Do you like your dual lye soap?

[lenarenee]

Its been an extraordinarily busy and chaotic year for us and I'm desperately behind in soaping.

I've finally tested/retested (4 weeks, then 6 weeks) my first batches of dual lye soap made with high lard and a 95/5 lye split. So far, I am not a fan of the dual lye. The soap stays softer longer - a week 6 cured bar is as soft as a regular 3 week cured bar. And dare I say....it lathers almost too much? At 4 weeks I had so much lather it was leaving a stack of it behind in the sink and taking way too long to rinse off. Now at six weeks, I like the lather better - the bubbles are bigger instead of simply over abundant, rinses better and I can live with it. Also - the big bubbles are stretchy and makes for a lot of fun if you're 9 years old!

But the bars are still so much softer, so I thought I'd experiment with a 97/3% split and see what happens.

What have you all noticed with your dual lye soaps?

 

[Susie]

My dual lye soap is as hard as my 100% NaOH from 4 weeks on. Matter of fact, it took my mandatory cure time from 8 weeks to 4. I love it!

What is the rest of your recipe, and curing conditions?

 

[lenarenee]

Used 33% lye solution, 4% sf, 5 lb recipe

5% castor
15% co
10% ho sunflower
15% tallow
55% lard

(I know many people prefer grams instead of percentages, but unless you disagree I think the %'s are more helpful here.)

One loaf gelled - and it's still softer than my normal single lye soap.

Sorry....you asked for curing conditions. We've been mostly very moderate (less than 40% daytime) in humidity, far drier conditions than you get Susie

 

[Susie]

Is this a recipe you have made with 100% NaOH from the same bottle as you made the dual lye soap?

 

[lenarenee]

Yes. However - that NaOH bottle was first opened well before Christmas, but then remained unopened for about 3 months. I was suspicious too - but there was no sign of clumping. The KOH is 3 years old - but used once and never touched again until I made liquid soap last year, and now dual soap. So all told it's been opened 5 times. (Soapee's KOH is set oft 90%, so I wasn't worried about the KOH). High humidity is not common here in San Diego county.

I just cut my newest dual (97/3) soaps made with a freshly opened NaOH bottle. One batch divided into 3 loaves: 2 gelled and were cut at 24ish hours - but still softer than expected for gelled soap. The 3rd is over 48 hours old and doubtful it will be ready at 72 - used wsp's pink grapefruit.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

A tip for those who struggle when reading % recipes -mentally replace the % sign with oz and think of it as being a 100oz batch. (5oz castor, 15oz co and so on)

Did you use the same moulds and so on? Same additives (salt, sugar)?

 

[kchaystack]

Not sure why you would do a dual lye on this recipe. Usually a 95/5% NaOH/KOH solution is used with high oleic soaps to reduce the slimey oleic soap. I seem to remember a thread that discussed that the dual lye technique wouldn't be needed for higher stearic soap. Might be wrong.

I have a bar of dual lye olive oil soap and a palm free vegan bar in my shower now. Both are very nice and under 6mo old

 

[cherrycoke216]

Not sure why you would do a dual lye on this recipe. Usually a 95/5% NaOH/KOH solution is used with high oleic soaps to reduce the slimey oleic soap. I seem to remember a thread that discussed that the dual lye technique wouldn't be needed for higher stearic soap. Might be wrong.

I have a bar of dual lye olive oil soap and a palm free vegan bar in my shower now. Both are very nice and under 6mo old

Here's DeeAnna tackle down the KOH question.
http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showpost.php?p=528179
High stearic and palmitic acid soap are long lasting soap, thus less soluble. A little bit of KOH just make lather faster. If that makes sense.

ETA: on a second thought, did you mean adding KOH and making it more soluble is kinda contradiction the long lasting quality of high stearic acid & palmitic acid soap???

 

[Susie]

Not sure why you would do a dual lye on this recipe. Usually a 95/5% NaOH/KOH solution is used with high oleic soaps to reduce the slimey oleic soap. I seem to remember a thread that discussed that the dual lye technique wouldn't be needed for higher stearic soap. Might be wrong.

I have a bar of dual lye olive oil soap and a palm free vegan bar in my shower now. Both are very nice and under 6mo old

Because dual lye makes even high lard bars bubble ferociously. It is now my go-to lye for all my bar soaps.

 

[DeeAnna]

I'm not seeing any unusual softness in my dual lye soaps, Lenarenee. I've been using 5% KOH and this change has made no clear-cut difference in how my soap turns out. I don't see any practical difference between the KOH-NaOH soap batches vs. the all NaOH batches, except for the lathering ability.

Also see the thread I started about this dual lye idea: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=59747

 

[lenarenee]

A tip for those who struggle when reading % recipes -mentally replace the % sign with oz and think of it as being a 100oz batch. (5oz castor, 15oz co and so on)

Did you use the same moulds and so on? Same additives (salt, sugar)?

Good question - and yes I did except for the fragrances. I'm wondering now if I simply happened to choose fo's that reversed trace a little. Hmm...except two of them were florals known for slight acceleration.

Right now I'm left with the small possibility that the NaOH had degraded enough to make a difference. Although I have 4 loaves of salt bars made in the same time frame from that NaOH and showed no differences whatsoever.

The good news is although my go to recipe is 60% or more lard, I love the crispness of a high tallow bar. But the thin milky lather of tallow doesn't make me happy. Neither do I like an equal recipe of lard and tallow, despite the fact I'd love to use both in my recipe. Now I'm going to experiment with dual lye and adding tallow to increase the crispness of the lard bar.....this just might be the magic formula!!

 

[DeeAnna]

I've tried tallow several times now as a partial substitute for the lard in my basic high-lard recipe. Tallow adds hardness, but I agree with you Lenarenee that the lather is not quite as pleasant when the % of tallow is higher.

For example, I made a pine tar batch using tallow at 30% of the total fats, and the soap bars were harder compared to a no-tallow batch, but lather was not as abundant and creamy as a no-tallow PT soap. My DH even noticed the difference, but he and I also have noticed the lather quality has improved with cure. The bars he's using are about 1 year old and lather very nicely. I made a basic bath soap with 13% tallow recently, and I like that batch just fine.

I realize these two batches of soap are not an apples and apples comparison, but I think 10% to 15% tallow is a good amount to include in recipes when I have tallow to use. (Friends sometimes give me beef suet to render, but it's an on-again off-again thing.)

 

[Dahila]

I use lard and tallow but 1 part of tallow 2 parts of lard works really nice

 

[CTAnton]

I was hemming and hawing as to how to change my high % deer tallow recipe to make it more appealing to me. The 95/5 split has indeed done that. It was shocking to me what a difference in the bubble category. I'd probably investigate a lower percentage in a recipe if I didn't have so much of it!

 

[Saranac]

My "duel lye" bars seem slightly softer when unmolded than my 100% NaOH bars. But this is temperary and by week 4 they're plenty hard enough.
I love the lather of the duel lye bars, but what got me started with adding KOH was a brief passage in a 1908 soap manual. It mentions that a small amount of KOH would make CP soap appear smoother; the reference also says that KOH will make the soap milder. "Mild" is rather subjective but my bars are much smoother and cut easier with my wire cutter. They cut so smoothly that I no longer have to plane the cut surface.

 

[cherrycoke216]

I love the lather of the duel lye bars, but what got me started with adding KOH was a brief passage in a 1908 soap manual. It mentions that a small amount of KOH would make CP soap appear smoother; the reference also says that KOH will make the soap milder. "Mild" is rather subjective but my bars are much smoother and cut easier with my wire cutter. They cut so smoothly that I no longer have to plane the cut surface.

Would you mind sharing the 1908 soap manual's book name? Or did you buy a first print in secondhand book store?

 

[Saranac]

Would you mind sharing the 1908 soap manual's book name? Or did you buy a first print in secondhand book store?

I'm not sure where I found it. I have a copy I printed from the internet and put in a binder. I did a quick search and found it for free (Kindle download) on Amazon--

The Handbook of Soap Manufacture, by W.H. Simmons and H.A. Appleton. Of course, I just downloaded, too!

Or, you can find other options at Project Gutenberg.

(I edited my last post to include the Amazon link.)

 

[Dean]

Its been an extraordinarily busy and chaotic year for us and I'm desperately behind in soaping.

I've finally tested/retested (4 weeks, then 6 weeks) my first batches of dual lye soap made with high lard and a 95/5 lye split. So far, I am not a fan of the dual lye. The soap stays softer longer - a week 6 cured bar is as soft as a regular 3 week cured bar. And dare I say....it lathers almost too much? At 4 weeks I had so much lather it was leaving a stack of it behind in the sink and taking way too long to rinse off. Now at six weeks, I like the lather better - the bubbles are bigger instead of simply over abundant, rinses better and I can live with it. Also - the big bubbles are stretchy and makes for a lot of fun if you're 9 years old!

But the bars are still so much softer, so I thought I'd experiment with a 97/3% split and see what happens.

What have you all noticed with your dual lye soaps?

I know this is an old thread but if anyone searches it, I wanted to add that my dual lye soap came out very soft...and this was from a recipe that made bars that were so hard they were brittle when cut. Will reduce the water next time to accommodate the softness from KOH.

 

[Obsidian]

My duel lye bars were a bit soft too and they seemed to melt away quicker with no real increase in lather. I won't waste my time doing duel again.

 

[Dean]

My duel lye bars were a bit soft too and they seemed to melt away quicker with no real increase in lather. I won't waste my time doing duel again.

Interesting. Im hoping for some lather increase from the KoH. Dont want melt tho.