GM soap newbie with a few questions

[Peskychicken]

Hi everyone .. I've been searching through this forum and I now realize I know almost nothing about making goat milk soap. I've been using the following recipe and I've made 5 batches of soap over the past few months.

It's very simple ...

2 cups goat milk
2 cups lard
2 cups coconut oil
1/4 cup lye
1/4 cup water

Question: Am i using enough lye? I've checked out the lye calculators but they thoroughly confuse me ...

So .... I thought I'd stop in and say "Hi" and see if anyone has any advice to offer?

Cheers,
Peskychicken

 

[Sunny]

Hi friend! Welcome to the forum!

It's really hard to say whether that's an appropriate amount... it's best to make soap by weighing all ingredients. It's a lot more precise and it's the way most soapers do it now.

You can just use a kitchen scale to weigh whatever you need.
You can plug your amounts into a soap calculator like the one at this site:

http://soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp

and it will tell you how much lye and water you need to use.

Let us know if you have anymore questions!

 

[Sunny]

If you need SPECIFIC instructions on how to use the soap calc I will gladly walk you through it step by step. Feel free to PM me!

 

[xraygrl]

hello and welcome!

Like Tasha said, it's best to measure all of your ingredients by weight. A postal scale from an office supply store will work well.

For a beginner lye calculator, I suggest this one:

http://www.thesage.com/calcs/lyecalc2.php

I think it's much less confusing for a newbie than soapcalc. BTW, I like your forum name, it's cute.

 

[Peskychicken]

Hi xraygrl - thanks for the info. I ran these numbers through ... 16 oz coconut oil and 16 oz lard and came up with 4.75 oz to 4.9 oz of lye (8% to 5% xs fat). With 8 to 12 oz of liquid.

Do you simply substitute 1:1 GM for water? How much water should I set aside for the lye crystals?

tasha, I will need help with your calculator. I'll pm you if I can't figure it out. Thanks.

As for the name, you can read about it here ... http://100mdiet.blogspot.com/2010/07/st ... icken.html

Cheers,
Peskychicken

 

[Sunny]

I loved the story about your name, very cute. We briefly had a pet chicken, and will definitely be getting some when we buy a house. LOVE them!