aihrat
Gently gently
Hello everyone! ^^ I hope this will be useful for anyone who's disappointed with the 1 teaspoon ppo recommendation for honey usage in CP soap.
I loooove the smell of honey and beeswax. Once or twice a year, I'll buy a box of raw honeycomb and spread that on my partner's freshly-baked sourdough bread. It's simply unbeatable.
When I first started soapmaking, I was most excited about bringing that fresh, sweet, floral scent to my soaps. My eagerness was quickly tempered upon learning that honey heats up cold process soap like nothing else! I found that at 1-5 tsps of honey ppo, the lather improves from the sugar in the honey but that wonderful honey smell is completely absent after the soap has cured.
So far, the most effective way I've tried for boosting the honey smell of honey soap is a small amount of rose EO blend. A local supplier (I live in South Africa) sells a slightly more affordable natural rose EO blended from a variety of different rose strains. It's still awfully expensive...but in reach for a splurge. And yet, still no true honey fragrance.
I recently came across this site that purports to sell a soap with 10% honey. Aside from the eyeroll-inducing marketing copy, I was intrigued. Could traditional soaps really not solidify with a 10% honey content? What's it like to use soap that costs 50 USD for an 80g bar? And at that price point, why was the soap still full of so many synthetic additives? By then, I was determined to make my own simple, high-honey-percentage soap. Or least find out first-hand what kind of gloopy mess I'd end up with if I tried.
I looked around on the internet some more, and found that a 10% CP soap had already been done by One Leaf Soap. Their honey soap looked absolutely gorgeous! So I had proof that high-honey soap could be accomplished.
Only problem was, their recipe included palm oil, and I am determined not to use any in my soaps. If the problem with honey soap failing to solidify was with the high water/non-fat additive content, intuitively it would seem that a water discount and a higher percentage of hard oils would be needed to compensate. But as someone who desperately wants to make palm-free soap, increasing the hard oil content without making the bar more drying to my coconut-sensitive skin was a challenge. I'd used beeswax at 1-2% to harden my bars before, but the lather seemed to suffer, even at that percentage and with an added 5% of castor oil to compensate. Another option was to use sodium lactate, but I'd rather soap without it - especially since it's almost impossible to get ahold of in my country.
After a bit of research, and slowly increasing the honey proportion in my batches from 1% to 5%, then from 5% to 8%, I was satisfied with my recipe and methods to try a 12% honey soap. I chose to attempt a recipe with 12% honey in the hopes of learning something new about the boundaries of honey soap. Not 12% of oils, but 12% of the entire recipe. I'm quite happy with how it turned out despite the technical challenges!
Here are a couple of things I did when making my batch:
Here they are after 2.5 weeks of cure:
I had a tiny bar I made from the scrapings of the pot and tested it after the batch no longer zapped. Interestingly enough, the center is bright orange! Compared with the One Leaf Soap version, my soap seems to have gone through an intense partial gel that stopped short of the outside of the bar. At 2 weeks cure, the test bar foamed with dense, creamy, luxurious tiny bubbles. The lather washed off cleanly and left my hands feeling smooth. The honey smell was very faint when the bars were first unmoulded, but increased in intensity as the bars cured. They now smell lightly of honey and deep caramel. The delicate floral overtones didn't make it through the saponification process but the soap still smells amazing.
Some misc observations on the soap:
Next steps?
Anyways, hope this helps for those considering larger amounts of honey. I loved the results of this experiment and would really love to hear more stories and learnings from people who do high honey-content soaping!
~ racter
I loooove the smell of honey and beeswax. Once or twice a year, I'll buy a box of raw honeycomb and spread that on my partner's freshly-baked sourdough bread. It's simply unbeatable.
When I first started soapmaking, I was most excited about bringing that fresh, sweet, floral scent to my soaps. My eagerness was quickly tempered upon learning that honey heats up cold process soap like nothing else! I found that at 1-5 tsps of honey ppo, the lather improves from the sugar in the honey but that wonderful honey smell is completely absent after the soap has cured.
So far, the most effective way I've tried for boosting the honey smell of honey soap is a small amount of rose EO blend. A local supplier (I live in South Africa) sells a slightly more affordable natural rose EO blended from a variety of different rose strains. It's still awfully expensive...but in reach for a splurge. And yet, still no true honey fragrance.
I recently came across this site that purports to sell a soap with 10% honey. Aside from the eyeroll-inducing marketing copy, I was intrigued. Could traditional soaps really not solidify with a 10% honey content? What's it like to use soap that costs 50 USD for an 80g bar? And at that price point, why was the soap still full of so many synthetic additives? By then, I was determined to make my own simple, high-honey-percentage soap. Or least find out first-hand what kind of gloopy mess I'd end up with if I tried.
I looked around on the internet some more, and found that a 10% CP soap had already been done by One Leaf Soap. Their honey soap looked absolutely gorgeous! So I had proof that high-honey soap could be accomplished.
Only problem was, their recipe included palm oil, and I am determined not to use any in my soaps. If the problem with honey soap failing to solidify was with the high water/non-fat additive content, intuitively it would seem that a water discount and a higher percentage of hard oils would be needed to compensate. But as someone who desperately wants to make palm-free soap, increasing the hard oil content without making the bar more drying to my coconut-sensitive skin was a challenge. I'd used beeswax at 1-2% to harden my bars before, but the lather seemed to suffer, even at that percentage and with an added 5% of castor oil to compensate. Another option was to use sodium lactate, but I'd rather soap without it - especially since it's almost impossible to get ahold of in my country.
After a bit of research, and slowly increasing the honey proportion in my batches from 1% to 5%, then from 5% to 8%, I was satisfied with my recipe and methods to try a 12% honey soap. I chose to attempt a recipe with 12% honey in the hopes of learning something new about the boundaries of honey soap. Not 12% of oils, but 12% of the entire recipe. I'm quite happy with how it turned out despite the technical challenges!
Here are a couple of things I did when making my batch:
- - Used a 50% lye solution (a very steep water discount) to balance out the added water from the honey, and to raise the temperature (and shorten the duration of) the gel phase. This decreased the risk of cracking and volcanoes.
- - Used individual silicone moulds to encourage heat dissipation
- - Used a higher proportion of cocoa and shea butter (instead of coconut oil) in the recipe to harden the bars
- - Skipped the beeswax to take full advantage of honey's lathering qualities
- - Used a lower superfat to help with the hardness
- - Soaped very cold to buy some time before placing in the freezer - both my oils and my lye solution were at room temperature (20 degrees celsius)
- - Stick blended the oils and honey to incorporate them well before the lye was added, to prevent needing to blend well after trace and risking heat-up in the pot
- - Placed the individual moulds into the freezer overnight immediately after pouring
- - Transferred the batch to the fridge after the freezer phase for an additional 4 days (this part wasn't very intentional, I went on a business trip and left them in there to keep on the safe side)
- - Left out any colourants and fragrances for this batch
- - Scattered silica gel around the curing area to assist with drying
Here they are after 2.5 weeks of cure:
I had a tiny bar I made from the scrapings of the pot and tested it after the batch no longer zapped. Interestingly enough, the center is bright orange! Compared with the One Leaf Soap version, my soap seems to have gone through an intense partial gel that stopped short of the outside of the bar. At 2 weeks cure, the test bar foamed with dense, creamy, luxurious tiny bubbles. The lather washed off cleanly and left my hands feeling smooth. The honey smell was very faint when the bars were first unmoulded, but increased in intensity as the bars cured. They now smell lightly of honey and deep caramel. The delicate floral overtones didn't make it through the saponification process but the soap still smells amazing.
Some misc observations on the soap:
- - Hah! The soap did harden, and unmoulded within a week.
- - The batter heated up almost immediately after the lye hit the water. It was hot, hot, hot!
- - The bars are still a bit soft at 2.5 weeks. I can carry them around without leaving fingerprints on a rainy day, but as you can see in the picture, any gentle trauma will leave marks
The marks on the pictured soaps were from falling, domino-style, after tripping past my curing rack. I'm looking forward to finding out what this batch is like after 8-12 weeks! - - The tiny test bar seems to hold up well with washing so far. Given the softness, I'm surprised that a 8g bar has lasted more than 8 washes.
- - A light dusting of soda ash formed on the top of the bars 2 days after unmoulding. Given that the bars were frozen and refrigerated for an exaggerated amount of time, I'm surprised there wasn't more. Fingers crossed it stops there.
- - These bars are seriously spongy. Even with the surrounding silica gel, it's like they know when it's raining before I do. With honey being hygroscopic, the resultant soap is extremely sensitive to ambient moisture. On dry days, the soaps are dry, but on wet days, they tend to get slightly slippery. This would present a challenge when wrapping and storing.
- - Thank goodness for individual soap moulds - as someone who prefers their soap fully ungelled but loves soaping with rich additives, individual soap moulds do tend to mask the aesthetic issues with partially gelled soaps
Next steps?
- - Noting any changes to the soap's properties as it passes the 6 week, 8 week, and 12 week mark. Will it reach its optimum usage age at 90 like the HACCI site says?
- - I've heard that you can get dehydrated honey, although not in my country. I'd be super curious to see someone trying a similar style of soap with dehydrated honey though! Dehydrated honey would overcome the challenge of too much moisture and possibly contribute to a harder bar.
- - My municipality supplies slightly hard water and I've recently begun adding citric acid and extra lye to my soap batches as a chelating agent. I will try this with the same recipe to see if it alters any part of the soapmaking process or batch properties.
- - Increasing the suitability of the bars as a facial soap by decreasing the comedogenic oil content, such as cocoa butter and coconut oil. Could I retain the hardness of the soap this way?
- - Trying beeswax again in the recipe, introducing it at 0.5% to see if helps combat the moisture absorbency without sacrificing lather.
- - Assessing the performance of the soap during packaging and storage.
Anyways, hope this helps for those considering larger amounts of honey. I loved the results of this experiment and would really love to hear more stories and learnings from people who do high honey-content soaping!
~ racter
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