Soaping 101 liquid soapmaking video?

The no SL soap is thin for me. Have SL on order, so 3-5 days more waiting.

So...Here is my first glycerin liquid soap(IrishLass's recipe)!!! Thanks to all, IrishLass, Susie and DeeAnna !

Now I am off to make Isg's GLS recipe! Wish me Luck! Thank you Isg!

It came out beautiful! :clap: Be prepared to be addicted now!

IrishLass

Thank you so much IrishLass!!!

I was typing an update last night and the power blinked off. Lost everything I'd written. Ugh. So here's a brief re-write:

I did 3 dilutions yesterday. After the dilutions got a night's rest, any slight differences between the dilutions are more clear, so maybe the power blink was a good thing.

What was common to all: I diluted 200 g soap paste with 150 g of water (or water and glycerin) following Irish Lass' basic method of dilution (see Post #9). The diluted soap is a crystal clear liquid almost exactly the same golden yellow as the color of the olive oil is used. When used for handwashing, the soap starts out as a fluffy mass of large bubbles quickly followed by a dense foamy lather. I like the lather in quality and quantity. The diluted soap is thinner in viscosity than Dawn dishwashing detergent, but it is definitely not watery. The feel of a drop of diluted soap on dry skin is almost exactly the same as the skin-feel of Dawn -- thick, syrupy, slightly sticky.

Dilution #1. Paste + water. Dilutes a bit slower than #2 and #3. The foam/suds that formed from stick blending took forevah! to dissipate. I kicked myself after making this dilution, cuz I realized I had forgotten to add the sodium lactate to the dilution water. Arrrgh!

Dilution #1a. This is dilution #1 fixed by adding 3% sodium lactate (SL) added several hours after the original dilution. The SL fell to the bottom of the diluted soap and formed a pile of unappealing jelly-like goop. When I mixed the goop into the soap, the soap became very slightly more jelly like. If you've ever made chicken stock, it's the difference between the thin watery texture of the starting broth and the subtle gelatinous mouthfeel of a finished stock made with lots of nice bones. Not a huge difference, but still important.

Dilution #2. Paste + water + 3% SL per Irish Lass' method. The paste softened a wee bit faster than #1, but I can't say the difference was earthshaking. This might be my relative lack of experience that's showing here, so consider the source! What I did see that was really different -- the foam/suds created by stick blending dissipated much quicker with SL than without. After a night's rest, this dilution and #1a are basically the same as far as viscosity, texture on dry skin, and overall lather.

Dilution #3. Paste + water (126 g) + glycerin (24 g) + 3% SL. To explain this dilution -- My paste has more water and less glycerin than Irish Lass' (see Post #76). For this dilution, my dilution "water" included the "missing" glycerin (24 g). I reduced the water by the same amount so the total dilution liquid was still 150 g. The end result is a product similar in composition to Irish Lass' soap. After a night's rest, this dilution makes a slightly less abundant lather with more fluffy bubbles and less dense lather. The viscosity is also lower compared with dilutions 1a and 2 -- it is still syrup-y, but definitely thinner. My hypothesis before I made this dilution was the lather might be less with the added glycerin, but I was expecting the viscosity to be thicker.

Overall conclusions: I like the method of dissolving KOH directly in room temperature water, then adding the glycerin as I explain in Post #76. Advantage is the KOH dissolves quickly without added heat, but I still get the benefit of quick trace that the glycerin provides. I like the no-added-heat, no-long-cook method of making the soap paste -- it's easy, quick, and fun.

I must have mis-measured my water somewhere. It is entirely possible. I have SL on the way, so I will try to thicken what I have with some SL before trying again.

I am wondering if this method would work with other recipes. I might try that.(Have to wait for more KOH anyway.)

Grayceworks did a LS using a similar method -- she posted her results in another thread. Here tis: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=45025

Note: You'll see she uses less than 2:1 ratio of water/glycerin to KOH, for what it's worth. Now that I've tried both 2:1 and 3:1, I'd say the 3:1 ratio is a little easier to work with both as the paste and to dilute.

edit: I miss Grayce! She's not posted in awhile. I think she had some health troubles and I hope she's doing better. If you read this, Grayce -- hi!!!

Thank you so much for posting your detailed results, DeeAnna. You are a soaper after my own heart! So many interesting results. This is so exciting to me! I am definitely going to have to try your method! Hopefully, I will be able to do it sometime this coming week.

I'll have to go through Grayce's thread, too. I don't know if I've ever read it. I hope she's doing well, too.

Regarding the sodium lactate- after having done it both ways, with and without- I noticed that my paste softens up for me much quicker/easier with it than without. Of course, people's perceptions of 'quicker' can be relative. It might be that I'm just too impatient! lol

I really like the sound of how your dilution #2 came out with a 100% water dilution compared to #3 with the water/glycerin dilution. Shoot, if I had the time to do it today, I would (I'm that excited!), but I promised hubby and son pot roast with all the fixins today, so it'll have wait! Aaarrrghhh! lol

IrishLass

Irish Lass -- I really, honestly, truly was not expecting the all-water dilution to be thicker than the water-glycerin dilution. I keep looking at both versions, and, yep, the all-water dilution is really thicker and staying that way. I'll keep an eye on it for a few more days just to be sure.

As a newbie liquid soaper, I don't have the experience to compare water only vs. water + sodium lactate as you do. I am quite happy to follow your advice on this point. It certainly helps the foam to disappear quicker!

I would just like to let you people know that you are a bad influence.

A while ago, I accidentally purchased KOH and it would have been too costly to return it.

Yesterday, I ordered SL and a bunch glycerin.

Down the rabbit hole I go!

Yeah, I know what you mean. For some reason, bar soaps just don't inspire me like liquid soaps do. I got to a good, consistent recipe in bar soaps, and I just have no interest in doing all the fancy swirls and such. None.(Don't get me wrong! I think all those swirls, patterns, and fancy stuff are amazing to look at! I do! And I really admire you folks with artistic ability! But for me, meh. If it lathers and does not make me itch, I am happy with it.) Liquid soap, on the other hand, is strangely addictive to me...

I am like Susie, I like to see beautiful soap but somehow I prefer the simple ones especially using the herbs. The liquid one is something I would love to make, I already copied and printed all Irishlass posts about it and taking to work, there will be time, I hope to go through it. I am afraid that i will not make it properly.

I've been following this thread, and I'm planning to print it off and learn to make liquid soap from it as soon as I get caught up on orders and re-stocking. Thanks to all who have contributed their knowledge here. It should make learning to make liquid soap a titch easier!

"...I am afraid that i will not make it properly...."

So, okay, do you make CP soap with NaOH? Look at this method of making LS as almost the same as basic CP soapmaking, except you're using KOH not NaOH. And you don't have to prepare a mold or cut the bars as you do with NaOH soap -- you have to dilute the soap paste instead. Diluting can be a bit messy, but is actually easier than cutting bars -- I don't have to worry about mis-cutting!

As Susie has pointed out, there is a mystique that has grown up around liquid soapmaking that makes people think (including me) that this type of soap is more difficult to make than it really is. Don't let that scare you off.

Dahila- I agree with DeeAnna- if you make CP, then I have every confidence that you can do it!

I put off making liquid soap for a loooong time. I read Catherine Failor's book and I bought a pound of KOH to back in 2009 with which to make liquid soap, but it sat, untouched, in my closet for 3 whole years! lol

My reluctance to give it a go stemmed from a little bit of fear and a lot of how complicated, fussy and 'involved' Failor's method seemed to me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I felt that there just had to be a less fussy way, and then I promptly forgot about it until I ran into some threads on another forum talking about the glycerin method, and then watched Carrie Peterson's video (cue the singing angel voices here), and as sappy as it sounds, hope sprang into my heart.

I've found the glycerin method to be so forgiving that I think it would be pretty hard to screw it up- unless one was actively trying really hard to screw it up- but even then, I bet the screwed-up batch could somehow be fixed and made all better (as Ellacho recently found out).

IrishLass

DeeAnna said:

"...I am afraid that i will not make it properly...."

So, okay, do you make CP soap with NaOH? Look at this method of making LS as almost the same as basic CP soapmaking, except you're using KOH not NaOH. And you don't have to prepare a mold or cut the bars as you do with NaOH soap -- you have to dilute the soap paste instead. Diluting can be a bit messy, but is actually easier than cutting bars -- I don't have to worry about mis-cutting!

As Susie has pointed out, there is a mystique that has grown up around liquid soapmaking that makes people think (including me) that this type of soap is more difficult to make than it really is. Don't let that scare you off.

Click to expand...

^Exactly this!

I understand perfectly well that people who started writing books about making liquid soap back in the old days HAD to use neutralization and sequestering to get the product they wanted consistently. We have modern lye calculators. We don't have to. It is SO much easier now to make liquid soap! We have it made! I spent no more time making that liquid soap above than I would have making and cutting CP. Best of all...I used it that day with no cure time. And if you have made HP soap, or rebatched soap, you have all the necessary equipment and skills. You need only 2 additional ingredients: KOH and glycerin. And you can go buy glycerin at Walmart these days.

Does anyone know if the liquid soap calculator in SM3 is any good? I haven't used it yet, and I wasn't sure if I should or use the Summerbee that was recommended earlier.

I have never tried SM3, but the SBM Advanced will also allow you to use combination NaOH and KOH, which is useful if you are making cream soaps. And, as stated before, I like the outcomes better. I might would try comparing the recipes by running the same recipe through each.

After re-reading DeeAnna's water/glycerin experiment with this formula, I had an idea pop into my head that I believe I shall try out. Hopefully it won't turn out to be a cockamamie, crazy idea, but it won't be the first time I've tried something nutty! Besides- you never know until you try! I'm going to use an equal amount of water as per KOH in which to dissolve the KOH (to avoid cooking the KOH/glycerin), and then instead of reducing the glycerin amount to compensate for the added water, I'm just going to add the regular, full recipe amount of glycerin to the KOH/water solution before adding it to the oils (this makes about a 20% lye solution instead of a 25% solution). Then later, when I go to dilute what hopefully turns out to be paste, I'll use something in the range of 1 part paste to .62 parts water (plus the sodium lactate), instead of .75 parts water (and sodium lactate).

Does that sound too crazy? It's just that I really like the feel of the recipe amount of glycerin in my finished soap using this formula, so I don't want to reduce it. I would add it back in later during dilution, but since DeeAnna reported she had diminished lather by adding the glycerin later at dilution, I'm hoping that adding it up front would help prevent that.

Anyway, call me nuts, but that's what I'm going to try. I'll let you know how it goes!


IrishLass