Dual lye castile

[Guspuppy]

Apologies for being a little off the main topic, but since we are talking about snotty lather here - is it in Castile soap from the very beginning or does it develop as it ages? I just made my first Castile over the weekend and I added a tbsp of sugar to the water to help it lather. Reading this thread alarmed me so i went and lather tested a piece and it seems fine. I want to give it to some very elderly aunts for Christmas but if it is going to develop snotty lather I'll have to make something else (maybe buy some KOH) soon! We all have soft water, btw, in case that makes a difference.

 

[penelopejane]

I can only get Potassium Hydroxide in 25 kg buckets where I live and only one soap supplier I have found in Australia will send it via courier. I am not ordering from them for a while.
But after exhaustive ringing around I can buy it in 1kg jars at a cleaning supplier 2 hours drive north. Next time I go up there on a weekday I will get some. So pleased.

 

[penelopejane]

Apologies for being a little off the main topic, but since we are talking about snotty lather here - is it in Castile soap from the very beginning or does it develop as it ages? I just made my first Castile over the weekend and I added a tbsp of sugar to the water to help it lather. Reading this thread alarmed me so i went and lather tested a piece and it seems fine. I want to give it to some very elderly aunts for Christmas but if it is going to develop snotty lather I'll have to make something else (maybe buy some KOH) soon! We all have soft water, btw, in case that makes a difference.

Lots of people (well me and my family) love it. I cure it for 1 year. I have used it in less but it tends to dissolve quickly. I am not sure what they mean by snotty lather. I don't think I get it and the OO I use is pure EVOO. It might depend on the water supply in your house. It might depend on the OO.

 

[fuzz-juzz]

I can only get Potassium Hydroxide in 25 kg buckets where I live and only one soap supplier I have found in Australia will send it via courier. I am not ordering from them for a while.
But after exhaustive ringing around I can buy it in 1kg jars at a cleaning supplier 2 hours drive north. Next time I go up there on a weekday I will get some. So pleased.

You can get it off eBay in 1kg tubs and also from Escentials of Australia.

 

[DeeAnna]

Soap will form a gel (aka snot, slime) based on the oleic acid content in the fats used to make it. If the soap is mostly sodium oleate, it's going to form a gel -- that's just its nature. I should probably trot out my solubility charts and get all geeky on y'all to try to explain, but I'm kind of down and tired right now so I'm going to leave it at that.

There are a number of reasons why some people don't see the gel/snot. Two I can think of quickly -- the soaper is making soap from oil that's sold as olive (or other high oleic fat) but it's really a low oleic fat masquerading as olive or whatever. Or the person is using a fair amount friction and/or lots of water and/or warm water to develop the lather and thus they break up the oleic gel as soon as it forms. It makes no difference whether one's water is hard or soft -- it's more important whether the water is cold or hot, since sodium oleate is more soluble and less inclined to make an obvious gel when used in hot water.

Here's a suggestion to make oleic gel -- Wet the bar of soap and also to wet your hand in cool water. Let any free water run off the soap to leave just a wetted surface. Let the wetted soap sit undisturbed for 10-15 seconds. Don't touch it or add extra water -- give it a short amount of time to absorb the water and form a gel. Put your wet hand firmly flat down on the wetted soap and let it sit for a few seconds. Pull your palm straight away from the soap surface about an inch (2 cm). If you see strings of gel bridging the gap between the soap surface and your hand, that's oleic gel. If your hand has white or clear gelatinous lumps on it, that's oleic gel.

Another way -- Put the soap in a dish that has a thin layer of water in it. You're simulating soap sitting in a wet soap dish. After 20-30 minutes, remove the soap from the dish and examine the soaked surface. If the wetted soap looks more like soft mushy pudding or gravy, the soap isn't high enough in oleic acid to form an oleic gel. If the wetted soap peels off the underlying dry soap in a relatively firm layer -- something a bit like Jello gelatin -- that's oleic gel.

 

[penelopejane]

You can get it off eBay in 1kg tubs and also from Escentials of Australia.

Yes but i wanted to get more than just one thing from them because of the postage. I can pick this up next time I go to the big smoke for free.
Think frugal. : )

 

[penelopejane]

Soap will form a gel (aka snot, slime) based on the oleic acid content in the fats used to make it. If the soap is mostly sodium oleate, it's going to form a gel -- that's just its nature.

DeeAnna,
Thank you for restating things so understandably.

Do you think it is causes less gel to form if you have a low SF? like 0% or 2%?

 

[DeeAnna]

Do you think it is causes less gel to form if you have a low SF? like 0% or 2%?

The 100% olive oil NaOH soap I've been talking about in this thread was made with a -40% superfat (in other words, made with a huge lye excess). It makes plenty of gel. Other people see the same gel formation in their 100% olive oil soaps made with more typical superfat. So I don't think it makes much if any difference.

What does make a difference whether you see the gel or not when using the soap is the amount of water (lots of warm water = less obvious gel) and abrasion (more mixing and aeration = less obvious gel) and cure (well-cured, dry soap = less soap on your washcloth = less obvious gel)

 

[penelopejane]

What does make a difference whether you see the gel or not when using the soap is the amount of water (lots of warm water = less obvious gel) and abrasion (more mixing and aeration = less obvious gel) and cure (well-cured, dry soap = less soap on your washcloth = less obvious gel)

Thank you. I think I do all those options so maybe that's the difference. DH uses a washer so it never comes into consideration for him. My Castile is (mostly) given a year minimum cure.

 

[Guspuppy]

thank you for that explanation DeeAnna!

 

[Arimara]

If I can get some rice bran oil, I could try this technique with that, olive oil, and avocado oil. I would take another risk at an 8oz batch but I've learned from my previous mistake and will be more careful with all of my measurements (I made a lye heavy batch of rice bran oil bastile for an experiment). I just don't feel like looking for rice bran oil now.

 

[ngian]

I was thinking if this dual lye method could help also with thickening a liquid soap. KOH 95%, NaOH 5%. I know only with experiments we can get some answers but I was wondering if anyone has already tried that.

 

[Susie]

I have used from 5% up to 40% NaOH in an effort to thicken liquid soap. It does not work. If you use 50% NaOH, it begins to get snotty unless you make a cream soap.

ETA: I tried up to 45% NaOH, I had to finish breakfast to check my notes.

 

[DeeAnna]

From our human point of view, it seems sensible that the overall texture of a mostly-potassium soap should smoothly and gradually shift from water thin to honey-like syrup to smooth gel to firm solid as the percentage of sodium increases in the soap. From the soap's point of view, that is absolutely not something it wants to do.

Sodium soaps really "want" to be organized, so that's why sodium soaps prefer to take a solid form or make a ropy gel depending on water content and fatty acid content. The solidity of a bar soap or the ropy-ness of a sodium-soap gel is the result of those sodium soap molecules trying to organize themselves into some kind of structure. Sodium soaps will finally end their quest to be organized only when the water content gets very high. At that point, a sodium soap will form a watery-thin solution.

Potassium soaps are less particular about being organized into a framework -- they're naturally more disorganized. That is why a potassium soap can range in texture from soft sticky paste to smooth gel/syrup to water-thin liquid, again depending on water content and fatty acid content.

As you dial up the sodium content in a mostly KOH recipe by adding more and more NaOH, you're very likely to see exactly what Susie has seen -- a fairly abrupt shift from mostly disorganized potassium soap behavior to mostly organized sodium soap behavior. I won't say it's impossible, but I do think it's going to be tough to find a precise mixture of Na and K and fatty acids and water content that produces the human ideal of a thick syrup or gel that stays pourable and doesn't get ropy. We're wanting a soap that is carefully balanced between sodium-soap characteristics and potassium-soap characteristics. That will be a challenge, because a soap generally wants to behave one way or the other, not somewhere in between.

 

[Arimara]

I wish I could show you the unholy gelatinous soapy mixture that became of my avocado oil tester. I'm trying this again but this time with a 0% superfat. I have my soaps curing now.

 

[Arimara]

I messed up with the olive oil soap today and made something with a 5% superfat. It is currently hardening up as we speak albeit since I've never made a pure castile, I have no idea if it is setting on the faster side or normally. I made it at about 11:00 or so and it is not a liquid anymore.

The avocado oil, if the dual lye process is used for it, seems trace much faster than olive oil, especially with a mover of an FO.

Edit: I unmolded these two soaps about two hours ago. they were very firm and not zappy. Considering that I was told that I'd have to wait at least a day to unmold a castile, I'm quite surprised.

 

[cherrycoke216]

Nikos -- Like I said, I remember SMF member Sistrum sharing this tip several years ago, but I wasn't interested in pursuing the idea at the time she mentioned it. I've tried to find the post where she talked about it, but I've given up on that project. The SMF advanced search will let me restrict my search to just her posts, but it won't search on keywords of 3 letters (KOH) or less. Google won't let me do a combined search in SMF by member name and keyword. And I'm not up to the idea of personally looking through all 500+ of her posts to find the one.

Pims, you can add koh to cold process soap. I now add 10% of my NaOH to my batches high in lard and or tallow to help with lather, but will probably keep going higher just to see where I feel the cut off is for my formulas.

Hi, everyone. Here's a long- time lurker's contribution to the forum...



I think DeeAnna is referring to this post by Sistrum?!

Since I have seen commercial facial soap ingredient list states both NaOH & KOH, and at the time I just didn't get it...and tonight I bumped into this thread with High OLEIC acid soap using both lye.
The curiousness/ geekiness just got me and I have to find it out. But since I'm a lurker, not quite sure I'm posting it right with iPhone app...

It's from a thread started by FatFacedCharlie called KOH and NaOH in shaving soap ,
www.soapmakingforum.com/archive/index.php/t-32706.html
Probably in post 19 or I just lost count!!! Haha!

ETA: I used " lard, KOH, % " & user ID sistrum to filter it out... Still not quite sure if this is the answer DeeAnna is referring to.

 

[DeeAnna]

YES! Thank you, Cherrycoke! <...doing a happy dance...> I really appreciate the help.

Just a thought -- I really think Sistrum meant to write KOH, not NaOH, in her post:

"...I now add 10% of my [KOH] to my batches high in lard and or tallow to help with lather, but will probably keep going higher just to see where I feel the cut off is for my formulas. ..."

 

[cherrycoke216]

YES! Thank you, Cherrycoke! <...doing a happy dance...> I really appreciate the help.

Just a thought -- I really think Sistrum meant to write KOH, not NaOH, in her post:

Woohoo!!!
It's me doing the happy dance!
Glad that I can help.
<3
You're a true heroine. Should made you a crown or laurels or something.
Thank you for Always Breaking the hard stuff down and translate into human language for the Non-science people here!

And you are right, I think it's a fast typo there according to the post she replied.

 

[DeeAnna]

I'm happy that this thread has gotten others interested in using a bit of KOH in bar soap recipes to increase lather and reduce oleic slime.

Here are a couple of threads that develop this idea further -- I want to mention these threads here so others reading this thread can find the others more easily:

"Castile 95%NaOH 5%KOH calculations help" by Earlene: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=60350
"Dual Alkali Soaps (NaOH & KOH)" by Nikos (ngian): http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=61561
"Dual lye soap? What is this amazing concept?" by Mikvanrose: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?p=625451