Eco enzyme soap

[Oumsofia25]

Hello everyone
I'm Sam, mom of 3, has just started making soap for 1 month so I'm a newbie in soapmaking world. English is not my 1st language so I hope all of you can understand my messy English.
I would like to ask a question. So recently I stumbled upon a soap recipe in YouTube. It's an eco enzyme soap. Some of you probably never heard about eco enzyme, to make it simple this liquid is made with organic waste (clean fruit and veggie skin), fermented in water and molasses/honey. It results in low pH liquid, less than 4 (the pH mostly around 3).
So this recipe that I found used 100% coconut cooking oil and eco enzyme for lye solution.
43 grams of eco enzyme for lye solution
43 grams of extra eco enzyme for last addition (after emulsified)
300 grams of coconut oil
57 grams of lye

So I tried this recipe. I put my eco enzyme in ice bath because I'm afraid of scorching, but when I mixed it with lye, the solution thickened. Then I mixed it with the oil and start stirring. The batter thickened very fast, after I added extra eco enzyme and mixed it, the batter looked brittle, and I had hard time putting it into the mold
The soap overheat, and hardened real quick. Then after I took it out of the mold (I used individual molds), it has powdery white substance on parts of it ( soda ash?)
I haven't try using it because it's been only a week after I made the soap but I kinda scared that the soap will be lye heavy
Please kindly educate me, is this recipe lye heavy? Why the lye solution thicken and why the soap overheat?
Thank you

 

[glendam]

The best thing would be to run the recipe through a lye calculator, (like soapmakingfriend.com) to see if it is lye heavy, put the amount of coconut oil you used and see how much lye it calls for, Then compare it to the amount of lye you used.

 

[Oumsofia25]

The best thing would be to run the recipe through a lye calculator, (like soapmakingfriend.com) to see if it is lye heavy, put the amount of coconut oil you used and see how much lye it calls for, Then compare it to the amount of lye you used.

Thank you for your reply, but unfortunately I don't understand how to use lye calculator. All this time I only tried making soap with recipes I found online, which has been tested by those who posted it.
I once tried soapcalc.net but I couldn't find the field for entering liquid type.
I wonder if using acidic liquid like eco enzyme would increase superfat? Is that why the lye needed is higher than normal coconut oil soap?

 

[artemis]

Thank you for your reply, but unfortunately I don't understand how to use lye calculator.

No one understands the a lye calculator the first few times. They just keep trying, just like learning to use any new tool.

If you don't like the one you tried, try another one.

 

[glendam]

Thank you for your reply, but unfortunately I don't understand how to use lye calculator. All this time I only tried making soap with recipes I found online, which has been tested by those who posted it.
I once tried soapcalc.net but I couldn't find the field for entering liquid type.
I wonder if using acidic liquid like eco enzyme would increase superfat? Is that why the lye needed is higher than normal coconut oil soap?

I once made a video for a lye calculator I use, you can watch it here.
Normally citric acid (or lemon juice instead instead of water in the lye solution) does decrease the effectiveness of the lye, so more is needed. I would not know how much acidity the eco enzyme would have though. However, I would suggest you take the Ph of the soap to see if it is lye heavy or not. I did it once for a lye heavy soap, you can see the process here.

 

[Oumsofia25]

I once made a video for a lye calculator I use, you can watch it here.
Normally citric acid (or lemon juice instead instead of water in the lye solution) does decrease the effectiveness of the lye, so more is needed. I would not know how much acidity the eco enzyme would have though. However, I would suggest you take the Ph of the soap to see if it is lye heavy or not. I did it once for a lye heavy soap, you can see the process here.

Thank you so much. I watched your lye heavy video. I did have ph strips so I'll definitely give it a try.
Gonna watch the lye calc video too asap

 

[dragonmaker]

Soap chemically falls apart at low pH into fatty acids instead of soap molecules. It is good for soap molecules to be at high pH and won’t hurt you. The zap test is the best indicator of being lye heavy or not. pH strips aren’t all that accurate especially with solids like bar soap.

 

[not_ally]

I'm afraid I found your post very unclear, but in part I think that is because you maybe are using this "eco enzyme" to make a kind of cleaner that is not soap as we would define it here, ie; as a chemical process called saponification that combines either sodium hydroxide (lye) or potassium hydroxide (potash) with oils to create soap. We use calculators that are based on combining either lye or potash with specified amounts of selected oils to calculate exactly how much lye or potash we will need for the combination to be turned into soap.

Your recipe above states that you used 300g of coconut oil ("CO") and 55g of lye. I ran that through the calculator I usually use, soapcalc.com. According to soapcalc, you would need 77.10g of lye to saponify 300 grams of CO with a 0% superfat (the amount of excess oil which is required beyond the bare minimum required to mix with the lye to form soap). You used 55g of lye, so without the "eco enzyme" and whatever it does, the combination would definitely not have been lye heavy, rather the opposite.

ETA: ran this through soapcalc again because I am curious now, I had to go to 28% superfat to get this to get the required lye amount to go as low as 55g, so whatever the "eco enzyme" is, it does the same thing as added oil/superfat. While it makes sense that you would need a high amount of superfat with a 100% CO soap (CO is a very harsh/stripping oil when used in soap, so you need a high SF with 100% CO) 28% is really high, I've never seen that used in a soap with any oil combination before. IMO it would not make a very nice soap for using on human skin. Is it made for a specific other purpose, ie; household cleaning or something else?

I don't know if I misread your post, but based on that I don't know if anyone here can help you since we don't know what "eco enzyme" is/ what it does/how it interacts with the lye and oils, and the fact that it cannot be entered into soapcalc or another calculator. I'm not a science person, though, I hope one of the resident experts can come along and take a better swing at it.

A question, if you have lye, why not just use that, whatever oils you have, and a calculator? It seems a lot easier and safer than adding in some undefined substance that it seems difficult to research effectively and that you can't double check with any source other than the people providing the recipes. What is the benefit of this particular method?

 

[Oumsofia25]

Soap chemically falls apart at low pH into fatty acids instead of soap molecules. It is good for soap molecules to be at high pH and won’t hurt you. The zap test is the best indicator of being lye heavy or not. pH strips aren’t all that accurate especially with solids like bar soap.

Thank you very much. I did read about zap test and has just started trying it in one of my soap that has been cured, I will try it for this soap too after curing.

I'm afraid I found your post very unclear, but in part I think that is because you maybe are using this "eco enzyme" to make a kind of cleaner that is not soap as we would define it here, ie; as a chemical process called saponification that combines either sodium hydroxide (lye) or potassium hydroxide (potash) with oils to create soap. We use calculators that are based on combining either lye or potash with specified amounts of selected oils to calculate exactly how much lye or potash we will need for the combination to be turned into soap.

Your recipe above states that you used 300g of coconut oil ("CO") and 55g of lye. I ran that through the calculator I usually use, soapcalc.com. According to soapcalc, you would need 77.10g of lye to saponify 300 grams of CO with a 0% superfat (the amount of excess oil which is required beyond the bare minimum required to mix with the lye to form soap). You used 55g of lye, so without the "eco enzyme" and whatever it does, the combination would definitely not have been lye heavy, rather the opposite.

ETA: ran this through soapcalc again because I am curious now, I had to go to 28% superfat to get this to get the required lye amount to go as low as 55g, so whatever the "eco enzyme" is, it does the same thing as added oil/superfat. While it makes sense that you would need a high amount of superfat with a 100% CO soap (CO is a very harsh/stripping oil when used in soap, so you need a high SF with 100% CO) 28% is really high, I've never seen that used in a soap with any oil combination before. IMO it would not make a very nice soap for using on human skin. Is it made for a specific other purpose, ie; household cleaning or something else?

I don't know if I misread your post, but based on that I don't know if anyone here can help you since we don't know what "eco enzyme" is/ what it does/how it interacts with the lye and oils, and the fact that it cannot be entered into soapcalc or another calculator. I'm not a science person, though, I hope one of the resident experts can come along and take a better swing at it.

A question, if you have lye, why not just use that, whatever oils you have, and a calculator? It seems a lot easier and safer than adding in some undefined substance that it seems difficult to research effectively and that you can't double check with any source other than the people providing the recipes. What is the benefit of this particular method?

Hi, not_ally, thank you so much for your reply and I really appreciate that you went through soapcalc to calculate my recipe.
Now that you said my soap has high superfat seems like I dont have to worry about it being lye heavy. Acidic liquid gave more superfat, right? Seems like my soap has higher superfat then, because of this eco enzyme.. I'll dive in google again to research about this.
About the reason why I want to use eco enzyme in my soap is because of its benefit. Eco enzyme is a multi purpose cleaner, not a soap, but probably closer to vinegar. Normally people made it with whatever fruit & veggie peels, fermented with molasses and tap water, so it's only used as regular cleaner (for dishwashing, floor, laundry). It can be used for skincare if made with better ingredients. I made mine with papaya and banana peels, fermented in clean water + good quality honey. But recently I found out that we can't really know what beneficial substance in our liquid that survived through saponification (just like when people use ACV in their soap hoping to get the benefit of it), so I guess this gonna be my first and last time making eco enzyme soap. And I learned that my biggest fault is to try making soap using complicated ingredients which is not recommended for beginners
The YouTuber that posted this recipe gave trainings on how to make this the recipe to the people in Bali as part of sustainable living. She made it so easily that it convinced me on doing the same thing

 

[not_ally]

Now that you said my soap has high superfat seems like I dont have to worry about it being lye heavy.

I'm too unsure about anything connected with eco enzyme to say that, I'm afraid, I guess I'm saying that it *acts* like it's adding superfat. I would be nervous to it on my skin because I don't know what's in it and how that stuff works, it is just confusing to me. If the recipe source recommended it as an all purpose cleaner I guess I'd try using it for that (with gloves) to see how it performs.

For actual soap I'd just use lye, oils, a calculator and go from there. I really would not use, gift, sell or do anything else with a soap for which I could not personally check lye amounts with a lye calculator and understand what was going on, which I don't here.

 

[Oumsofia25]

I'm too unsure about anything connected with eco enzyme to say that, I'm afraid, I guess I'm saying that it *acts* like it's adding superfat. I would be nervous to it on my skin because I don't know what's in it and how that stuff works, it is just confusing to me. If the recipe source recommended it as an all purpose cleaner I guess I'd try using it for that (with gloves) to see how it performs.

For actual soap I'd just use lye, oils, a calculator and go from there. I really would not use, gift, sell or do anything else with a soap for which I could not personally check lye amounts with a lye calculator and understand what was going on, which I don't here.

This link contains better explanation for eco enzyme, in case you want to know more..
All this time I've been made only 6 different types of soap and the recipes were from famous soapmakers (bramble berry, soap queen, etc), which I believe have been tested by themselves in lye calc, so I just copy-paste the recipe
Except this eco enzyme soap, as the one who posted it isn't a professional soapmaker, just someone who make contents about eco living..

 

[Mobjack Bay]

From a published paper, eco-enzyme is a microbially transformed product based on organic waste, such as fruit peels. The process is somewhat similar to making vinegar from apple peels, a ginger bug made by combining grated ginger and sugar, sourdough starter, yogurt, etc. The naturally-occurring microbes from the organic matter produce alcohols, acetic acid, and lactic acid as waste products when they “consume” the organic matter. We know that the acids will neutralize some of the lye (and be transformed to salts) during the saponification process. I’m not sure exactly what happens to alcohol during saponification, but my guess it either reacts and is transformed into something else, or evaporates quickly.

 

[Oumsofia25]

From a published paper, eco-enzyme is a microbially transformed product based on organic waste, such as fruit peels. The process is somewhat similar to making vinegar from apple peels, a ginger bug made by combining grated ginger and sugar, sourdough starter, yogurt, etc. The naturally-occurring microbes from the organic matter produce alcohols, acetic acid, and lactic acid as waste products when they “consume” the organic matter. We know that the acids will neutralize some of the lye (and be transformed to salts) during the saponification process. I’m not sure exactly what happens to alcohol during saponification, but my guess it either reacts and is transformed into something else, or evaporates quickly.

Thank you for the explanation! My vocabulary is limited so I couldn't explain it any better
I've tried my soap and it lathers beautifully. Still a little bit drying because it's not fully cured yet, but overall it's just a normal soap. Thank goodness there's nothing dangerous about it