Deanna, I have a question...

[krunt]

Well, I have to take back my comment about the -40% batch staying nice and hard. It started getting softer yesterday, and is soft in the same way the -10% and -20% batches were (not so soft that I have to stop using it, but softer than I would like). I am going to stop using it though, as I just don't like it.

In the beginning, and even just a few days ago, the soap dried off really quickly. It has now reached a point where it just isn't drying out quick enough. Even hours after I last used it, its still wet. Hopefully it just needs more time -- it is only 9 weeks old, after all. I'll keep trying it every month and see if there is a point where it stays hard throughout use of the whole bar. And well, it is a Castile, and I have always read they need a year to reach their best, so perhaps that's how long it will take!

 

[FlybyStardancer]

Just tried my ugly olive/soy blended soap. 57% olive oil, 43% soybean oil, the -43% superfat, and it also had 65g milk powder (for 1000g oils). The uncolored areas have gone a dark khaki color, while the micas are just weird morphs.

It certainly bubbles a lot easier than the castile I had made! And it's not entirely the sugars in the milk doing it, since the castile had 22g honey and 35g milk powder for 531g oil. It seemed like the linoleic from the soy was making a big difference in how much it dissolved in the water. Towards the end of the shower I could smear off a layer of soap, and the castile never got that mushy.

 

[DeeAnna]

I can see your point, FlyBy. I've been wondering what this technique would do with a non-castile recipe.

The second superlye soap I made had 70% high oleic safflower and 30% lard. The blend was meant to mimic the fatty acid profile of my first batch, which was all olive. The primary fatty acids of both batches are about 66% oleic and 12% each of palmitic and linoleic. (No, the numbers don't add up to 100%.) Apparently my castile-wannabe soap succeeded, because this soap lathers just like the all-olive batch does. At the sink, the lather is ropy and scant for either soap (similar to the castile with a normal superfat) unless I add a lot of water and then it will suds up.

Just musing here....

Your olive-soy recipe has about 12% palmitic, 28% linoleic, and about 50% oleic.

A typical "bastile" that people like for easier lathering is often 20-30% coconut oil with the balance being olive. A recipe like this has 50-55% oleic depending on how much CO is used.

I wonder if the oleic content is the key difference -- soaps with oleic below about 55% lather relatively easily; soaps with oleic above 60% lather more like castile.

 

[FlybyStardancer]

It would be interesting to run an experiment to see where the lather mark is! I certainly wasn't expecting better lather from the olive/soy soap.

It would have to be double-blind, varying the percentage of olive oil... Maybe a second set using your lard/sunflower mix instead of olive to see if the results hold up to a recipe without olive oil?

 

[newbie]

I made a normal recipe using this technique, the recipe for the SF swap. Some people are finding it drying but some people found the castile to be drying as well. I will say that there is no ropiness or sliminess like I am getting with my OO/Castor recipe. If anyone is interested in a piece of the normal recipe I made with the lye and water excess, just PM me and I will send you some.

 

[DeeAnna]

"...I made a normal recipe using this technique, the recipe for the SF swap...."

Not sure I'm following -- you made the swap recipe (palm, olive, CO, castor) with -40% superfat?

I think it's really interesting how the -40% SF soap is doing in the superfat swap. I did a rough analysis of the swap info today -- http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showpost.php?p=425710&postcount=12

 

[seven]

i nearly forgot about these soaps

my ugly batch, zomg! it has lost so much water it shrunk so much, looks so damn funny. this soap really give the term ugly soap a new definition..

my 2nd batch, the good one, has retain its shape. lots of ash present..

both of them are rock hard atm. am gonna take them to the shower soon. very excited to see if there is much difference since my last use of these soaps.

 

[Twiggy]

Ok, this is crazy.... I'm on page 13- must make this soap asap! so curious how will it go for me!?

 

[newbie]

DeeAnna, yes, I used the OO/Palm/CO/Castor recipe from the swap and made it with this technique, using -40% SF and the excess water. The lye water was a 1:1 and then I added excess water equal to the weight of the oils. Some people have found it drying but I also saw some of the SF'ed bars were rated as drying as well. Totally perplexing.

 

[DeeAnna]

Thanks for clearing that up. I am just as perplexed by the results so far, but I think you need more data before drawing any conclusions. It's hugely interesting to me!

 

[krunt]

Hi everyone,

I have recently made an interesting (well, interesting to me :smile discovery/observation with this soap.

To recap, I have made 4 batches of this soap (100% olive oil) of varying lye excesses (-10%, -20%, -30% & -40%).

The -10%, -20% & -40% batches were made with a water amount equal to the weight of the oil + the weight of the lye. All 3 batches reached the "plastic" stage.

The -30% batch was made with a water amount equal to the weight of the oil only. This batch did not reach the plastic stage. And yes, I know I should not have changed more than 1 variable, but I really didn't think it would make a difference.

My -20% batch separated somewhat, when I unmolded it there was a pool of water on the bottom of the loaf which I tipped off (some of you might remember the photo of it I posted some time ago). But the rest of the loaf was soap and was fine.

The observation I have made is that the -20% and -30% batches have an unpleasant smell to them. The same smell that was the reason I stopped using olive oil in my soap. The -10% and -40% batches do not have any unpleasant smell.

My thoughts are that the water amount is responsible for the smell or lack thereof. With the -30% batch, I used less water, and with the -20% batch, I tipped some of the water off (resulting in less water in that batch). Based on the -30% batch having less water and not reaching the plastic stage (where the other batches with more water did reach the plastic stage), I tend to think the plastic stage is an indicator that enough water has been added to produce a soap that will not develop an unpleasant odour a couple of months down the line. I am going to test this theory later in the week by making a batch and adding water to the point that it reaches the plastic stage, and then see if it starts to stink in a couple months.

My thoughts are that a certain amount of water is needed to allow the caustic to completely saturate and surround the oil aspect of the mix, to react with every last molecule of oil, and come into contact with any unsaponifiable matter in the oil to prevent it going bad in the future.

I dismissed the caustic excess as the reason for the smell, as surely if the -20% and -30% batches smell, then the -10% batch should smell too? And yet, it does not.

I also dismissed the oil itself as the reason -- the -10%, -20% & -30% batches were made with oil from the same container, the -10% batch doesn't smell, but the other 2 batches do.

I hope what I'm saying makes sense, and I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on this!

 

[DeeAnna]

"...the -20% and -30% batches have an unpleasant smell to them. The same smell that was the reason I stopped using olive oil in my soap. The -10% and -40% batches do not have any unpleasant smell...."

I can't speak to the smell ... I'm not picking up on that, regardless of the recipe. Maybe my nose isn't as well trained as some. What I can say about the high water recipes -- your -10% and -40% batches -- is that the large amount of water evaporation may have carried some of the chemicals that are causing the odors you don't care for to the surface of the soap bars. They might either evaporate if they're volatile enough or perhaps oxidize from exposure to fresh air. Hard to say.

I have an update about lather quality. The two batches I made -- one that broke and drained and the other that did not -- are now lathering really well at the sink in cold water. When I got this result from bars that I'd already been using, I was so surprised that I dug out some unused soap from both batches fresh from storage. I got the same results.

When I last reported (post 598, 5 May 2014), I said of my 2-month-old soaps that "... the lather that develops on my skin is thin and ropy..." and it needed a lot of water to develop a loose, fluffy foam. I tried the soaps today (3 months after making) and the lather is surprisingly different -- it develops quickly and easily into a pleasant bubbly foam that rinsed off nicely and left my hands feeling pleasantly clean without feeling stripped or dry. The bubbles are not a huge fluffy froth like a CO soap, but there's definitely no gluey/slimy/ropy stuff going on either.

Wowser.

 

[krunt]

Hi DeeAnna,

Thanks for your explanation as to why the higher water soap batches may not be smelling.

The smell of olive oil in unscented soap is something I have only ever seen a couple of people post about on this board, so either most people don't find it unpleasant, or most people aren't experiencing it for whatever reason. I have wondered if the fact I use extra virgin olive oil has something to do with it, however I have never compared it with a refined olive oil to know for sure. For the record, I have noticed the same off smell with avocado oil (extra virgin, as well).

And that's some good news regarding the lather quality of your soap. I'll be busting mine out again in a few days, I hope it's as good as yours!

 

[DeeAnna]

Hey there! For what it's worth, I used just "olive oil", not extra virgin, so your point about the type of OO may be a good one. I have made a couple of batches of soap with a high % of avocado oil and have not noticed an odor, but the smell of the oil in the bottle is very mild so I'm guessing the avocado oil is not EV.

That said, I never notice the famed "piggy" smell of lard soap that some loathe. Lard soap just smells like nice soap to me. I've worked on my family's hog farm and my grandmother rendered her own lard and made lard soap, so I do think I have a clue about this. Maybe my nose is just different.

 

[DeeAnna]

Well, it's been 121 to 128 days since I made my two batches of "superlye" soap. The soaps are continuing to sllllooooowly lose weight, but I am going to stop tracking this, because the weight loss is so small and looks pretty much the same as "normal" soaps.

I learned in doing this weighing that I have to convert the weight loss of all the soap recipes so they all share a common basis. If I don't, there's no way to really compare the weight loss of different soaps. That's what this chart shows -- the average water weight in the bars of soap on a particular day divided by the amount of 100% pure soap in the bars.

When you put the data on a common basis and compare the weight loss curves, the superlye soaps really don't behave a lot differently than the normal soaps ... after the superlye soaps (green and orange curves) lose enough water to make them similar in composition to the normal ones (blue and red curves). Before that time, the superlye soaps have a large, fast water loss.

Both of my superlye batches are really pleasant in the shower with a bath puff and for use as a shampoo. They lather well and rinse cleanly with the extra agitation and aeration from puff or hair.

I've gone back and forth about the quality of the lather at the sink. I checked one of my all-olive bars (from my first batch that broke) and it lathered wonderfully at the sink today. It had an unexpected amount of lather with a pleasant whipped cream texture. The lather developed quickly and easily and rinsed off cleanly -- a real winner. A bar from my second safflower-lard batch had a lather that seems to be more typical of a normal castile -- dense ropes of lather, almost gelatinous, that did not rinse off easily. Fine for the shower, but not something I want to use at the sink.

The lather has been so variable -- sometimes the soaps lather beautifully and sometimes they don't. I find myself wondering if there is some kind of difference about the soap at the surface of a bar vs. down deeper, because it seems as if the bars I've been using tend to lather better than the fresh bars do. Dunno.....

 

[Bex1982]

What do you think causes the slimyness of regular cp oo soap? I was wondering if castile soap might make an exceptional amount of glycerin and maybe with the lye heavy formula the lye is somehow eating the glycerin. That paired with obviously no sf %. What are your thoughts Deeanna?

 

[DeeAnna]

No, olive oil won't make any more glycerin when turned into soap than any other fat, regardless of the amount of lye used. Any of the soaping oils, when saponified, makes 3 molecules of soap and 1 of glycerin.

Glycerin is highly soluble in water, so I really don't think that is the issue. And if it was, then melt and pour soap would have a reputation for being slimy -- it is notorious for oozing glycerin in humid weather. I don't recall that I've heard anyone complain much about that, although lots complain about the sweating issue.

I suspect the issue about slimy lather is more about the fairly high water solubility of a soap that is very high in sodium olivate (aka a castile) and the specific process of how this particular soap molecule goes into solution with water. IMO, when a castile first absorbs water, this type of soap first turns into a gelatinous colloid (this is the slimy stage), then it actually goes into true solution as more water is added. (You can see this translucent gel forming if you put a castile bar in a puddle of water for awhile.) A bath puff short circuits the gel step and mixes the soap more quickly into solution.

The shorter, straight chain soaps (coconut, lard, palm, etc.) or soaps made with a mix of fats including olive tend to go into solution without going through such an obvious gelatinous (slimy) stage.

I am still wondering why the superlye recipe changes the lathering characteristics of the soap -- no grand theories come to mind.

 

[Bex1982]

I'm still wondering the same (why the lye heavy thing changes it).
I sort of like the "slimy" castile because I get the gooey parts off and it's like shower gel

 

[hmlove1218]

I've been thinking about this thread for a while now and finally decided I want to make a batch of the lye heavy castile. How has everyone's turned out?

 

[cpacamper]

hmlove, I made a batch in July. Hardly any lather to speak of after a six month cure, but it seems to be very gentle soap, not slimy in the least. Very hard, white bars (I used evoo we had in the cupboard).