Hey, liquid soap makers, here's a new thing to make with your KOH --
I have been reading Anne Watson's "Castile Soapmaking" book. She discusses the issue of castile (100% olive oil + NaOH) soap forming that slimy gel we all love to hate (aka snot or slime) and the related problem of the soap not lathering well. To help combat these disadvantages, she suggests making castile soap with 5% KOH and 95% NaOH.
Intrigued, I put it on my to-do list. Last weekend, I made a small batch of "mock castile" soap using 100% high oleic safflower oil, 5% KOH, balance NaOH, 40% lye solution concentration, 3% superfat. My personal calc includes estimates for the actual purity of the lyes, so there's less chance of extra "hidden" superfat in my soap compared with recipes made with most online calcs.
By golly, Anne's suggestion works pretty good.
I compared this week-old soap to a 2 year old 100% OO soap by washing my hands in cool water. The OO soap immediately formed the classic ropy gel and small amounts of creamy lather. I could put my hand flat on the wet bar of soap, pull it away slowly, and the soap would form slimy ropes of gel 1 to 1 1/2" long before they broke.
The young HO safflower soap doesn't make any snot at all. It lathers easily with a nice amount of fluffy bubbles mixed with a creamy lather that has a slightly slick, syrupy quality. This slick, syrupy quality of the young soap's lather is similar to that of the older castile after I worked to get its lather developed.
The soap with 5% KOH is not at all soft or sticky. It unmolded and cut nicely 12 hours after the soap was poured. It looks just like a normal bar of NaOH soap. I found myself wondering how 10% KOH would change a high oleic soap, whether for better or worse. Or whether 5% to 10% KOH would improve the amount and quality of lather in tallow or lard bar soaps -- in other words, soaps high in palmitic + stearic acids.
Some of you might wonder why I used HO safflower if the point was to make a castile. A couple of years ago I made a 100% OO soap and a 70% high oleic safflower + 30% lard soap and compared the two. They both made the same slimy gel and the same low level of lather when hand washing, so I concluded a castile acts like a castile because of the high oleic acid content more than anything else. I don't have any OO around that I want to use for soaping, but I have plenty of HO safflower. My earlier experiment made me comfortable with this substitution.
I have been reading Anne Watson's "Castile Soapmaking" book. She discusses the issue of castile (100% olive oil + NaOH) soap forming that slimy gel we all love to hate (aka snot or slime) and the related problem of the soap not lathering well. To help combat these disadvantages, she suggests making castile soap with 5% KOH and 95% NaOH.
Intrigued, I put it on my to-do list. Last weekend, I made a small batch of "mock castile" soap using 100% high oleic safflower oil, 5% KOH, balance NaOH, 40% lye solution concentration, 3% superfat. My personal calc includes estimates for the actual purity of the lyes, so there's less chance of extra "hidden" superfat in my soap compared with recipes made with most online calcs.
By golly, Anne's suggestion works pretty good.
I compared this week-old soap to a 2 year old 100% OO soap by washing my hands in cool water. The OO soap immediately formed the classic ropy gel and small amounts of creamy lather. I could put my hand flat on the wet bar of soap, pull it away slowly, and the soap would form slimy ropes of gel 1 to 1 1/2" long before they broke.
The young HO safflower soap doesn't make any snot at all. It lathers easily with a nice amount of fluffy bubbles mixed with a creamy lather that has a slightly slick, syrupy quality. This slick, syrupy quality of the young soap's lather is similar to that of the older castile after I worked to get its lather developed.
The soap with 5% KOH is not at all soft or sticky. It unmolded and cut nicely 12 hours after the soap was poured. It looks just like a normal bar of NaOH soap. I found myself wondering how 10% KOH would change a high oleic soap, whether for better or worse. Or whether 5% to 10% KOH would improve the amount and quality of lather in tallow or lard bar soaps -- in other words, soaps high in palmitic + stearic acids.
Some of you might wonder why I used HO safflower if the point was to make a castile. A couple of years ago I made a 100% OO soap and a 70% high oleic safflower + 30% lard soap and compared the two. They both made the same slimy gel and the same low level of lather when hand washing, so I concluded a castile acts like a castile because of the high oleic acid content more than anything else. I don't have any OO around that I want to use for soaping, but I have plenty of HO safflower. My earlier experiment made me comfortable with this substitution.
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