Aahh, wonderful calculator!! I am so tempted to just start straight away with HP, but so scared at the same time to fail and waste everything... let’s see what my mind settles onto! Thanks a lot for your help
First soap recipe... Need reassurance!
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Aahh, wonderful calculator!! I am so tempted to just start straight away with HP, but so scared at the same time to fail and waste everything... let’s see what my mind settles onto! Thanks a lot for your help
I haven't yet read all the comments but something you said struck me as odd, that you can't get palm oil in India.
India produces and consumes a huge amount of palm oil because it's one of the cheapest fats for cooking.
So I went looking and found that hydrogenated palm oil (also called shortening in the States) is pure palm oil and very cheap. I found it's called "vanaspati" and I use it to make my soap survive the humidity where I live at present, El Salvador. For me, 200g of hydrogenated palm costs less than US$.40. That's enough palm oil to keep 1 kg of soft oils (olive, canola and grapeseed oil blend) from turning into a puddle. I can't get tallow (beef, deer, or other ruminant fat), or lard (pig fat), so palm is it.
If you look at some of the cheapest oils in your market you'll probably find palm, maybe with some other oil mixed in.
India produces and consumes a huge amount of palm oil because it's one of the cheapest fats for cooking.
So I went looking and found that hydrogenated palm oil (also called shortening in the States) is pure palm oil and very cheap. I found it's called "vanaspati" and I use it to make my soap survive the humidity where I live at present, El Salvador. For me, 200g of hydrogenated palm costs less than US$.40. That's enough palm oil to keep 1 kg of soft oils (olive, canola and grapeseed oil blend) from turning into a puddle. I can't get tallow (beef, deer, or other ruminant fat), or lard (pig fat), so palm is it.
If you look at some of the cheapest oils in your market you'll probably find palm, maybe with some other oil mixed in.
Soya bean and sunflower are the common oils here. I asked the husband about vanaspati, and it’s actually sold as a vegetable ghee (ghee is clarified butter), so it’s a mix of vegetable oils that have been hydrogenated to make it thicker. I checked online and first ingredient is palm oil, and second palmolein, so you are right (and it is really cheap, around 0.26$US per 200 g ;-) ), but as you said it is mix with other oils... so my question is, how to calculate the lye amount if we don’t know the exact composition? :-/
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Check your lye calculator if you are using one. Palm and also palmolein are in many calculators.The numbers for Palm Oil and Palmolein are extremely close, so there should be no trouble at all calculating the amount of lye needed if that is your mix of oils.
I don't know if I have seen vegetable ghee on any lye calculator, but it seems likely that if there is a calculator made by someone in India, it is likely to include more of the oils available to you, I would suspect.
I meant that vegetable ghee (vanaspati) seems to be made with a variable amount of different vegetable oils. The one I saw, in the packet, they write a few of the oils and at the end they even say blend of other vegetable oils. So we basically don't know what's inside and in which quantities. So making soap using that seems a bit tricky... How do you use it? Yours is made of palm oil only?!
We have 100% palm shortening available here, so that's easy. When I bought some to test it I just used the palm oil setting in Soapee. I still have some of that soap. It is hard as a rock. I haven't purchased any since because it was super expensive and I seem happy enough without palm. Although now and then I think I might order some from a soap supplier.
We also have Crisco shortening, which has Palm & Soy and it's listed in Soapee as Crisco, new. So again, super easy calculations. The lye calculator does it for me. And the soap turns out fine, so it must be right or close enough to correct that it works.
I agree, the vegetable ghee is surely too tricky to find the right calculations for lye.
We also have Crisco shortening, which has Palm & Soy and it's listed in Soapee as Crisco, new. So again, super easy calculations. The lye calculator does it for me. And the soap turns out fine, so it must be right or close enough to correct that it works.
I agree, the vegetable ghee is surely too tricky to find the right calculations for lye.
@momoha is there a vanaspati that maybe has a simpler mix of oils? Where I live that shortening I mentioned earlier is the only one that has almost all palm, but there's other liquid oil blends that have only palm and soy (70 and 30% respectively), others that have palm and olive (90/10%). It's a matter of looking at labels..
Alfa_Lazcares
Well-Known Member
The problem is the labels say only “mix of vegetable oils” or something along those lines. Here we have a brand like that, and dont even say if it contains palm, but my guess it it does, as for what is the rest, who knows.
I think I should just forget palm oil, seems it’ll make me more ecological anyways, so not that bad in the end I guess! It’s quite ironic that India is a huge exporter of palm oil and beef, but none of it is sold internally... but let’s not diverge from the initial topic ;-)
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