Can anyone Help me figure out how to create Stirling soap, soap bars

[LukasSubway]

I'm new to soap making and love Stirling soap, they create amazing soap bars and I was wondering if anyone could help me recreate their recipe I included some details I could about the soap.

It has a creamier lather, weighs ~5.5 ounces at the dimensions of a standard bar of soap.

Please do not go out of your way to buy a bar of soap from them to help me decipher the amount of each ingredient. Just wondering if this recipe has been replicated before or if anyone who has any idea where to start could give me some info.

This is their disclosed ingredients in order

Beef Tallow, RSPO (Sustainable) Palm Oil, Coconut Oil, Distilled Water, Olive Oil, Castor Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Fragrance Oil, Sodium Lactate

 

[lsg]

Ingredients are usually listed in the order of the percentage used. Beef tallow would be the highest percentage, then palm, coconut, olive, and Castor oil. I will give you a starting point; but you can adjust the percentage if you wish. Be sure to run the recipe through a lye calculator such as
Soapmakingfriend
https://www.soapmakingfriend.com/soap-making-recipe-builder-lye-calculator/or
SoapCalc
http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/soapcalcwp.asp
Beef Tallow 30%
Coconut Oil 21%
Castor Oil 8%
Palm Oil 22%
Olive Oil 19%

 

[violets2217]

That’s basically the recipe right there. It’s a pretty straight forward bar of soap. If I were you I’d get to know a soap calculator and enter the oils and play around with percentages until you have the qualities you think that soap has. Has just like… @lsg has posted while I was slowing texting on my phone! Have fun and good luck!

 

[lenarenee]

Never heard of Stirling. Their "sheep" soap is made with mutton fat and now I HAVE to buy a bar to see what it's like!

 

[kagey]

NA
Beef Tallow 30%
Coconut Oil 21%
Castor Oil 8%
Palm Oil 22%
Olive Oil 19%

Not sure I agree with this recipe.
We can alway fudge the water discount to get it to fall inbetween the Coconut and Olive oils -- but the lye (NaOH) will be pretty constant. So, to get castor oil above the lye weight means more castor, IMHO.
so I got:
Tallow 24, Palm 23, Coconut 22, Olive 16, Castor 15.
with water and NaOH falling right inbetween where they're supposed to be.

 

[AliOop]

Not sure I agree with this recipe.
We can alway fudge the water discount to get it to fall inbetween the Coconut and Olive oils -- but the lye (NaOH) will be pretty constant. So, to get castor oil above the lye weight means more castor, IMHO.
so I got:
Tallow 24, Palm 23, Coconut 22, Olive 16, Castor 15.
with water and NaOH falling right inbetween where they're supposed to be.

What does that even mean? There is no rule that says there must be more castor than lye, or that water needs to be between CO and OO. Those sounds like old soaping myths to me. I regularly use 40% lye concentration in almost all my soaps, but it has nothing to do with trying to get the water weight to correlate to weight of any or all of the oils.

Also. using more than 5-8% castor will usually result in a very soft and maybe even sticky bar of soap. You don't need that much to get the benefits of castor, which is to stabilize the lather that is created by other oils (mainly the CO in this recipe).

@lsg gave you a very good recipe there; if it were for me personally, I'd lower both the castor and the CO just a bit for my own preferences. But since I have no experience with the soap you are trying to duplicate, her starting point is a good one. Your suggested change to bring castor to 15% is very unlikely to produce the type of firm bar soap that would be sold commercially.

 

[kagey]

What does that even mean?

Typically, the ingredient rule is that they're listed in order from most to least.
So if the list of ingredients are:
Beef Tallow, RSPO (Sustainable) Palm Oil, Coconut Oil, Distilled Water, Olive Oil, Castor Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Fragrance Oil, Sodium Lactate

Then, that should mean that the most substance is Beef Tallow, followed by palm oil, then coconut oil - then water, then Olive Oil, followed by NaHO -- with the least ingredients being frangrance and Sodium Lactate.

Agree that it's odd that there should be so much Castor Oil... but if the listed ingredients are in order of most to least, then there's more olive oil and castor oil than NaHO.
Therefore, having 8% Castor oil would be listed after Sodium Hydroxide, not before it.

It's not about following soaping myths, it's about translating an ingredients list provided.

You can disagree with this recipe - I'm not suggesting it's a good one. Only that it accurrately reflects the ingredient list.

 

[ScentimentallyYours]

I'm new to soap making and love Stirling soap, they create amazing soap bars and I was wondering if anyone could help me recreate their recipe I included some details I could about the soap.

It has a creamier lather, weighs ~5.5 ounces at the dimensions of a standard bar of soap.

Please do not go out of your way to buy a bar of soap from them to help me decipher the amount of each ingredient. Just wondering if this recipe has been replicated before or if anyone who has any idea where to start could give me some info.

This is their disclosed ingredients in order

Beef Tallow, RSPO (Sustainable) Palm Oil, Coconut Oil, Distilled Water, Olive Oil, Castor Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Fragrance Oil, Sodium Lactate

Very interesting that Stirling has a bar called Ben Franklin’s Soap. It appears they played off of the Frank in frankincense and came up with Franklin? I love the scent of benzoin. Wonder if it causes any skin sensitivities?

Ben Franklin‘s family actually made soap, but the recipe wasn’t anything like Stirling is selling. I will have to send them information from the rabbit hole I fell down into over on the brine soap thread.

 

[lsg]

Not sure I agree with this recipe.
We can alway fudge the water discount to get it to fall inbetween the Coconut and Olive oils -- but the lye (NaOH) will be pretty constant. So, to get castor oil above the lye weight means more castor, IMHO.
so I got:
Tallow 24, Palm 23, Coconut 22, Olive 16, Castor 15.
with water and NaOH falling right inbetween where they're supposed to be.

You can agree or disagree, that's OK. The recipe I listed will produce a hard bard with lots of creamy lather and some bubbly lather. As I stated in my first post, the recipe I gave was just a starting point. The OP can manipulate the percentages to their satisfaction. I think that 15% Castor oil is way too much. IMO, it will produce a sticky, soft bar of soap.

 

[LukasSubway]

Never heard of Stirling. Their "sheep" soap is made with mutton fat and now I HAVE to buy a bar to see what it's like!

Let me know how it is, I've only used their beef tallow bars

 

[LukasSubway]

Ingredients are usually listed in the order of the percentage used. Beef tallow would be the highest percentage, then palm, coconut, olive, and Castor oil. I will give you a starting point; but you can adjust the percentage if you wish. Be sure to run the recipe through a lye calculator such as
Soapmakingfriend
https://www.soapmakingfriend.com/soap-making-recipe-builder-lye-calculator/or
SoapCalc
http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/soapcalcwp.asp
Beef Tallow 30%
Coconut Oil 21%
Castor Oil 8%
Palm Oil 22%
Olive Oil 19%

Thank you! I will try this when I get more beef tallow!

 

[Zany_in_CO]

Scroll down to the last recipe in the list -- TALLOW SOAP RECIPES

 

[AliOop]

Typically, the ingredient rule is that they're listed in order from most to least.
So if the list of ingredients are:
Beef Tallow, RSPO (Sustainable) Palm Oil, Coconut Oil, Distilled Water, Olive Oil, Castor Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Fragrance Oil, Sodium Lactate

Then, that should mean that the most substance is Beef Tallow, followed by palm oil, then coconut oil - then water, then Olive Oil, followed by NaHO -- with the least ingredients being frangrance and Sodium Lactate.

Agree that it's odd that there should be so much Castor Oil... but if the listed ingredients are in order of most to least, then there's more olive oil and castor oil than NaHO.
Therefore, having 8% Castor oil would be listed after Sodium Hydroxide, not before it.

It's not about following soaping myths, it's about translating an ingredients list provided.

You can disagree with this recipe - I'm not suggesting it's a good one. Only that it accurrately reflects the ingredient list.

Thank you for clarifying - I get what you are saying now and agree - you did what you could to replicate the ingredient list.

 

[lenarenee]

Let me know how it is, I've only used their beef tallow bars

I will! I got one of the sheep tallow ones too so it will be fun to compare.

 

[lenarenee]

My order from Stirling has already arrived. I bought a tangerine tallow bar, and the scots pine sheep tallow….and a pound of roasted coffee!

My observations after using the beef tallow twice: this is a soft bar! Easily dented with my thumb. I wondered if they even cured it. However…my hands did have that tight drying feeling I expect from a young soap.….especially after using it twice. This also makes me think it’s contains less than 30% coconut ( most 30% co soaps make my hands creak!)

The Sheep tallow bar has a partial gel ring, but still dentable. I haven’t washed with it. Thought I’d weight it over time and see if it loses water.

The tangerine is scented with eo, and it’s bright and strong! It’s a naturally orange soap so possibly 5x eo. But the scent quality is not what I would expect from a cured bar.

I would describe the lather as bubbly, and it bubbles up immediately…no need to work up a lather. Later is becomes creamier, but the bubbles are still sizeable enough to be bubbles ( compared to high lard soaps where the lather is thick with tiny tight bubbles similar to shaving cream.

Each biodegradable box has a batch number.

I love the soap. I think this is a company that is trying to do things right and I wish them success!

 

[Carly B]

I make tallow soap a lot. Tallow/lard blend is my hubby's favorite--seriously, he comments on how much he likes the lather in a particular soap, and sure enough, it's always a lard/tallow blend (not always the same blend or proportions, because I'm still having fun experimenting).

But in my experience, tallow soaps are NOT soft after they cure. It would be interesting to see if/how long they cured it.

 

[lenarenee]

I make tallow soap a lot. Tallow/lard blend is my hubby's favorite--seriously, he comments on how much he likes the lather in a particular soap, and sure enough, it's always a lard/tallow blend (not always the same blend or proportions, because I'm still having fun experimenting).

But in my experience, tallow soaps are NOT soft after they cure. It would be interesting to see if/how long they cured it.

I've used tallow a fair amount too; and love that it makes a nice "crisp" hard bar - as if it would snap if you could break it in half, so this really makes me wonder if they used a lot of castor, and/or no cure time. I set the unused sheep tallow bar aside to cure. It weighted 162 grams, so we'll see if and how much water it looses in a couple of weeks.