Analyzing soap performance

[Melysg25]

Yes, I know that powdered sugar contains anti-caking ingredients. I don’t exactly know why it works so well, but I’ve been using powdered sugar about 2 years now and granulated sugar for about 5 years before that. Powdered sugar dissolves effortlessly into water and slows trace. And now since I use the combination of powdered sugar, salt, silk and citric acid, I have noticed how much more bubbles there are. I’ve only been using this combo about 6 months. I’m really impressed.

Ok, just wondering. So much soapy tidbits, thank you! So much to learn. I did find a site on how to make homemade powdered sugar, just blending it with high speed vitamix type blender. No other additives in homemade version some I'm going that route. Until I learn more about starches and lather I will omit them in my homemade powdered sugar. I like to learn the why of adding stuff so I have the knowledge and thereby freedom to play with this and that, because I know why I'm doing it. Lol. I've hesitated using granular sugar because I like additives that dissolve effortlessly. I'm glad to hear powdered sugar does just that. I don't want to bother with sorbitol because I rather use what I have on hand, regular sugar. I did end up buying, what looks like a lifetime amount, of tussah silk after reading all about it here on SMF. WILL be my next batch experiment of the new year!

 

[TheGecko]

Thanks. This makes a lot of sense to me. I think when I am able to test one of my Palm Oil soaps I will be able to garner whether I like a Palm free soap better than one with Palm.

Just MHO, but I'm guessing that you may not notice a difference is you are substituting as opposed to developing an entirely new recipe. With that said, an article from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (Commercially available alternatives to palm oil) has some interesting alternatives

All of my beginning recipes were all just small tweaks to basically the same few ingredients (Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Shea Butter, Cocoa Butter, and Castor Oil) with a specialty oil like Hemp or Tamanu thrown in once or twice.

I think that that is pretty SOP for the majority of soap makers. When I first started out, I had collected a boat load of different recipes, but it's not very cost effective to have 20 different oils and butters on hand. I started with a basic recipe of Olive, Coconut, Palm and Castor Oils (BrambleBerry's Beginning Soap Recipe). When it came time to order more supplies...I bought a dozen different oils and butters...substituting between 5% to 20%. In a discussion about the real-life benefits of using various oils and butters, I was told that with the exception of Castor Oil, adding less than 10% of any ingredient was a waste of money. Adding expensive ingredients of any amount was also a waste of money as the majority of any 'benefit' would 1) be destroyed by the Lye and 2) soap is a wash on/rinse off product and thus not on the skin long enough. In short, save the good stuff for leave on products like lotions.

I thinks it's all the additives or water replacements that I feel overwhelmed sometimes. For example, are soaps with a certain thing like beer or goats milk that much better than just using just regular distilled water. Sometimes I think people just add stuff because someone else did and/or they read something about it. Can someone really tell when using a soap which one was made with water or aloe vera juice or apple cider vinegar or any other thing like clay, silk, etc? I am just being the cynic that I am, so excuse me for being long winded.

I can't speak to beer, AVJ, Tussah Silk and a bunch of other additives, but I can with Goat Milk, Kaolin Clay and Sodium Lactate. I don't know if Goat Milk is "better" for the skin that soap make with Distilled Water...again, it's a wash on/rinse off product, but I can tell the difference between a bar of GMS and a bar of Regular Soap and that is less about it being "Goat" milk and probably just milk in general with its added fat and sugars. I could probably get the same 'feel' if I increased my SuperFat and add sugar or honey. And Lord knows it would be less of a hassle since I use fresh goat milk as opposed to powdered, but I enjoy the process...it's very zen...kind of like when I wind hanks of yarn into cakes.

With regard to the KC...some say it provides more 'slip', some say it helps to 'anchor' FOs...I don't know, it's soap, it's naturally 'slippery'. LOL As to the anchoring...the jury is still out on that one. I haven't tested it...maybe I'll do that this weekend. Make a small batch for my round cavity molds...add KO to one and not the other and put the soap on the shelf and check on it over the next year.

Last is the Sodium Lactate...I do find that it makes it a bit easier to unmold a lot of my soaps...especially during the Fall/Winter when it gets cold and damp. I could probably make my own or grab the salt shaker, but it's cheap enough and a gallon of the stuff lasts a long time.

To be honest, I don't get a lot of the additives I see folks putting into their soaps on YouTube...to me it's just more crap to buy, more crap to store, more crap to list on my label. Watched one gal add about a dozen different 'additives' and I kept thinking...is there any more for oils?

But the nice thing about making your own soap, it that you can experiment with stuff like that. A half ounce of Tussah Silk is $2.98 at BB, an ounce of Collodial Oatmeal is a buck and a quarter, an ounce of KO is a buck, seventy-five and so on and so forth.

 

[Catscankim]

@linne1gi do you add the powdered sugar at the same rate as granulated? I use granulated in all of my batches because it makes great bubbles. I am curious about the powdered sugar.

 

[SoapSisters]

But since I can't feel any difference between cheap white vinegar and expensive ACV, and since cheap white vinegar + sugar (or sorbitol) for bubbles is cheaper than aloe vera juice, that's what I choose to use most of the time.

[/QUOTE]

How do you dissolve the sugar? In the vinegar? I recently used white vinegar in a high OO soap with lovely results, but I didn't add sugar. I use sugar in my other recipes but dissolve in distilled water.

 

[SoapDaddy70]

Just MHO, but I'm guessing that you may not notice a difference is you are substituting as opposed to developing an entirely new recipe. With that said, an article from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (Commercially available alternatives to palm oil) has some interesting alternatives



I think that that is pretty SOP for the majority of soap makers. When I first started out, I had collected a boat load of different recipes, but it's not very cost effective to have 20 different oils and butters on hand. I started with a basic recipe of Olive, Coconut, Palm and Castor Oils (BrambleBerry's Beginning Soap Recipe). When it came time to order more supplies...I bought a dozen different oils and butters...substituting between 5% to 20%. In a discussion about the real-life benefits of using various oils and butters, I was told that with the exception of Castor Oil, adding less than 10% of any ingredient was a waste of money. Adding expensive ingredients of any amount was also a waste of money as the majority of any 'benefit' would 1) be destroyed by the Lye and 2) soap is a wash on/rinse off product and thus not on the skin long enough. In short, save the good stuff for leave on products like lotions.



I can't speak to beer, AVJ, Tussah Silk and a bunch of other additives, but I can with Goat Milk, Kaolin Clay and Sodium Lactate. I don't know if Goat Milk is "better" for the skin that soap make with Distilled Water...again, it's a wash on/rinse off product, but I can tell the difference between a bar of GMS and a bar of Regular Soap and that is less about it being "Goat" milk and probably just milk in general with its added fat and sugars. I could probably get the same 'feel' if I increased my SuperFat and add sugar or honey. And Lord knows it would be less of a hassle since I use fresh goat milk as opposed to powdered, but I enjoy the process...it's very zen...kind of like when I wind hanks of yarn into cakes.

With regard to the KC...some say it provides more 'slip', some say it helps to 'anchor' FOs...I don't know, it's soap, it's naturally 'slippery'. LOL As to the anchoring...the jury is still out on that one. I haven't tested it...maybe I'll do that this weekend. Make a small batch for my round cavity molds...add KO to one and not the other and put the soap on the shelf and check on it over the next year.

Last is the Sodium Lactate...I do find that it makes it a bit easier to unmold a lot of my soaps...especially during the Fall/Winter when it gets cold and damp. I could probably make my own or grab the salt shaker, but it's cheap enough and a gallon of the stuff lasts a long time.

To be honest, I don't get a lot of the additives I see folks putting into their soaps on YouTube...to me it's just more crap to buy, more crap to store, more crap to list on my label. Watched one gal add about a dozen different 'additives' and I kept thinking...is there any more for oils?

But the nice thing about making your own soap, it that you can experiment with stuff like that. A half ounce of Tussah Silk is $2.98 at BB, an ounce of Collodial Oatmeal is a buck and a quarter, an ounce of KO is a buck, seventy-five and so on and so forth.

Thanks so much for the lengthy and well thought out response. My last few recipes have been more simple than what I was doing at the beginning. When I start using my palm oil soaps I will be able to make an informed decision if I want to continued using palm or not. Thanks again.

 

[Basil]

@SoapDaddy70 those are all great questions to ask!

Bottom line, make the kind of soap you want to use, or the kind of soap you can sell to your target market, as fits your situation.

We've got all kinds of soapers here, and that's part of what makes this group so fun.

@SoapDaddy70 you asked so many of the questions I’ve asked myself and as I continue to play and test and ask questions on this forum and read others input on many other questions, I’m beginning to understand what type of soap I like. Allioop brings it back home to me when she says “bottom line....” and “all kinds of soapers here”. I absolutely love how everyone on this forum is so encouraging and take the time to support, knowing many of them really don’t need to. The experience on this forum is mind boggling to me. Sharing it is even more so.

 

[AliOop]

How do you dissolve the sugar? In the vinegar? I recently used white vinegar in a high OO soap with lovely results, but I didn't add sugar. I use sugar in my other recipes but dissolve in distilled water.

Yes, I dissolve it in the vinegar, along with the sodium citrate that I use as a chelator. You can also choose to dissolve it in a bit of extra water if you prefer.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I’ve tried many, many different recipes, with various hard fats (tallow, lard, butters, palm and soy wax alone or in combination), liquid oils (mostly olive, HO sunflower, Avocado or RBO), CO ranging from 10-30%, with and without castor oil, sugar, vinegar, aloe juice, salt, goat milk, cow cream, oat milk, clay, etc. After almost two years of experimenting, I know that I like handmade soap . I also learned that what I like the most in a soap aligns pretty well with particular ranges for the major groups of fatty acids. For me, this is 14-20% lauric + myristic, 25-31% stearic + palmitic and 11-15% linoleic. These ranges work well for me, almost regardless of what fats I use to get the profiles, except that after almost two years I still don’t have a palm-based recipe that I love. The hard fats give me creaminess, but if I go above above 31% in my recipes, the soap feels too hard in my hands. The linoleic gives my recipes some “slip” and bigger bubbles without adding sugar or a lot of coconut oil. Unless I’m making a high OO soap, I think of the oleic FA as a filler. I’ve made soap with and without castor, but I don’t feel it changes my recipes much. My batches made with sugar make more/bigger bubbles and the animal milks add creaminess in my recipes, but for the most part, the qualities of my soaps align most closely with the FA profiles. When I add extra things now, it’s mostly for visual or label appeal. Since I don’t give any soap away without a label, the huge job of labeling test batches has forced me to think hard about whether or not I need any particular ingredient in the soap.

ETA: I forgot to mention that chelators are another additive I’m sold on. Aside from keeping DOS at bay, I get better bubbles with a chelator in the recipe. We have a water softener, but our water still has high TDS. I also use a low SF (2-3%) and have no problems with soap scum.

 

[KiwiMoose]

I will make a vast generalisation here (*ducks for cover*) and say that men prefer more bubbles and are not quite as sensitive to drying soap as women are. I like my soap to leave a soft lotion-y film on my skin so that they don't feel as dry. My son and partner both complain about this and say that it doesn't 'rinse off' properly. Considering how often I wash my hands and analyse how lovely and creamy the lather may be, or how beautiful scent is, and also that I rarely use hand cream, I would much prefer to have use a soap that leaves my hands feeling 'damp' than have big bubbles that rinse off dry.
There - I think I've explained it well enough, let me know if it doesn't make sense.

 

[hlee]

To really do it right you would need a soap " standard" to compare the different qualities of your soaps.
You would need a soap that is acceptable to you that you would use as the "standard ""and you would need to know the composition of the "standard "soap. Then you test soaps side by side as you modify and make changes.
As you expand recipes you can also make more " standards" say one for palm soaps or one for lard soaps, etc. You would have a checklist for both good qualities and bad that you would note with your side by side soap comparisons. This is how it is done with food , etc. and probably the best way to notice the little changes.

 

[Zing]

I will make a vast generalisation here (*ducks for cover*) and say that men prefer more bubbles and are not quite as sensitive to drying soap as women are. I like my soap to leave a soft lotion-y film on my skin so that they don't feel as dry.

Like I always say, Daddy loves the bubbles!

 

[Basil]

I will make a vast generalisation here (*ducks for cover*) and say that men prefer more bubbles and are not quite as sensitive to drying soap as women are. I like my soap to leave a soft lotion-y film on my skin so that they don't feel as dry. My son and partner both complain about this and say that it doesn't 'rinse off' properly. Considering how often I wash my hands and analyse how lovely and creamy the lather may be, or how beautiful scent is, and also that I rarely use hand cream, I would much prefer to have use a soap that leaves my hands feeling 'damp' than have big bubbles that rinse off dry.
There - I think I've explained it well enough, let me know if it doesn't make sense.

I’m right with you @KiwiMoose. I used to think it was all the bubbles I liked until I started noticing the bubbles weren’t what made my skin feel good after the shower. I’m gravitating to the creamy now. My husband likes creamy lather and scent - he’s a burn victim and he has some parts of his body that are sensitive and tight. He really likes @Zany_in_CO no slime Castile. Even with his skin he likes the peppermint EO and it gives him no problems. He can’t use Shea butter as it causes blisters. Go figure ...

 

[KiwiMoose]

I’m right with you @KiwiMoose. I used to think it was all the bubbles I liked until I started noticing the bubbles weren’t what made my skin feel good after the shower. I’m gravitating to the creamy now. My husband likes creamy lather and scent - he’s a burn victim and he has some parts of his body that are sensitive and tight. He really likes @Zany_in_CO no slime Castile. Even with his skin he likes the peppermint EO and it gives him no problems. He can’t use Shea butter as it causes blisters. Go figure ...

Nut allergy?

 

[Melysg25]

I will make a vast generalisation here (*ducks for cover*) and say that men prefer more bubbles and are not quite as sensitive to drying soap as women are. I like my soap to leave a soft lotion-y film on my skin so that they don't feel as dry. My son and partner both complain about this and say that it doesn't 'rinse off' properly. Considering how often I wash my hands and analyse how lovely and creamy the lather may be, or how beautiful scent is, and also that I rarely use hand cream, I would much prefer to have use a soap that leaves my hands feeling 'damp' than have big bubbles that rinse off dry.
There - I think I've explained it well enough, let me know if it doesn't make sense.

I prefer the creamy lotion lather for my bath bars but for hand soap, that "damp" lotion feeling annoys me. I keep washing and washing to get it off. Though when I wash my hands I generally apply some type of moisturizer afterwards. Just what I'm used to. I don't like residue after a good hand wash. Lol. Call me kooky.. For my hands I like a squeaky clean big bubble no fluff hand soap. Not saying I would wash my hands with 100% coconut oil soap cause that would just make them raw, but I get your son and partner not wanting a lotion feel for hand soap.

"Don't shoot just my IMO, probably not worth 2 pennies rubbed together."

 

[Basil]

Nut allergy?

No, he eats nuts, peanut butter, etc all the time...

 

[ravenscents]

~ Relatable~
Funny enough: I didn't even know my skin was sensitive till I started using homemade soap and basically all of my skin problems went away! Ha!

Lather is really the one thing that gets me sometimes. Like I can tell if a bar has bad lather....but as far as good lather...I'm like "it's bubbly!" without really knowing the degree or how it compares to other "bubbly" soaps.

I would say, trying out other maker's soaps helps a lot. I know there haven't been any big trades on here recently, but FB has several groups you can join...or just purchasing several bars from different artisans. I have tried several of the "famous" soaper's soaps, and some local.
I mean you won't get a feel of how recipe affects soap so much this way (except for the ingredient list), but you can get a good feeling of how different handmade soaps can be. I've found some definite bad (for me at least, no shade on any maker) ones out there and some pretty good ones too.

I always buy others soap when I can. I keep the label to analyze the recipe. I look for things different in the performance than mine.
I have very oily skin, so I’m really not the best judge.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

As I understand it, bubbles do not automatically equate to high cleansing. Coconut oil soap bubbles profusely because it dissolves easily and is very cleansing because there are a lot of short chain fatty acid soap molecules in solution when in use. Sugars (and glycerin) enhance bubbles because they increase the surface tension of the bubbles, which allows them to grow bigger without breaking. Chelators, like sodium citrate and edta, enhance bubbles because they keep the dissolved soap from complexing with hard water minerals. Why the addition of oils that are high in linoleic fatty acid, like RBO, hemp and grapeseed, leads to bigger bubbles in a balanced recipe is still a mystery to me, especially since we know that soaps made with these oils at 100% do not make great lather.

 

[Basil]

Why the addition of oils that are high in linoleic fatty acid, like RBO, hemp and grapeseed, leads to bigger bubbles in a balanced recipe is still a mystery to me, especially since we know that soaps made with these oils at 100% do not make great lather.

Thank you for bringing that up as I was wondering the same yesterday. In celebration of Az becoming cannabis legal recreationally, I’m playing with hemp oil again in some recipes.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I honestly think that most people, other than soapmakers and those close to them, would find most balanced recipes to be a big improvement over commercial soap. That being said, most of the comments I get are about creaminess in my animal fat soaps and bubbles and silkiness In my soy wax and RBO soap. A lot of my tweaking over the last year has been about achieving recipes that trace slowly for the FA profiles I like, while also keeping the base color as close to white as possible. With RBO at 25-30% and soy wax at 20%, I am always going to have an off colored base, but I’ve learned to live with it because I really, really like the soap that recipe makes.

 

[linne1gi]

@linne1gi do you add the powdered sugar at the same rate as granulated? I use granulated in all of my batches because it makes great bubbles. I am curious about the powdered sugar.

I master batch my lye solution 1:1. And I usually use a 2:1 water to lye ratio. So the 1st part of the water I need is already part of the master batched lye, the 2nd part is where I add powdered sugar, salt, silk, citric acid and extra lye. I sometimes use other liquids besides water; coconut milk, oat milk, aloe juice, etc. (not usually goats milk as I add that in powder form). And yes I add powdered sugar at the same rate as granular sugar (1 teaspoon per pound of oils) - it dissolves almost instantly, and tends to slow trace a little.