First Soap Recipe, how does it look?

[DomTheDillyHoo]

Hello all! After creating a few batches of CP soap off of recipes, and doing plenty of research and getting help on the ingredients used in this recipe of soap, I have put together my first recipe (rough.) There is Kaolin Clay that I was told should be added after achieving a light trace. I also was told I should reserve batch water for water used to be mixed with kaolin clay, so I did so. I took away 8g of batch water because the 8g of water would be put in with the kaolin clay upon light trace. Let me know what you think. If anything looks wrong, please let me know. I want to have the highest chance of success for my first custom batch. Thanks!

INGREDIENTS:​

• 273g Olive Oil
• 227g Palm Oil
• 227g Coconut Oil (76 deg)
• 159g Shea Butter
• 123g Lye
• 337g Water
• 20g Bay Rum Essential Oil
• 5g Fir Needle Essential Oil
• 10g Orange Essential Oil
• 5g Cedarwood Essential Oil
• 8g Kaolin Clay
• 1tsp Sea Salt

INSTRUCTIONS:​

1. Mix 8g of Kaolin Clay with 8g of water, set aside.
2. Mix your essential oils into a cup, set aside.
3. Fill a cup with 329g of water and add 1 tsp of sea salt. Stir until dissolved.
4. Slowly and carefully add 123g of lye to your saltwater. Stir until the lye has fully dissolved and the liquid is clear. Set aside to cool.
5. In a large pot, combine your oils and set on stove on low heat. Turn off stove once oils have fully melted and have been stirred.
6. Using a Lazer thermometer, consistently check the temperature of the oils and the lye-water. Once the oils and the lye-water have cooled to 130 degrees Fahrenheit or below, and are ideally within 10 degrees of each other, add the lye-water and oils to a lye-safe bucket, and stick blend until thin trace.
7. Add your Kaolin Clay into your soap.
8. Add your mix of essential oils to your soap.
9. Pour into a mold and let sit. Remove soap from mold and cut soap 1-3 days after pouring into mold.

 

[AliOop]

HI @DomTheDillyHoo

That is a decent beginner recipe, a slight riff on the trinity of oils. I personally would find it too high in coconut oil (which is very cleansing, aka stripping to the skin). But some are fine with that, and since you are new, why not give it a try and see if you like it? I would definitely change a few other things, however.

1. Soaping at 130F means that your batter will trace quite quickly. You might consider letting everything cool off to 100F to slow things down.

2. In my opinion, adding the kaolin clay at trace is a more difficult task than adding it to the oils or lye water before you mix them. Remember that once your soap reaches trace, it will keep getting thicker on its own, even if you stop blending. Clay also thickens the soap. So, adding clay after you've already traced means you will be stirring a thickener into an already thickening solution. Since you aren't adding any colorants that the clay might affect, why not stick-blend the clay into the oils before adding the lye solution? This will help you disperse it more evenly while you are not racing against the clock.

Normally I would suggest that you use the EOs to hydrate the clay, but you should be made aware that Bay Rum EO is approximately 60% eugenol. Eugenol is a very strong trace accelerant. Even a few drops of it will make the soap become almost instantly thick. With that much eugenol in your EO mix, once you add it to the batter, if you are lucky, you may get five seconds to try and stir them in well, before your soap becomes so thick that you will be plopping and mashing it into the mold. This is another reason for soaping at a lower temp; the higher the temp, the faster the eugenol will react to accelerate the trace.

That's enough for now. I've stayed up way too late watching election results come in, and had better get myself to bed. However you end up making this, I hope you will share the results with us. Good luck!

 

[Marsi]

I think AliOop has covered everything

Nice first recipe

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Nice job on the recipe. I didn’t put it into a soap calculator to check the lye amount, but the amount looks about right for a batch made with just under 900 g of fats.

I checked the safe usage guidance on Bay Rum EO, here (scroll down to link to the IFRA doc) and here. It’s one of the EOs that can cause dermal sensitization. Recommended usage is ~ 1% of total fat weight, which would be 9 g if you‘re starting with 900 g of fats. If you use bay rum at a lower percentage, and keep or increase the orange in the mix, the blend may not accelerate at rocket speed, but I would still consider the advice above about working at a lower temperature.

Now that I‘ve read your full method, I suggest that you use more like 16-24 g of the recipe water to hydrate the clay, or take the easy route and add the clay to the batch oils as suggested above. Kaolin clay is not a swelling clay, but you’re going to end up with a paste-like consistency unless you add more water.

 

[DomTheDillyHoo]

HI @DomTheDillyHoo

That is a decent beginner recipe, a slight riff on the trinity of oils. I personally would find it too high in coconut oil (which is very cleansing, aka stripping to the skin). But some are fine with that, and since you are new, why not give it a try and see if you like it? I would definitely change a few other things, however.

1. Soaping at 130F means that your batter will trace quite quickly. You might consider letting everything cool off to 100F to slow things down.

2. In my opinion, adding the kaolin clay at trace is a more difficult task than adding it to the oils or lye water before you mix them. Remember that once your soap reaches trace, it will keep getting thicker on its own, even if you stop blending. Clay also thickens the soap. So, adding clay after you've already traced means you will be stirring a thickener into an already thickening solution. Since you aren't adding any colorants that the clay might affect, why not stick-blend the clay into the oils before adding the lye solution? This will help you disperse it more evenly while you are not racing against the clock.

Normally I would suggest that you use the EOs to hydrate the clay, but you should be made aware that Bay Rum EO is approximately 60% eugenol. Eugenol is a very strong trace accelerant. Even a few drops of it will make the soap become almost instantly thick. With that much eugenol in your EO mix, once you add it to the batter, if you are lucky, you may get five seconds to try and stir them in well, before your soap becomes so thick that you will be plopping and mashing it into the mold. This is another reason for soaping at a lower temp; the higher the temp, the faster the eugenol will react to accelerate the trace.

That's enough for now. I've stayed up way too late watching election results come in, and had better get myself to bed. However you end up making this, I hope you will share the results with us. Good luck!

Thanks so much for the help on this recipe, I am trying to keep my expectations low because with my first custom recipe, anything could happen. I will now mix the oils and lye-water into eachother at 95-105 degrees, I will decrease the amount of bay rum used in this recipe, and I will instead add the kaolin clay into the oils. I have a few questions though, should I reserve oils instead of water to mix with the kaolin clay since I'm putting it into the oils anyway? And you said something about kaolin clay affecting colorant. How does it affect colorant? Thanks a lot!

 

[dibbles]

I agree with what the others have said. I often use 25% coconut oil without finding it to be too drying and I think your recipe will make a nice soap. I would let the oils and lye solution cool more - to between 100-110. For this batch, I would also add the kaolin to the warm oils and stick blend well before adding the lye solution. I do like to hydrate my clay with a little batch oil or batch water before adding to my oils, but that is personal preference and not necessary.

 

[DomTheDillyHoo]

I agree with what the others have said. I often use 25% coconut oil without finding it to be too drying and I think your recipe will make a nice soap. I would let the oils and lye solution cool more - to between 100-110. For this batch, I would also add the kaolin to the warm oils and stick blend well before adding the lye solution. I do like to hydrate my clay with a little batch oil or batch water before adding to my oils, but that is personal preference and not necessary.

Thanks! I think im gonna use oils instead of water to mix with my kaolin clay. Which oil should I use? I would assume olive oil because its liquid at room temperature..

 

[dibbles]

Thanks! I think im gonna use oils instead of water to mix with my kaolin clay. Which oil should I use? I would assume olive oil because its liquid at room temperature..

Yes, olive oil would be the best choice. Good luck, and post pictures when your soap is done!

 

[AliOop]

And you said something about kaolin clay affecting colorant. How does it affect colorant? Thanks a lot!

White kaolin clay will lighten and/or mute the color of your batter, including any mica or other colorant you might add. It's nowhere near as strong as titanium dioxide or even white mica, but it does have an affect.

@Mobjack Bay good catch on the usage rate!

 

[DomTheDillyHoo]

White kaolin clay will lighten and/or mute the color of your batter, including any mica or other colorant you might add. It's nowhere near as strong as titanium dioxide or even white mica, but it does have an affect.

@Mobjack Bay good catch on the usage rate!

Oh, so if I use any micas or any other colorant, why should I put kaolin clay in at the stage of trace rather than in the oils or lye? You said, "Since you aren't adding any colorants that the clay might affect, why not stick-blend the clay into the oils before adding the lye solution." I'm sorry for all these questions, I like to have information for next time I might want to use colorants! Thank you so much for your time.

 

[cmzaha]

When I use Kaolin soap I just stick blend it directly into my oils. Personally, I would lower that Bay Rum due to the acceleration issues and you're being a new soaper and up the Cedarwood if you like Cedarwood and cedarwood usually soaps beautifully. I would also up the Fir, but for my nose, you just can't get too much Cedarwood.

White Kaolin really will not affect the color of your soap batter other than possibly lighten it a tad. Also, when you add it to your oils you will know what color you are working with.

 

[AliOop]

Oh, so if I use any micas or any other colorant, why should I put kaolin clay in at the stage of trace rather than in the oils or lye? You said, "Since you aren't adding any colorants that the clay might affect, why not stick-blend the clay into the oils before adding the lye solution." I'm sorry for all these questions, I like to have information for next time I might want to use colorants! Thank you so much for your time.

Sorry for the confusion. I was referring to the fact that you might not want to add kaolin to the entire batch if you were trying to achieve a specific color, or you were creating multiple colors.

In those situations, the soaper will bring the batch to emulsion (just before trace) and split it into separate containers for making different colors. It doesn't matter much for darker or deeper colors, but I find it does affect the lighter colors. So if you don't want the kaolin to lighten or dull your pale yellow, for instance, you wouldn't add any kaolin to the container with the yellow batter.

 

[DomTheDillyHoo]

Sorry for the confusion. I was referring to the fact that you might not want to add kaolin to the entire batch if you were trying to achieve a specific color, or you were creating multiple colors.

In those situations, the soaper will bring the batch to emulsion (just before trace) and split it into separate containers for making different colors. It doesn't matter much for darker or deeper colors, but I find it does affect the lighter colors. So if you don't want the kaolin to lighten or dull your pale yellow, for instance, you wouldn't add any kaolin to the container with the yellow batter.

Oh, I believe I understand now. Thanks a lot! So in my case, I'm adding kaolin clay to the oils mostly because it will help prevent it from accelerating faster with the bay rum essential oil. But it mostly doesn't really matter if I put my kaolin clay into my oils, the lye water, or the soap in a general situation. if I were to be adding colors, I might want to reconsider adding kaolin clay to my entire batch because it might affect the colors. But overall it doesn't matter if I put it into the oils or the lye water or the soap. Is this looking accurate? Thanks!

 

[Catscankim]

Hi there @DomTheDillyHoo what soap calculator are you using

 

[DomTheDillyHoo]

Hi there @DomTheDillyHoo what soap calculator are you using

lyecalc.com

 

[dibbles]

But overall it doesn't matter if I put it into the oils or the lye water or the soap.

This is correct. I wouldn't worry too much about the effect it might have on colors until you feel like you have a good handle on minimal stick blending and recognizing emulsion.

 

[Zing]

I'm just here to say Welcome, Good Luck, and where the heck are the pictures already??!!

 

[KiwiMoose]

Just wondering what percentage your lye concentration is? I tend to use 320g water with 136g Lye and that is around 30%. If yours is only 28% I would probably increase it to around 33% if you want to avoid overheating and glycerin rivers.

 

[user 56151]

I mix my kaolin clay with the fragrance oil. It’s supposed to help anchor the fragrance, I don’t know if it does but I do it anyway. Some people swear by it. I also dissolve 1tsp sugar per 500grams and 2% citric acid in a little bit of hot water and add it to my oils.

 

[Zany_in_CO]

I have put together my first recipe (rough.) ... Let me know what you think.

https://www.soapmakingforum.com/sea...title_only]=1&c[users]=Zany_in_CO&o=relevance
https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/first-soap-done-yay.83644/#post-885357