Feeling Good About a Final Recipe

[Guest]

This was my first recipe, using hp crock pot method I got a nice hard long lasting bar, that is mild but not as mild as I would like it. It was a nice whitish yellow.

7.1 oz of coconut oil
16.5 oz of lard
8 oz of olive oil
4.382 oz of lye
10.428 oz of water
2 oz coconut milk added after cook
5% superfat

this is 22% coconut
52% lard and 26%olive oil

my second batch
which was still not as moisturizing, but I did experiment with color and scent, of which I am real comfortable with an orange essential oil I purchased

was 52% lard, 20% coconut oil 4% shea butter, 24% olive oil I added honey after cook. My worst complaint was that the soap was not a creamy whitish yellow but was more toward an oily translucent yellow

so my third batch is sooooo soft and will probably take a month to harden. I won't know for a while whether it is as gentle a bar as I hoped because it is too squishy to use right now

it was 41% lard, 31% olive, 17% canola, 5% shea and 5% castor oil, it did lather though, and I was suprised

at 7% superfat, 2 oz of coconut milk after cook

with all that said

I think I will stay at
53% lard
16% coconut oil
5% castor oil
21% olive oil
5% shea butter

I will only superfat 5%
and add coconut milk after cook

I think this will yield a bar I will be the most happy with

 

[honor435]

is your "lard" soybean or palm? do you mean shortening, what does it say on ingredients? just wondered.

 

[Lil Outlaws]

Lard is usually pig fat.. I think you're thinking of Crisco/Shortening, which is usually "vegetable" aka soybean

 

[ChrissyB]

4.382 oz of lye
10.428 oz of water

How do you measure these amounts?
You must have fantastic scales.

 

[natrldsastr]

Also you will find orange EO is a bad fader, no scent within a relatively short time period, find some of those great fragrance oil suppliers online. No need to measure to all those points on your scale either, unless you're making one-bar batches. 1 point to the right is plenty.

 

[Guest]

is your "lard" soybean or palm? do you mean shortening, what does it say on ingredients? just wondered.

pork...can lard be made from veggies...I thought lard means pork and tallow means beef fat...

 

[Guest]

4.382 oz of lye
10.428 oz of water

How do you measure these amounts?
You must have fantastic scales.

no I round it off, I use the brambleberry lye calc

 

[Guest]

Also you will find orange EO is a bad fader, no scent within a relatively short time period, find some of those great fragrance oil suppliers online. No need to measure to all those points on your scale either, unless you're making one-bar batches. 1 point to the right is plenty.

I will say this the orange eo I used is from a place called Penn Herbs in Philly, I added a small amount of vanilla eo from the same store and mixed all that with bramble berry's fo "sweet thang"...the orange scent stuck real good

 

[Guest]

I also tried a lil experiment. with my first order from brambleberry I ordered a pound of sodium lauryl sulfate. I know it's use is very unpopular but I was really concerned with lather and had a preconcieved notion that homemade soap would not lather like regular soap.

I poured off 2 small amounts of my last batch of hp, one I added SLS at light trace, less than 1% and put down as a cp batch, its "wetish", almost the consistancy of LUSH brand alkamaar, if it had a wet like feel, I'ma let it sit in the basement window for a month

then I made a small hp batch with SLS, which is twice as hard and firm as the non sls hp, I just washed my hands with it and it made un natural bubbles, really fine foam and the bar "grew" mid size bubbles on it's own while it was wet and sitting in the soap dish...weird...my hands feel...okay...

 

[ChrissyB]

I think a large part of the appeal of hand crafted soaps is that they don't have additional chemicals added.
So I don't think you need to add SLS to your home made soaps to make them lather.
You could up the percentage of Coconut, or add some (not much, just 5% or so) in Castor Oil, or you can add sugar to your lye water. Make sure you dissolve all the sugar before you add the lye or you will have toffee.