100% homegrown ingredient soap

[eric]

Hi everyone,
My interest in soap making is to make soap with homegrown ingredients. I know I can make soap with just beef tallow, lye, and water, but it sounds like that might not be the nicest soap. So my question for you all is which of the following ingredients would improve tallow soap:
honey, beeswax, any kind of cow's milk dairy product, lard (pork)
Does anyone have a reliable recipe using only some mix of the above ingredients that's better than just a straight tallow-lye-water soap?
Thanks!
Eric

 

[jadiebugs1]

I believe any of the mentioned items could be used, I have never tried 100% tallow soap, but I'll bet it's not all that bad....100% lard soap is pretty nice. You didn't mention herbs/additives/etc. They could spruce up a plain jane soap. Do you have your own cows and pigs?? I have never tried using cow's milk in soaps, but if I recall it doesn't work real well. Maybe some one here has actually tried it and could give some feed back in that department. Do you have access to fresh goat's milk??? That would make a most awesome additive to your soap, ask anyone!!

Let us know what ya come up with, sounds exciting!
BTW.... Welcome to the board!!

 

[Lindy]

Hi Eric and welcome,

I have made soap using tallow and I added Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Coconut Oil to it. I have also used beeswax, honey, honeycomb and cream in soap. If you play with things like Rosemary, Mint, Lavender, etc. you make interesting soaps.

Please share pictures as you develop your soaps!

Cheers
Lindy

 

[starduster]

Sharon's soaps and stuff

Great site Saron I especially love your glycerine soaps. Are they MP?
Mary

 

[eric]

Hi,
Thanks for the welcomes. I'm sure I'll find herbs and additives to spruce things up with over time, but for starters I'm wanting to work more on the fundamentals. I'd like to correct/counterbalance whatever the weaknesses of tallow would be. Lindy, you mentioned using coconut oil and olive oil along with tallow. I know different ingredients provide different qualities/attributes to the soap, but I don't really understand the differences. Could any of the other ingredients I have at hand (e.g. dairy, honey, lard) provide any of the same kind of attributes as coconut or olive oil?

Jadiesbugs1, you asked if I had my own cows or hogs. I do have a milk cow, but obviously I'm not getting my tallow from her
I'm able to get beef fat for free from a local meat processor.
I don't have as good a source for lard, but my family typically buys a whole hog every winter, and I'll render whatever lard there is from that. The lard is more precious, though, as I value it for cooking.
I also have some milk goats, but they're all dry now, and I won't be milking them again until late this summer/early fall. When you say goat's milk would be an awesome additive, can you describe how it makes the soap different? I have a lot to learn!

Thanks!
Eric

 

[Lindy]

Hi Eric,

A straight tallow soap should be just fine....make sure you render it at least twice if not three times to get all the impurities out. If you add milk or cream and honey you will have an amazing bar of soap. The way I did my last one is that I used 2 oz heavy cream which I took the volume out of my water. I didn't put the cream in until I had reached a medium trace, just before putting into my molds. Honey you can add in with your tallow to melt. You'll end up with a fantastic milk & honey soap. If you use milk instead of water or with water you can do a 1:1 of water/lye then after you start mixing your batch add the milk then - just make sure it is really, really cold so you don't burn it.

Each additive is going to do something different with the oil. For instance Olive Oil softens the soap - with a straight tallow soap I wouldn't do a water discount, but I would do a lye discount of 8%.

I really recommend that you get SoapMaker at http://www.soapmaker.com. The download is free and the program is free to use for 30 days. I bought the professional version because I like being able to track my inventory and costs.

Please post pictures - we love pictures.......

 

[eric]

Thanks so much for the tips and encouragement, Lindy. I'm getting more and more fascinated in the whole world of soap making. I kind of made my first batch of soap yesterday, and it seems to have worked great. (I say "kind of" because my wife actually made the batch with a friend while I was gone, but that didn't take anything away from my enthusiasm.) For starters, "I" made a recipe with nothing but water, lye, and mixed tallow-lard. Everything went smoothly, and it's a beautiful creamy color now in the mold.

Next, I want to try adding cow's milk/cream and honey to the recipe. It sounds like honey is a straightforward addition. Milk sounds like a tricky thing to use in soap making, but it sounds very attractive nonetheless. I have a few more questions, if anyone can help.

(1) What are the rules on substituting fats? Can I, for instance, take a recipe and multiply the fats by their corresponding saponification numbers, and then divide that number by the saponification number for the fat(s) I want to substitute, and use that quantity of substitute fat? I'm assuming so long as the fat I want to substitute reacts with an equal amount of lye as the fats called for that I won't run into any major problems.

(2) When I started to do the math on Casey Makela's basic milk-based soap recipe like I just mentioned (using the "old" saponification numbers on the Miller soap web page) I come up with 11.51 oz of lye for the main fats. Figuring the butterfat in the milk at 4%, I only came up with 11.82 oz of lye, but the recipe calls for 12 oz. I suppose that's a small difference, but there doesn't appear to be any lye discount at all, rather the reverse. Would I not want any lye discount at all? Am I missing something?

(3) Can I think of borax and glycerin as optional ingredients, or will I run into major problems if I leave them out?

(4) What's the difference between doing a lye discount at the beginning and adding extra fat later in the process. (Would I do that at light trace?) If I add extra fat later in the process, will the fatty properties of that particular trace be better preserved? For instance, if my fats are tallow and the butterfat in cream, and I add heavy cream later, will more of the tallow saponify and less of the cream? If so, would the cream be the better superfatting fat?

Thanks!!
Eric

 

[carebear]

(1) you can do it that way but there is too much room for math errors IMO. I suggest you simply run a recipe through a lye calculator (soapcalc.com comes to mind) and get the correct amount of lye.

(2) we don't typically include the fat in the milk in our calculations. there isn't really much if you think about it. Say you use 400 grams of milk - whole milk is only 3.5% fat so that's only 14 grams of fat. You DO want a lye discount of about 5% (not counting the milk fat IMO). Thing is, the SAP values of a fat are actually a RANGE and not a set point - so you may be getting the superfat in there anyway. But... EVEN IF YOU ARE FOLLOWING A RECIPE FROM A TRUSTED FRIEND - CHECK THE LYE AMOUNTS.

(3) got me there

(4) most soapers and all the chemists I've asked says that besides a slight math thing, there is NO difference whether you add your excess fat up front (or discount the lye) or add it at trace. the vast majority of the lye is still available and will grab whatever fats it can get - we cannot predict which those will be. So add when you like.

MILK, however, is a tricky substance and to prevent scorching it you may want to add it at trace. It's marvelous stuff though, and adds a creaminess to the lather that you can't beat.

HONEY is not really as straightforward as you might think - thin it down with some warm water before you add it and be prepared for it to "reverse" trace.

Milk and honey both increase the heat of the reaction, so insulate lightly if at all.

 

[MikeInPdx]

(3) Can I think of borax and glycerin as optional ingredients, or will I run into major problems if I leave them out?

Borax is optional. It is supposed to quicken the sudsing action of soap, but I find some sugar or honey does just as much.....about a teaspoon per pound of oil dissolved in your cooled lye solution. I find that borax tends to make soap crumbly and I really don't want it in a body product anyway.....although it's a help in household cleaning soaps.

Glycerin is kinda pointless. The saponification process produces glycerin, and handcrafted soap has plenty to add to conditioning. I have heard of a few people that use it in HP and rebatching, but I have yet to have a bad HP or rebatch without it. I'd save it for lotion.

 

[IrishLass]

Hi,
but for starters I'm wanting to work more on the fundamentals. I'd like to correct/counterbalance whatever the weaknesses of tallow would be. Lindy, you mentioned using coconut oil and olive oil along with tallow. I know different ingredients provide different qualities/attributes to the soap, but I don't really understand the differences. Could any of the other ingredients I have at hand (e.g. dairy, honey, lard) provide any of the same kind of attributes as coconut or olive oil?

Thanks!
Eric

Hi Eric and welcome.

I use tallow quite often but have never made a soap with 100% tallow yet. The highest I go is 65% and it makes a beautifully hard soap. The thing with tallow, though, is that if you are used to bathing with soaps that have copious lather and big bubbles that easily bubble right up the second you apply even the slightest friction, you might be disappointed with the kind of lather you get from high amounts of tallow, unless you add other oils to it to boost it up, that is. Tallow lather is harder to work up and it is more on the creamy side with smallish bubbles. If you like that kind of lather, that's wonderful, but if not, here are some oils that add bubbliness:

1. Coconut oil
2. Palm Kernel Oil (PKO)
3. Babassu Oil

These oils also are very cleansing, so the trick is to get the right balance so the finished soap is not too drying for you.

To add a bit of conditioning, olive oil is great to use, and so is castor oil. Castor has the added advantage of lending bubbliness, too.

Regarding dairy, honey and lard- while each one of those adds nice qualities to soap, none of them can really be substituted for the more copious lather that you'll get from oils like coconut. Dairy adds a luxurious, dense creaminess; honey adds a humectant factor and also boosts bubbles to an extent, but should only be used in small amounts as large amounts will cause your soap to bleed honey as well as to overheat while saponifying. Lard is similar to tallow with the differences that it is more conditioning and makes for a slightly softer soap. The lather is similar to tallow, though.

This is my tallow soap recipe. I've posted it here before:

-Tallow 65%
-Castor Oil 23% (that might seem high for castor, but with 65% tallow, it balances it out quite nicely)
-Oilve Oil 12%

For extra bubbly fun, I like to toss a bit of cured, chunked up soap to this recipe at trace that I had previously made from the famous 100% coconut oil/20% superfat recipe. It makes for a great, hard, gentle soap with very nice, bubbly lather.


IrishLass

 

[eric]

All y'all are wonderful. Thanks so much. I really appreciate all the great information. I just made my second batch of soap a couple days ago. (Actually my wife made the first batch without me.) The first batch was nothing but mixed tallow-lard, water, and lye. On the second batch we used cow's milk in place of all the water, and added 1/4 oz of honey (to a batch with just over 3 lbs of fat). I followed your advice, Lindy, and added the honey to the melting fat before adding the milk-lye mixture. Once I got to mixing it in I realized 1/4 oz is next to nothing, though. How much more honey do y'all think I can I use without causing the saponifying mixture to overheat? I saw a recipe on the Majestic Mountain site that called for 1/2 ounce per pound of fat, but I think that recipe recommended adding the honey at trace. Would that make much of a difference?

I tried washing my hands with both soaps today, figuring I could get an idea what the finished product might be like, even if it's still curing. The water batch is very white, almost chalky looking, and the soap making process went quickly and smoothly, but I don't think I'd want to use it. There's very little lather, and even after rinsing my hands have that same feel as when I shower at someone's house with a water softener -- is there a technical word for describing that? -- almost greasy like.

I definitely liked the feel of the milk batch better. The lather wasn't copious, but it was fine. It's a light tan color with attractive slight color irregularities. The milk batch took a lot longer to trace. It must have been over an hour compared to maybe 10 minutes.

Now I want to experiment with more honey and then try adding ground rosemary to a batch. (I assume I should dry the rosemary first?)

Thanks again for all the help and master advice.

 

[carebear]

have you been to millersoap.com? I don't know that there is info on honey there but it's a treasure trove of soaping info and recipe building.

 

[Lindy]

Eric give it some time to cure - the longer the soap sits the better the lather gets. It should become really thick and creamy - wonderful soap!

By the way - pictures please.........

 

[happyday]

Excellent start, Eric! I also farm and really love the process of making as much as possible from things we raise ourselves. Unfortunately, having that attitude leads to so many opportunities (spinning, cheese, grinding wheat to bake, soaping, on and on it goes) that I scarcely have time to go to work to afford it all, LOL! I'm currently eyeballing a few of our ewes and wondering if I could rob the lambs of an ounce here and an ounce there to save up for a batch of soap or two. :twisted:

I have put powdered home-grown rosemary into soap, and was disappointed. As the soap cured, the rosemary flecks turned from green to black, and there just isn't enough oil there to really scent the soap well enough. Instead, you might think about harvesting a good quantity of rosemary and letting it soak in some oil for several weeks. Let it sit in a sunny window to encourage the natural oils of the rosemary to migrate to the soaking oil. Keep in mind that when oils are being expressed or distilled to make EO's, it takes a LOT of the herb to yield just a little oil.

When your infused oil is good and strong, strain out the rosemary and use the oil to soap. It should also give your soap a nice greenish tint.

Best wishes for a long and satisfying life of soaping!

 

[ChrissyB]

I just wanted to say that now you've been bitten by the soaping bug there is no turning back!!
Soapmaking is totally addictive, and I wouldn't change it for the world.
I have learnt so much on this website, and made excellent friends here too!!
Good luck with your soaps! and we love pictures!

 

[IanT]

I love this idea... I wish i had enough room to grow a large quantity of things to use for my soaps... soon enough I will have the space, how are you coming with your goal?

I wish I had a goat or a cow lol


maybe a chicken or two as well!!