per any instructions on the internet it turned my soap white. Again, this has been my experience YMMV. I got some citric acid from a middle eastern store (also known as sour salt). Don't expect to find this at safeway or target .I made a twenty-something percent solution in DISTILLED water and I always add about 1% to my diluted soap. a 16oz batch would need about 0.5 ounces after dilution. Do it while it's hot or heat it up after you add it to the diluted mixture in your pot. The lumps you see in the soap will dissolve pretty quickly. Remember that Neutralizing is not really neutral. 7 is neutral on the PH scale but soap MUST be alkaline for it to work properly. I have added citric acid to a diluted soap before and then saw the soap get cloudy after it cooled because the PH dropped too low. Yikes! This is pretty easy to fix, thankfully. I just grab about a 1/2 tsp of lye and add it to tablespoon of water. I add it, a little at a time and I can almost watch as the soap gets clear again right before my eyes. Do it while it's cold because the soap will get clear when you heat it up and you want to be able to see the reaction to know when you've added enough lye to bring it to clarity. Once it's clear, i'd add a tiny bit more for good measure. Remember, soap is supposed to be a little on the alkaline side. DR Bronner's castile soap says their soaps are I believe 8.9 on the PH scale. Phenolphthalein drops with their soap produce a light pink that is so very very faint, you can barely see it.

6. Sequestering agents. I'm not very well versed on this but I see 5% the max sequestering agents to use. Either a sugar water solution or Glycerin. or a mixture of the two. I use the max of 5%. I understand that sequestering agents are used to help with clarity but I also now know that the added glycerin helps with bubbles and make the soap feel emollient. If it weren't' for these two points I probably would skip sequestering since I think i've mastered the process to produce a clear soap. Add these to diluted soap.

7. Fragrance. The about.com says to use 3oz of fragrance. That is a LOT if you ask me. Can anyone offer guidance here? the total batch for their recipe is about 80oz diluted. I wold guess 2% would be the max amount of fragrance to use and this is almost twice as much. Fragrance oils are delicate, especially real essential oils. Some more than others. I recommend waiting until your diluted soap is less than 130 degrees before adding any essential oils or extracts. Extracts are more soluble than essential oils, in my experience and I recommend using a combination of the two if the end product scent is nice. I wonder if you were to mix an essential oil into an extract (which contains alcohol) if it would make it more soluble? Ethanol (used with extracts and is consumable) is an emulsifier. Perhaps this is why I don't see any polysorbate on Dr Bronner's labels? The use of extracts! I never thought of that until now. 

7. Thickening. This part is fun . I make a supersaturated salt solution. I add 2 parts water to 1 part salt in a sauce pan and boil the DISTILLED (again) water and then add salt. This is what I add to to thicken. Recipes with more than half of the oil being Olive oil will thicken very nicely and very easily! I start with 3.5% but usually end up around 7% of diluted soap weight. Add thickening while it's cool. If you do it while it's hot, you may find that when it cools its WAAAAY thicker than you wanted. I turned an 80% olive oil recipie into nearly jello once lol. I'll usually take a teaspoon of it in a cup and just squirt a little saltwater in and mix it up just to see how it reacts if it's a new recipe. If you add too much, it will turn milky which is why 3.5% is a good starting point.


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## lsg (Mar 14, 2013)

Cally said:


> I was hoping that someone could look over this webpage and let me know their thoughts. I'm having trouble finding a recipe or an explanation of liquid soap that is put across in a way that I understand. This comes closest but it seems to contradict quite a few things that I've found out so far, though it is starting to make sense to me.
> 
> http://ourlifesimplified.com/house/soap-recipes/homemade-liquid-soap-the-easy-way/#axzz2N05ZEAzq
> 
> ...


 
I don't see where you stated that you cooked the soap paste after it came to trace.  You will need to cook it in the crockpot, stirring every fifteen minutes until it resembles Vaseline.  Then you check the pH with Phenolphthalein as is demonstrated in the link you posted.  If the Phenolphthalein solution turns the paste pink, then cook the paste some more.  When the paste does not turn pink when the Phenolphthalein is applied, then you dilute with distilled water.  I always add preservative to my diluted soap.


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## Mildreds.naturals (Mar 14, 2013)

Cally said:


> Using soapcalc I would put in KOH 0% superfatting the oils of my choice (I am thinking 20% coconut and 80% olive oil for  dishsoap?).



If you superfat, do it with no more than 3% and some oils are better for this than others.



Cally said:


> Put the oil into the crockpot and start to warm it up, mix the lye and oil, add the lye mix to the crockpot and blend every 15minutes or so until it turns gel like.



Measure your oils and heat them up. This is liquid soap so you can let oils heat up higher than you would for bar soap.  and I believe you meant 'mix the lye and WATER' and add lye mixture to the oils .  Blending every 15? well, if you go the water+lye route rather than the Glycerin+lye route, after you have finally gotten the oils to fully saponify you have to let it sit to see if any unsaponified oils separate. This is where you would re-blend for a bit and once it sits and nothing separates you are ready to let it cook.[/QUOTE]



Cally said:


> I would then weigh the paste and use three times as much water to dilute it? This is the part that my brain sort of fizzes and I'm not sure if I'm correct, I'm also not sure how to do the citric acid/borax part of thing to take care of the lye excess. At 0% is there even an excess?



Your dilution will depend what you want. For this recipe of 20 coco/80 olive I would go with 25% to start. Only dilute a portion of your paste until you become more comfortable making liquid soap. For example: take 6 ounces of paste and add 18oz of water. this is a total of (6+18) 24 oz. 6/24 is .25. Get it?

I recommend using an 8% lye excess. 10 is a little much if you ask me.  If your recipie is calcualted with no superfat, and you did not add in excess lye, then you may not have to add any citric acid at all and just cook to neutrality. The reason for adding in an excess lye is for controll. If you are sure all of the extra oils are saponified, then you can be sure when you add the 3% superfat, that will be the only extra oil in the recipie. If too much oil beyond the 3% is in the liquid soap at the end, it will most likely be cloudy. Does that make sense?


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## VanessaP (Mar 15, 2013)

Making it with glycerin, you don't HAVE to cook it - that has become the conclusion in the 48 page thread concerning LS made with glycerin over on the dish, I believe. In fact, after mine hit taffy stage (80% OO, 20% CB with a 3% superfat, using the SBM calculator), I just turned it off and let it sit in the pot overnight.


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## lsg (Mar 15, 2013)

Even after cooking my glycerin paste a couple of hours, it still didn't test neutral.  I have had to let it set for a day or two after cooking.  I guess if it works not cooking it and tests neutral then it is good to go.


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## CookbookChef (Aug 8, 2015)

VanessaP said:


> Making it with glycerin, you don't HAVE to cook it - that has become the conclusion in the 48 page thread concerning LS made with glycerin over on the dish, I believe. In fact, after mine hit taffy stage (80% OO, 20% CB with a 3% superfat, using the SBM calculator), I just turned it off and let it sit in the pot overnight.


 
Hi, You do NOT even need to go to Taffy stage if using the Glycerin Method. You simply need to stick blend it until little bubbles start flying out of the pot and around your head. Thats it. At that very moment, no matter what it looks like, place a lid on the pot, make sue your pot is a unplugged and walk away. A Set it and forget it type situation. I love to do this at bedtime so that I do not feel the urge to check it every couple of hours. Just let it do its things, and in the morning you will have Soap Paste. I make this LS All the time.


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## Susie (Aug 8, 2015)

This thread is two years old.  I am not sure you are going to get a reply.


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## Dahila (Aug 8, 2015)

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=46114
This is the right thread to read about making LS.  My first attempt (Irishlass method) was a success.  Next one will be Susie Method ,  the thread explain step by step)


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## The Efficacious Gentleman (Aug 8, 2015)

Again, this thread is an old one, so I don't know if the OP will see that link


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## IrishLass (Aug 8, 2015)

Cally (the OP) hasn't visited the forum for about a year and a half now.


IrishLass


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