Happy with my dual lye tallow soap!!

[CTAnton]

Just a little background:
I rendered a whole lot of deer tallow this past fall. Needless to say, I wanted to use it as a primary ingredient (over 50%) in some soap. I was attracted to soaping with a local product that would otherwise head to the trash. The problem for my testers and ultimately me was the lack of bubbles, creamy yes, but shy on the bubbles. So I started playing around with lowering the percentage of tallow to see if I could come up with something more appealing to MY American public. I remember telling people it was a good soap for mature skin. That was met with some amusing looks.
So having read the dual lye thread on here I did a batch with the only difference being the 5% KOH. I just tried the shavings from a batch well cured and shrink wrapped already. WOW. The bubbles are there, the creaminess is there, a light but noticeable lotion feeling to my hands which have been playing in dirt a lot lately.
I want to thank all the proponents of this process, mostly DeeAnna as well as others. What a difference!! Thank you, soap making forum!!!

 

[beardguy]

When using the KOH at a low rate (5 ish is the norm I think ?) do you soap as usual, or is there any secial technique involved ? I bought some KOH thinking about making liquid soap, but this has my interest piqued.

 

[DeeAnna]

I'm glad this is working so well for you! It's definitely not my discovery -- I just read about it and passed the idea on to y'all.

Here are my tips and suggestions: https://classicbells.com/soap/dualLye.html

Yes, 5% is typical. That's as high as I've gone with one exception of 10% KOH in a batch of high coconut oil laundry soap. The 10% KOH didn't cause trouble, but it didn't give any special benefits that I could see. I definitely haven't have any trouble with using 5% KOH, knock on wood, and I've made maybe 16 batches so far -- laundry soap and bath soap. I think a few other folks were talking about trying 10% or so, but I don't recall if they shared their results.

 

[CTAnton]

Beardguy nothing is different in how I proceed. I have embraced the lye calculator over at soapee.com which makes the calculations of dual lye a cinch.If memory serves me correctly that 5% KOH is making the soap more soluble which I guess accounts for some real bubbles in the lather with this formula. Supposedly this is the way to go for all high oleic acid percentage soaps...and being most of my testers tell me how long lasting my bars are a little additional solubility might be in order!

 

[DanielCoffey]

I can second the fact that Soapee helps with dual lye soaps and I too have just made my first batch of unscented 75% Tallow soap which I am very pleased with.

I browsed some of the other Tallow threads and spotted the dual-lye suggestion so I just started with that as my first recipe. Thanks to the forum gurus such as DeeAnna and friends who keep explaining to the new folks that it is easy and giving the reasons behind these choices.

My recipe (for the curious) was based on what I had in the fats box and was as follows...

Tallow, Beef : 75%
Coconut Oil, 76deg : 15%
Castor Oil : 5%
Shea Butter : 5%

Superfat : +2%

NaOH : 95%
KOH : 5%
Lye concentration : 31%

Purified water

EDTA : 0.5% of total ingredient weight

Fragrance : none (see below)

Since I was making a small batch I actually limited myself to only 300g of oils. It fitted a container I had, it matched the amount of Bog Myrtle EO I had available and it was my first attempt at this recipe.

I melted the fats in a small crockpot on low, weighed the lyes and went outside to mix them. I reserved some of the water to dissolve the EDTA since I have not made up a solution of it yet and placed the Bog Myrtle EO nearby. I turned off the crock pot and slowly added the lye solution once it had cooled somewhat, followed by the EDTA. Hand stirring was useful to get everything blended and then I ran the stick blender on low for a few short pulses until I got an emulsion.

Once I was satisfied I had combined all the oils from the edges into the emulsion, I stick blended in short pulses to trace which happened in only a few minutes. I ended up with a fairly thick but still pourable "custard". This was where I made my only mistake... I forgot the essential oil and only noticed when the batter was in the container and I was washing up. Ah well, I told myself the little lie of "well, all first batches of a new recipe should be unscented anyway so no harm done" and got on with the washing up.

It poured well into a wide, flat container which I had lined with parchment. It was one of the Lock&Lock flat, square boxes and was what I had to hand. I banged it a little to dislodge bubbles, placed the lid loose on the top and set it aside under a towel for a while.

It soon started to heat so I removed the towel and left it on the counter so I could watch it. It whitened pretty fast, changing from a light cream to an off-white and hardened in a couple of hours. It took a good six hours for the heat to die down but it never cracked or volcanoed.

I ignored it until mid-morning the next day (so just under 24h since blending) and did a zap test. It was perfect with no zap and the slight odour of tallow I detected when it was still fresh had morphed into "new soap" smell. I lifted it out by the parchment and weighed it (428g instead of expected 442g by Soapee) so some evaporation had obviously happened.

Placing the bars on a flat plate and cutting into quarters has yielded four just off-white bars that were fairly firm but still straightforward to knife cut.

A loose flake from inside a fold of the parchment was hard and gave a beautiful lather with large bubbles as expected from Tallow. I didn't leave it on my hand since the soap was so young but it rinsed off very well.

The bars are dated, loosely covered and curing so here are a couple of pics of the result. Actual colour is a little less stark but taking pics of white objects on a camera phone is always iffy...

 

[Dahila]

I had already make like 4 batches with dual lye and they are wonderful soaps.

 

[cmzaha]

I can say I am impressed with dual lye soaps

 

[lenarenee]

I've made about 8 batches of dual lye with high lard, all at various stages of cure, some at 3% or 5%. One of these days I'll have time to sit down and really do a thorough testing of them. But so far I don't like them. They are all so much softer than single lye; even the 3% koh which is still finger dentable at 6 weeks. Just sent some out to a couple of people for their feedback - both are connoisseurs of handmade soap so I'm eager to hear their opinions.

That being said, I love tallow soap for the crisp, hard white bar it makes, but hate the thin milky lather so I'm eager to try dual lye with about 60-70% tallow!

 

[Jena]

Gorgeous white soaps. I've been trying out the dual lye method with my bastille recipe. I've been happy with it too.

 

[DeeAnna]

I can't figure out why 5% KOH or less should cause so many problems for you, Lenarenee. I've had utterly no problems including KOH into my soap recipes. I've made at least 18 batches so far with 5% KOH and one with 10% KOH. All went fine and were firm enough to unmold and cut 12-18 hours after unmolding. There's no way a person could dent this soap with a finger even a few days after cutting. Most of my batches gel. I use over 50% lard -- usually around 60% -- in my recipes.

Want to share your method and recipe? Maybe there's something going on that we could help you see?

 

[lenarenee]

I can't figure out why 5% KOH or less should cause so many problems for you, Lenarenee. I've had utterly no problems including KOH into my soap recipes. I've made at least 18 batches so far with 5% KOH and one with 10% KOH. All went fine and were firm enough to unmold and cut 12-18 hours after unmolding. There's no way a person could dent this soap with a finger even a few days after cutting. Most of my batches gel. I use over 50% lard -- usually around 60% -- in my recipes.

Want to share your method and recipe? Maybe there's something going on that we could help you see?

Thanks, I've love too, but I'll have to wait for the weekend to look up the details and post them. We've been so busy with summer activities and must get to bed early. (Hope I remember to get back to this over the weekend)

I've now also made some 3% KOH soaps too - just barely cured and I still don't like them. Soft and the lather is just...off. Hard to rinse off all of that over-prolific lather. Maybe dual lye soaps don't like soft water?

 

[cherrycoke216]

I can't figure out why 5% KOH or less should cause so many problems for you, Lenarenee. I've had utterly no problems including KOH into my soap recipes. I've made at least 18 batches so far with 5% KOH and one with 10% KOH. All went fine and were firm enough to unmold and cut 12-18 hours after unmolding. There's no way a person could dent this soap with a finger even a few days after cutting. Most of my batches gel. I use over 50% lard -- usually around 60% -- in my recipes.

Want to share your method and recipe? Maybe there's something going on that we could help you see?

Maybe the rendering way of lard???
I have bought local lard here and it contains some gooey gelatinous thingy on top of the box. I think it's wet rendering without discarding the gooey gelatinous gel to weight more and get more profit.
Just a wild guess here. But I have also used dry rendered lard without problems. It just smells more. Might be the temperature thing and water render contains some salt to remove the impurity and bad smell.

The gooey gelatinous lard did come out of mold softer. And it's easily dented by fingers. I didn't discard gooey slime too. It just cures longer to become harder. I have only one batch of gooey lard go DOS.
Just my two cents.

 

[Dahila]

mine are wonderful, I test them at the sink and the lather is much better, Hardness, I do not think they are soft rather the opposite, I use 25 lard 20 tallow , shea butter OO and Castro and heavenly CO .......I add SL, Sugar and EDTA , That all plus coconut milk, It is my favorite recipe right now.
BTW when you use Aloe vera juice, I knwo obsidian does for full water replacement, do you add sugar or rather not? DeeAnna? If you do no mind to answer

 

[DeeAnna]

I don't use aloe juice, so I can't speak from experience about that, Dahlia. I think Carolyn (cmzaha) uses aloe often, so maybe she will give her perspective. My guess is that I'd use aloe without extra sugar, but like I said, it's a guess without personal experience to back it up.

As far as whether KOH doesn't like soft water ... I'm not sure I have that perception. We have a home water softener that does a fine job of softening, but it doesn't make that super, super soft water that makes soap hard to rinse off. My mom's softener tends to do that, however, so I understand what you mean, Lenarenee. I'm not sure why some softeners do that and others don't, so I don't have any advice about modifying the softener settings or whatever.

In addition to reasonably soft water, I also use 5% KOH and 0.5% EDTA in my bath bar batches. I can tell when the softener runs out of salt (hmmm, I believe that just happened, come to think of it) by the way my soap how it feels on my skin -- there's that sticky soap scum feel. It happens even with the EDTA, but less so compared to no EDTA. When the softener is working properly, however, the lather rinses off cleanly and easily and there's no sticky skin feel.

 

[kchaystack]

I use aloe juice, and have 2 dual lye soaps, a 100% olive and a bastile. I also have super soft water, and my NaOH soaps are really hard to wash off. I have not noticed a difference with my dual lye soaps, but I will test again today and report back. Tho come to think of it my dual lye bastile has powdered goats milk as well.