Beeswax & Castille?

[erniemay]

I'm contemplating making a honey and oatmeal castille next and have been reading up on various recipes and comments on the forum. I am now uncertain about the use of beeswax. Some castille recipes use it some don't.

The reasons I've come across for using beeswax include:

1. Gives a silky grain to the soap
2. Speeds up saponification (nice for working with lots of OO but is it needed as this could be achieved with a water discount...?)
3. Gives a honey scent (a positive, if true, for its use when making a honey soap)
4. Helps to give a hard soap
5. Is a protective allogen blocking barrier in the soap

I believe 2 & 4 may be true from what I've read, but what about the others? Also, if I add 2% beeswax would that mean that my soap is not 100% olive oil and therefore not a true castille? Or would it not count as wax is not an oil or a butter?

 

[soapopera]

I use Beeswax in all my soaps. I like how the skin feels when I use soaps with it. I only use 1% in my recipe as I'm concerned that it would inhibit lather if I use too much (my lathering oil which is CO is also at quiet a low percentage already).

I normally soaped at around a lye concentration of 28 to 32% and so far it's been behaving quiet well on my recipe (no super fast trace) but then again I'm only using 1%.

It does not give any scent at all I'm afraid. I can't answer number 4 and 5 as my main concern was not that much about hardness. Not sure about Number 5 or quiet understand it.

Depends on personal preference, castille or non castille is quite subjective. There's many debate about this topic in this forum. Try search 'bastile'. Personally I won't call a soap castille unless it's truly 100% Olive.

 

[falldowngobump]

A soaper friend of mine gave me a recipe for what she called a 'castille'. It had 75% OO, Coconut oil, and 2% beeswax. I made it last summer and honestly wasn't too impressed after a couple of months cure. I came across a bar of it a couple of weeks ago, tried it again and I was amazed at how wonderful it was. I'm not a fan of true castille but this bar has become my wintertime favorite. The soap was silky, creamy and felt like I had lotion on my skin. It's the best leg shaving soaps I've ever used. There was no scent of beeswax or honey at all in the soap. I call it a Bastile rather than a Castille. I've also started using at least 1% beeswax in most of my soap recipes now.

 

[ghia61]

Sounds interesting. Question about the beeswax - When you say 1% beeswax, is that included in the percentage oils or PPO?
Thanks!

 

[ghia61]

Sounds interesting. Question about the beeswax - When you say 1% beeswax, is that included in the percentage oils or PPO?
Thanks!

 

[soapopera]

Yes.. Beeswax is counted as 1% in the recipe which means the rest of the oils makes up 99%.

 

[erniemay]

Yes.. Beeswax is counted as 1% in the recipe which means the rest of the oils makes up 99%.

Hmmm, me thinks that if trying for a castile I will leave out the beeswax then. Although I think I will try beeswax in another recipe to see what it does to the soap. I do have a bastille I've been thinking of with CO, OO (74%), and Shea butter with activated charcoal, I may add it to that recipe instead.

 

[Maythorn]

One of the first recipes I tried from a book was just olive oil and beeswax with goat milk. It turned out great but had no real lather. Nice to use though.

It traced fairly quickly and wasn't as slimy as regular Castile soap as I think back on it.

 

[ladydiana]

Just ordered some beeswax to try. Some say it helps with soda ash also.

 

[erniemay]

Thanks for all your help folks! In the end I decided to make a bastille instead of a castille. I figured if I was going to do a castille I should use 100% OO and no beeswax and so if I wanted to try beeswax I should make a bastille.

With that in mind, my recipe ended up being 10% CO, 89% OO, 1% beeswax with 2% honey. No EO or FO as the soap is for friends with small children.

Big thanks also to everyone who has given advice in the forum about using honey as I read it all, added the honey to the lye water and, despite the spectacular red colour the lye water developed, had no probs at all with over heating or leaking.

Already I think I can feel a difference in the texture and hardness of the soap compared to my previous attempts which usually had much less OO and more CO (usually around 25%). It seems much firmer after only a few hours.

And I'm loving the very pale cream colour it has developed. I had expected it to be darker after seeing the colour of the lye!

Here's some pics! The oat flakes left track marks when I cut the loaf but I'll neaten those up when it's harder...

 

[soapopera]

Just ordered some beeswax to try. Some say it helps with soda ash also.

I've tried it to reduce ash but I still get ash. What I think reduce ash is the temp you soap in. The warmer you soap, the less ash (from my opinion). But ash also occur in other circumstances and soaping warmer does not guarantee ashless soap. One have to soap warmer than room temp with BW, so maybe for some people who soap room temp who had ash before and then soap with BW and get less or no ash, they accidentally thought BW is a cure for ash.

erniemay: great looking soap

 

[judymoody]

Nice soap!

Next time if you turn your loaf upside down and cut from the bottom, you won't have the flakes dragging across your cut surface.

To answer your original question, beeswax will produce a harder bar but will inhibit lather above 1-2%. You will have to soap hotter due to the melt point of the beeswax.

 

[erniemay]

Thanks for the compliments! I gave one bar a gentle shave with a veg peeler and rubbed it down with water and the drag marks a pretty much gone. It looks that little bit neater and nicer now.

Next time if you turn your loaf upside down and cut from the bottom, you won't have the flakes dragging across your cut surface.

Lol! I did and it still dragged! I should have ground up the oatmeal a wee bit more but I liked the flakes in the body of the soap. Ah well. They're for friends and not for selling and I know my friends won't mind a few lines.

To answer your original question, beeswax will produce a harder bar but will inhibit lather above 1-2%. You will have to soap hotter due to the melt point of the beeswax.

It is definitely much harder than my previous bars. I'm amazed at the difference a tiny % makes. It will be interesting to see how it lathers.

 

[carebear]

I wouldn't (personally) call it Castile unless it's100% olive oil. There is another discussion on this around somewhere - and there is no legal definition of Castile but for me if you add other oils then it's not...

You don't need to add anything to harden up the olive oil soap. Castile (olive oil) soap is already low lathering, and beeswax will just exacerbate this. And properly cured olive oil soap is rock hard - beeswax isn't going to make the rock any harder. It may seem harder but after a reasonable cure (it needs 6 weeks +) it wont'matter.

 

[Fragola]

For me, hardness is relevant after few days of using the bar, not while the soap sleeps on the shelf.

That's what I would be interested to know, if anybody has insight on this matter.

 

[carebear]

And that is what I provided

You don't need to add anything to harden up the olive oil soap. Castile (olive oil) soap is already low lathering, and beeswax will just exacerbate this. And properly cured olive oil soap is rock hard - beeswax isn't going to make the rock any harder. It may seem harder but after a reasonable cure (it needs 6 weeks +) it wont'matter.

 

[erniemay]

I think I'd like to use the oil/lye recipe again, this time leaving out the beeswax, and compare the soaps.

Would changing the additives be likely to make a difference to the hardness/textures? I was planning to make some beer soap next and have some of my home village's local brew slowly going flat in my kitchen. If I use the beer in place of water and leave out the honey will that affect any elements the beeswax may have brought to my soap? I have a sneaky feeling it may therefore making my comparing the two soaps useless unless I use the exact same recipe again which I'd rather not do just yet as there are so many new soaping techniques and soap types I want to try.