Gallseife (ox gall stain removal soap)

[Blufuz]

I’m starting this thread to keep track of my attempt to make gallseife (cow bile soap in German), and hopefully get feedback and advice along the way!

Gallseife is a traditional soap used for stain removal that is commercially available here in Switzerland but little known otherwise. It’s very popular among people who like to stick with “natural” ingredients although obviously it’s not vegetarian. It can make people a little squeamish, but until beef consumption goes out of fashion, I personally would rather use every bit of the cows we sacrifice. I’ve used the commercial soaps for 15 years, and it is amazingly good at removing stains, without being irritating to handle.

Needless to say, companies don’t share how they make it, and I haven’t been able to find a modern recipe online. The closest was this PDF of 100 year old recipes but the ratio of lye to oils was absurd, which makes me think that either they just cleaned with extremely high pH in the past, or their lye was substantially less pure than it is today.

So I’m trying to re-invent the recipe the hard way: trial and error.

Finding ox gall was easier than I expected; it’s an ingredient used in painting and art restoration, so I got a liter online from the brand Schmincke. The only safety indication is that it will cause eye-irritation if it gets in your eyes and can cause an allergic reaction, but otherwise is safe to handle.

I did my first experiment batch like so:
100% coconut oil, 0% superfat, NaOH to liquid ratio of 1:1.9

Then for the liquid I used either:
- 100% distilled water
- 50% water / ox gall
- 100% ox gall

The internet says bile is >97% water, so I don’t think I can add more; maybe the effect is there with a lot less, TBD.

I’m pretty sure the NaOH reacted somewhat with the ox gall because it turned from an amber beer color to something cloudier. I’m wondering if like with citric acid I should adjust the lye somehow, but I don’t have the tools for titration so I don’t know how to test how much lye the ox gall consumes… any ideas? Maybe I should add a small amount at trace instead?

I used coconut oil for now since it’s supposed to be high cleansing, but eventually I want to switch it with tallow, both for the perverse consistency of an all-cow product (in for a penny, in for a pound), as well as match the likely traditional recipe, and make it a “0 km” soap.

When I mixed the lye into the oil, the 100% water one immediately came to trace as is usual for coconut oil, but was substantially slower with the ox gall; it stayed thick for a while but when I actually tried to scatter traces on top they’d immediately sink. I eventually got to trace, but I don’t know what that means about what the ox gall is doing to the soap.

To test the soap, I plan to take an old white towel, pour some red wine on it, wait a day and then try:
- an honest attempt at cleaning with each soap
- dissolve some soap in water, then leave on the stain for 30 min, wash away and see who’s cleaned off the most
- the same but on a oil-stained red towel to see if it also removes clothing dyes

I’ll let y’all know how it goes in one month!

Any tips or suggestions on how to develop a stain removing recipe are extremely welcome!

 

[Ladka]

I can't offer any tips or suggestions, I'd just like to tell you I admire your systematic approach.

 

[Blufuz]

I can't offer any tips or suggestions, I'd just like to tell you I admire your systematic approach.

 

[mx5inpenn]

Bile is alkaline, so I wouldn't think it would need additional lye, but I'm no expert!

 

[Johnez]

Just gonna follow along and say this is pretty dang cool.

 

[Blue1969]

Any updates on this? Sounds really interesting?

 

[Blufuz]

Any updates on this? Sounds really interesting?

Yup! This weekend I’ll do the cleaning test

 

[DeeAnna]

Just because something is alkaline (high pH) doesn't mean it won't react with other alkaline materials.

100 year old soap recipes are mostly based on the "boiled" method of soap making, so they intentionally use an excess of alkali. That issue can be fixed at the end of saponfication.

Back in the day many soaps produced for laundry and household use and inexpensive bath soaps were intentionally left slightly lye heavy by the makers, however. That was the old makers' way of lengthening the shelf life of their soaps. But it was to the detriment of the people who had to use them.

 

[Dan9250]

I’m not sure this will help explain the reaction with the lye, but Ox gall is gall, usually obtained from cows, and is composed of the following: fatty acids, bile acids, inorganic salts, sulfates, bile pigments, cholesterol, mucin, lecithin, glycuronicacids, porphyrins, and urea.

I’m willing to bet some of these react with lye to produce the cloudy outcome.

Reference: Oxbile (Oxgall)

 

[Blufuz]

Reference: Oxbile (Oxgall)

Hmm…now I’m thinking that if my test doesn’t work, it might be because I need concentrated oxgall

 

[Blufuz]

The cleaning results are in!

The effects were not enormous, and you can only see the difference on the test where I tried to completely remove wine-soaked rags:

All soaps cleaned better than the control at the bottom (commercial liquid dish soap) but 100% oxgall did best (second to last), leaving a whiter towel. None of them restored the towel to its former glory, but in all fairness the towel had soaked in wine then dried for several days. Also, the center of the 100% sample actually was remarkably white, so for localized stain removal, I’d bet it’s sufficient.

For the oil-soaked red towel, all the soaps cleaned equally well, and none of them removed color:

But maybe this was too good a dye (or had gone through enough washes that it wasn’t going anywhere).

Since this is clearly a case of “more is more”, my next batch will be with a 1:3 lye-oxgall ratio. I also would like to get my hands on borax to compare, but I’m struggling to find where to get it.

For anyone planning on trying the wine test, make sure you soak the cloth as thoroughly as possible! I had discolored patches which made it harder to compare the different samples; I gave the 1/2 soap the darkest rag, and you can see it’s not as clean as the 0 oxgall soap.

 

[Blufuz]

Also, my mom told me that in her experience gallseife is not good for wools, just FYI

 

[Blufuz]

UPDATE: I finally got a real recipe for gallseife! They used to teach women how to make it in a special school before they got married called Bäuerinenschule.

It’s close to what I was doing, but they use 12% of the oil weight as stearin (hardened palm oil?) to make the bars even harder, and they use the highest percent lye:water concentration possible (1:1.5) then at trace they add the oxgall, about 3/4 the water weight. I will try this next, then come back in a month or so with more results

 

[AliOop]

Wow, that is so cool! Can't wait to hear how it turns out!!

 

[Blue1969]

Great! Can't wait for the results!

 

[BWt]

Have been working on dishwasher soap recipes. Research shows that commercial dishwasher soap has enzymes added to help dissolve the items left on dishes. Cow bile is used to help the cow digest food. So that leads me to think that there are enzymes in the bovine bile that are capable of removing certain protein type stains.