Can I make good soap without tallow or palm?

[MrKleen]

The oils I have easy access to are olive oil, coconut, sunflower, and the generic cooking oils like (corn, canola, peanut).

I've been making soap with this recipe.

1.5% castor
18.5% Coconut
30% Sunflower
50% olive oil.

I use 0% superfat.

I ran it through a soap calculator and it had a pretty bad rating with 0 on cleansing.

I've used it on myself and I like it, but then I havn't tried amazing soap from other people so I might know any better. I certainly like it more than the commercial stuff. Friends and family seem to like it, but then again they might be biased.

Is this recipe sellable on a small scale? I know people have said not to sell bad soap to create a bad name for other handcrafted soap makers, but I don't think it is a bad soap, the question is if it is good soap?

I don't have access to palm, but I do have access to tallow, but I am afraid people won't buy it if they know it has tallow in it. Please help!

 

[Marilyna]

Well, that recipe would make a really soft soap. For that reason I wouldn't use it. If not using Palm, I would use either tallow or lard. You can use the meat-based shortening which is supposedly about 96% tallow. I do sell tallow soap and no one (I mean no one) has ever questioned it. Some may have looked at the label and put it back down, but I wasn't aware of it.

I don't advertise it in big bold letters, but it's right on the ingredients list and if asked what's in my soap, I proudly tell it all.

I would also always use a superfat. I like 5-8%.

 

[thefarmerdaughter]

My favorite soap recipe that I've settled with is Lard, coconut, olive oil. all can be bought in grocery store. Imo it makes a superb soap that's creamy, bubbly, and gentle. Doesn't sound to me like you're ready to sell, just sayin. One other thing, a SF of 0% is a very tricky thing, you should definitely consider increasing it.

 

[CaraCara]

Not sure where you're located but lard is usually available in the grocery store baking isle. You can play with the numbers in your recipe to make the bar a bit harder but I wouldn't sell them until you come up with a formulation that increases hardness and decreases the chance of rancidity. You can add sodium lactate (~0.5oz ppo) or regular table salt to increase hardness (I think 1 tsp ppo), and you can add rosemary oleoresin extract as an anti-oxidant. FWIW the harder oils make lovely bars of soap that last longer.
Just my 2 cents.

 

[shunt2011]

I wouldn't recommend using a 0% superfat unless you are making laundry soap. Too much room for lye heavy soap especially being new. I always superfat 6-8% plus it makes it a bit more moisturizing on the skin. I also wouldn't recommend selling until you've had a whole lot of batches under your belt. That way you can see how your soaps last over time too after a good 4-6 week cure.

 

[OliveOil2]

If you are not opposed to using palm oil you probably have it available, just need to look in different places to purchase it. Spectrum makes an organic 100% palm shortening that most health food stores, or whole foods carries, and it always goes on sale, with extra coupons too. The restaurant supply store Cash & Carry also carries palm shortening in larger amounts. Wholesale Supplies Plus will ship with free shipping if you order $30 of supplies. I don't know what area of the country you are in, but you can most likely find it.
I agree that you need to super fat at a higher % at least 5% and 6% would be even better. When you are ready to sell 50% olive oil soap is going to take longer to cure and cost more than adding another oil, my favorite is rice bran, but you can play around with soap calc.

 

[adoptapitbull]

The oils I have easy access to are olive oil, coconut, sunflower, and the generic cooking oils like (corn, canola, peanut).

I've been making soap with this recipe.

1.5% castor
18.5% Coconut
30% Sunflower
50% olive oil.

I use 0% superfat.

I ran it through a soap calculator and it had a pretty bad rating with 0 on cleansing.

I've used it on myself and I like it, but then I havn't tried amazing soap from other people so I might know any better. I certainly like it more than the commercial stuff. Friends and family seem to like it, but then again they might be biased.

Is this recipe sellable on a small scale? I know people have said not to sell bad soap to create a bad name for other handcrafted soap makers, but I don't think it is a bad soap, the question is if it is good soap?

I don't have access to palm, but I do have access to tallow, but I am afraid people won't buy it if they know it has tallow in it. Please help!

At 0% SF, no, I don't think it would be a good soap. It might not be the worst soap ever, but I think you can do a whole lot better with the SF. I would not use it at 0%.

 

[dagmar88]

Is this recipe sellable on a small scale? I know people have said not to sell bad soap to create a bad name for other handcrafted soap makers, but I don't think it is a bad soap, the question is if it is good soap?

An educated guess; no.
Keep some for at least a year and test again by then.

 

[Moody Glenn]

Hello! I agree with everyone else concerning the superfat level. At 0% you will really need an extremely precise scale to measure the lye. There is nothing wrong with superfatting your soap. As for substitutes for tallow and palm oil you could try Cocoa Butter or (closely related) Shea Butter. These butters are difficult to find locally and you would need to order them from a supplier.

Here is a handy-dandy Soapmaking Oil Chart which helps explain what the various oils, fats and butters do for soap, the approximate percentage to use and what each gives to the quality of soap. Here is the link: http://www.lovinsoap.com/oils-chart/

I hope this is of some help for you! :smile:

 

[Bicycle808]

Superfatting at 0 is, as others mentioned, a bad idea with CP bar soap. But your problems don't end there.

Running your recipe thru a calculator, I find that it's soft, not very cleansing (although it is far from 0, thanks to the coconut oil), and it is also neither bubbly nor creamy. I think you'd do well to up the coconut to 20 or 25%, increase the superfat to 5%, replace the sunflower with palm or tallow, kick the castor up to 5%, and use 40% for the olive.
**edit** I cut n pasted from soapcalc, and it looked like the format survived the transfer to the forum, but it didn't. I suggest you go to soapcalc.net or a similar calculator and try to concoct a better recipe.**
If you experiment, you can do even better. If you look, you can find palm or tallow for cheap enough...

 

[CaliChan]

If i was only using those oils I would change that recipe to:
50% Olive Oil
40% Coconut oil
5% sunflower
5% Castor
And have a 10% superfat

The high super fat will stop the higher amount of coconut oil from drying out your skin and you will get a much harder bar. If you go to high with sunflower oil it can contribute to DOS and to low of castor oil will do almost nothing for the soap.
Run it through soapcalc.net for the amount of lye you will need.

**edit** I haven't run it through soapcalc but I already know you won't get a creamy bar from these oils, for a creamy bar without changing the oils you can discount the water some and add a milk or yogurt at a light trace (or freeze it and throw it in with your lye solution, what ever floats your boat)

 

[sososo]

I think that you don't necessarly need tallow or palm. My first recipe was:
Coconut - 33%
Sunflower - 67%
5% superfat
...and I was very content with it.

 

[seife1441]

I agree strongly with the 5% superfat Ratio that has already been said.

If People like your Soap the way it is thats fine. There is 100% olive oil Soap on the market. The lather is what one would expect...not sudsy and more creamy. But People buy it. It is a matter of taste.

If you are going to sell it, People do tend to prefer harder bars than what the mix you listed is most likely to produce. I would suggest trying to secure a source of Palm oil and try out a couple or formulas with it. That way you are covered incase you start to get negative feed back on your current mixture.

Try Restaurant supply houses for Palm oil. You can also use Shea Butter but that is more expensive.

Canola oil( Raps Oil) has a similar Oleic/Linoleic fatty acid Ratio with olive oil

Olive 69/12
Raps 64/13

a difference is that raps has 9% Linolenic were olive has 1% and more Palmetic (14%).

These ratios can be seen on the Soap calculator at Soap calc:
http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp

I know some People that use raps as a replacement for olive oil.

However, I do not use much olive oil in my mixtrues and no raps oil.

 

[jenneelk]

There are good recipes out there with neither of those. I just made another one and the info is on the recipe help page. Recipe is on the last page.

 

[misskat22]

I don't use palm or tallow (or lard) the first recipe I started with was 75% Olive, 20% Coconut and 5% Castor with a 6% superfat. It's a good recipe to start with. It was shared with me when I started because it's good to learn on, it doesn't trace super fast or slow, and gives you a good feel for what you're doing. When I made my first batch I picked up everything I needed locally. I now buy online because I need bigger quantities (mostly of castor) than I can find locally so definitely look into a supplier that you can get a good deal from.

 

[Bicycle808]

BITD, I made soap with just OO and CO. It was good soap! But now that I've been using palm for a while, I can say that I probably won't go back to making soap that doesn't have PO, BT, or something similar in it. Makes good hard bars, without being as drying/harsh as soaps with a whole lot of CO.