Goats milk soap

[Lansdowne]

Hi there. I need some professional opinions about my goats milk soap recipe.
I have goats milk soap in excess so I have been making soap for some time.
I have recently had a lot of my friends that own businesses suggest I sell and make a little display in their shop. How scary !
Everyone that has tried it , says they love it and request more . But maybe they are just being nice? I'm a perfectionist and I want to make it the best.
I use essential oils for fragrance and clays or oxides for colours as I want to have the most natural bar .
the recipe I most commonly use is attached to this post hopefully.
My biggest problem is hardness. If I wait 4 months then it's perfect but I'd like it to be hard after 6 weeks cure
Any advice appreciated !
Opps forgot recipe
Obviously I use goats milk instead of where it says water

 

[traderbren]

Welcome! I don't think a single one of us has not had it suggested by family and friends to sell. Wait until YOU are ready and comfortable with a recipe, and until you know how your soaps hold up after a few months or better yet a year.

As far as your recipe, the coconut oil is a bit on the high side for me. I like 20% or less.

You also have a lot of soft oils, which will take a while to cure. I would get rid of the sunflower oil. I would also suggest using lard, tallow or palm oil if you want a harder bar.

 

[shunt2011]

I agree that the CO is too high. Under 25% is a good place to start. Some do like it higher but also increase the SF. Also a lot of soft oils. I would add some Lard/Palm (40-50%) and up the castor to 5%.

 

[snappyllama]

In addition to the other comments, you might want to look at reducing the water amount. Most folks use Lye Concentration instead of Water as % of Oil Weight . Then experiment with your recipe by taking a discount. Your bars will still need a good cure, but should harden up much faster.

Here's an explanation on it that I found helpful: http://rivercitysoaps.com/dwcp/dwcp.pdf

 

[Little-Bits-N-Pieces]

Yes, I would say decrease the milk amount as well. In the lye concentration box on soap calc I put in between 28 (if I'm doing swirls) to 30 (if I want it to set faster). At 30% lye concentration, the water as percent of oils is usually around 31% instead of 38%.

 

[lsg]

You might try add up to 3% sodium lactate to the recipe.

 

[Steve85569]

"I have goats milk soap in excess so I have been making soap for some time.
I have recently had a lot of my friends that own businesses suggest I sell and make a little display in their shop. How scary !"

First: Welcome to the forum!!

I am not a professional.
From your own statement you are not comfortable selling for profit so don't.
I gift soap to friends and some of them want me to sell to them. I let them know what my costs are so if they feel REAL bad about free soap they can feed my addiction -er- hobby.
The addition of lard or tallow to the recipe will add some hardness to the soap as long as you have no problem with using those fats. Mr. Lye will digest them and there will not be anything piggy left in the lard.

There are lots of more experienced and capable soap makers here than I and lots and lots of information and knowledge to be gained here.

Again, welcome !

 

[cmzaha]

I agree with all the above. Sorry I do not think you are ready to sell, and I am not trying to be mean. Take into consideration if you sell to soon you risk the loss of customers, and that is a proven fact. The above recipe, in my opinion, is not one I would "Sell". For one it is way to cleansing for my old skin and it is going to dissolve quickly. The addition of Palm in place of some of your coconut oil will create a less soluble bar of soap and less stripping. I like 10-15%, even 0 for facial bars, for coconut, but I do not high superfat. I refuse to wash with oil and do not want all the free oil going down my drains. You need to experiment with different oil combinations to see what works well. Using just one recipe tells you nothing.
Your soap is nice and white for a gm soap, mostly due to the high coconut oil. Also as mentioned that is a lot of soft oils, rice bran oil has similiar properties of olive oil and some use it as a replacement for OO. Neither of which hold great fondness for me in soap but would choose OO over RBO. I love Sunflower, but I highly recommend high oleic since I am sure you are supperfatting.

 

[IrishLass]

You're going to get lots of opinions on your recipe, but hopefully all the varying opinions won't overwhelm you. One good thing to keep in mind is that each of us are all going to give our advice based on our own different preferences, according to our personal skin-types. So with that in mind, here is my own opinion......and remember- opinions are like noses- everyone has one and they all have a few holes in them....

Seeing as how your family/friends like the soap that you make with this formula and are always clamoring for more, I'm going to try to offer suggestions that are geared towards tweaking things without rocking the boat too much.....

Soaps with a high amount of soft oils such as you have will take longer to cure out to perfection, as you have already observed..... To improve it so that things don't take as long as four months to be good and hard, I believe the addition of a hard fat or butter will help out greatly.

Also, if it were me, I would nix the sunflower oil. It's really not bringing enough to the party to make any appreciable difference.

As for the rice bran and olive, I know that some suggest that they are much the same and to keep one and nix the other, but I respectfully disagree. Rice bran is high in linoleic and low in oleic, while olive is the opposite. They both bring something different to the table that the other does not have. I myself use a combo of olive and rice bran in my Castile-type/bastille for that very reason.

Anyway, this is how I would tweak things to make things so that they have a much better hardness by 6 weeks, but without drastically changing too much of it's character. The biggest change is that I totally nixed the sunflower and added in some cocoa butter, which I think is an absolutely essential tweak. If you don't have cocoa butter, though, you could use any other hard butter you might have handy, or you could use palm or lard or tallow instead:

Olive Oil 30%
Rice Bran 30%
Coconut Oil 30%
Castor Oil 5%
Cocoa Butter 5%

Some here will consider the coconut amount to still be way too high (I'm not one of them, btw), but since your family/friends seem to like it just fine with the 33.3% that you've already been using, I decided to keep the coconut in the 30's, but I did knock it down just a few points to tweak the other things around.

Since you are using 100% goat milk as your liquid, the 5% superfat you have been using should be dandy. Others here might feel differently, but since you and your peeps have been happy with it, then that's all that matters.

Having said that, though, I would reduce the overall amount of your liquid to lye ratio by using a 30% lye concentration, which is a ratio of 1 part lye to 2.3 parts water (or in your case, goat milk). Don't go by 'water as % of oils'. Go by 'lye concentration' instead. It's a much better way to calculate your liquid amount.

Also, last but not least- I agree 100% with what Steve said- since you are not comfortable with selling- don't. Especially if you have not tested out your formula and observed how it behaves under different conditions for a minimum of a year (the essential 'gold' quality control standard when it comes to lye-based soap).


IrishLass

 

[Lansdowne]

Thanks for all the input
So would it look something like this recipe then ( after reading everyone's suggestions) ? I will not be offended any more suggestions ( I only didn't put palm in because I would have to wait three weeks to get some at this stage).

 

[Susie]

One of the few things I never change in my recipes is Castor Oil at 5%. It stabilizes the lather that the oils are making. Some people use more, but few use less.

I am going to repeat the suggestion to use lard, palm, or tallow in there.

 

[lionprincess00]

That's a very high olive oil soap with a lot of water imo. It won't be as hard as you're wanting in 6 weeks, and olive oil in large amounts often take months to cure out. You have no hard fats in there, palm or tallow or lard. Sure olive at 70% can make a really hard bar, but i *think* it takes 6 months to a year (at least 100% castile bars will, but you're awfully high at 70% and i believe it'll be months). You're CO is still higher than many like, but that's just down to personal preference and keep it where it is if you like it that high. Finally any oil under 5% really isn't bringing much to the table.
Castor to 5%
CO 20% (25% is fine if you're ok with it)
40-50% lard
Olive remainder

I'd start here and play with different recipes until you find one you're happy with.

 

[shunt2011]

I would up the Castor to 5%. I too never change that. Also, lowering the Olive and adding Palm/Lard/Tallow. Otherwise your soap is still going to take quite a long time to cure. You need some hard fats. High olive is okay but you could have something even better. I would leave the CO where it is.

 

[IrishLass]

What you have there is a pretty much the same as one of my "bastile" formulas (bastardized Castile), only I use 25% coconut and 5% castor in mine. It makes a fine, gentle soap, but doesn't get really good until 3 to 6 months have gone by, which defeats your purpose of making a bar that will be harder much sooner than 4 months.

And with a 28% lye concentration, that's a lot of water to use with a soap that has 70% OO in it, which will make it so that things are even softer and will take even longer for the soap to get hard. For what it's worth, I use a 33% lye concentration in mine and no less (water as per lye amount, as opposed to "water as per oil" amount).

I agree with Shari that you should really consider knocking down the olive amount to add in a hard fat or butter.

If it were me, I would do something more along the lines of this:

Olive oil 60%
Coconut oil 25%
hard butter or lard or tallow or palm 10%
Castor 5%

And I'd use a 33% lye concentration (water:lye amount)


IrishLass

 

[Arimara]

I went ahead and did a little tweaking of your original recipe, Lansdowne. I dropped the coconut, rice bran, and olive oils and added lard and palm oils. I switched your sunflower oil for the high oleic version to give it an extra oleic push.

Recipe 1(I rounded the figures for some simplicity for me)

Castor: 2%
Coconut: 28%
Olive: 23%
Rice Bran: 17%
Sunflower HO: 5%
*Lard / Palm Oil: 25%

If you use soapee's calculator, they have a hardness estimator that comes in handy as a basic guideline (it's not set in stone). The palm oil or lard would help make your soap last long, palm oil being slightly more efficient for the job. The other suggestion, short of buying cocoa, mango, or shea butters, would be to use beef tallow. It's not as conditioning as lard and it would add to your soaps cleansing factor but it is nice in soaps and gives your soap a better hardness factor than lard would. Several of us who use animal fats use a mix of tallow and lard in our soaps but I haven't yet.

Your soap with Beef tallow:

Castor: 2%
Coconut: 25%
Olive: 26%
Rice Bran: 17%
Sunflower: HO: 5
Beef Tallow: 25%

The choice is yours really. The best way to test them, if you do decide to sell, would be to play around with the formulas and see if you can get some honest friends to test the soaps out if you don't want to have strangers blindly test your soap. Do make sure you have your original recipe on as a control sample and a standard for comparison.

 

[Lansdowne]

Hi Everyone . Thank you so much for replying I'm really excited. It's all making sense. I just ordered some palm oil so now I can play around with this recipe some more. I have also ordered some sodium lactate but I can't find a way to put it in on the soapcalc app. I was going to put in just 3% as advised. What do you think of this recipe ? Too much olive oil still ? Thanks

 

[Susie]

You can add SL at the bottom of the page in the notes section. It will not change the hardness numbers, as that calculator only assigns hardness numbers based on the oils you choose.

 

[shunt2011]

Your recipe looks good to me. However, that's a pretty large batch of soap for testing purposes. I would make something more along 2 lbs until you know if you like it or not.

 

[LisaAnne]

I also had people that insisted I sell my soap. I started out with artsy MP and when I switched to HP and CP nobody understood that I was dealing with a whole different world. I caved and sold some and that was my biggest mistake. I don't sell anymore and I won't again until I have it down to an exact science. I had my own plans of trying to sell at five years, which I figured by then I would be making the best I could. I wholeheartedly regret that people have purchased my soap that I know now wasn't that great (I didn't realize it at the time). I just wanted to share my experience, I love love love making soap, my only regrets is I sold less than my best

 

[Lansdowne]

Yes I know how you feel. I have given away soap and cringe now at what I gave them . Nothing wrong with it, just too soft . I have a daughter with severe eczema so I've kept a detailed discription of any soap I have ever made and also I keep a piece from each batch. Most harden and look perfectly fine . However one crumbled after six months !