Help! Accidentally did 0% superfat

[willowr]

Hello,

I guess I was feeling a bit tired when I made my last batch, because I just realized I used 0% superfat. I've made this soap many times but I made a slight ingredient change and made a new calculation using soapcalc. I guess I didn't notice that the superfat was set to 0% - I always use 5%.
Here's the recipe
24% coconut oil, 76 deg
22% Olive oil
20% Palm
12% sunflower, high oleic
10% shea butter
7% cocoa butter
5% castor oil

Water 358.62 grams
Lye 176.63 grams

Accidentally did 0% superfat. Used 33% lye concentration.

Added 3% essential oils and also added mica that was dispersed in sunflower oil. All in all, I probably used around 4-6 tsp of sunflower oil to disperse the colours I used.

I did not account for this additional sunflower oil when calculating my oil weight.

This particular batch was made as a topping on a loaf I already made a few days before, that had 5% superfat. The 0% superfat batch makes up approximately 30% of some of the bars and 60% of the other bars.

From what I've read here by other members, the lack of lye purity may help increase the superfat unintentionally and the sunflower oil in the mica could possibly help too? I'm just wondering if these soaps are going to be way to drying and if I should scrape it off and rebatch or if it could be ok as is.

Thank you!

 

[AliOop]

Hi there,

As long as the soap doesn't zap after a few days, I wouldn't worry about it. As you noted, your lye purity is less than 100%, and you used extra oil to disperse the micas.

FWIW, I make and use soaps with very low SF all the time, including one with 0% SF. They are not any more drying or irritating than soaps made with 5% SF.

 

[willowr]

Hi there,

As long as the soap doesn't zap after a few days, I wouldn't worry about it. As you noted, your lye purity is less than 100%, and you used extra oil to disperse the micas.

FWIW, I make and use soaps with very low SF all the time, including one with 0% SF. They are not any more drying or irritating than soaps made with 5% SF.

Thank you so much for making me feel better!

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Yep, it will be fine. I once made a similar mistake and found that the low superfat section did not dissolve away as quickly as the higher superfat section, which made for a funny looking bar of soap.

 

[KiwiMoose]

They'll be fine - don't worry. Give them a decent cure.

 

[DeeAnna]

I agree with the others -- your soap should be fine.

A tip for future problem solving:

When you list the fats in percents and but list other ingredients in units of weight (or volume), there's really no way to evaluate the recipe for problems.

For example, you said you used 4 tsp extra oil and 176 g NaOH, but I don't know if you were making a batch based on 100 g total fats or 1000 grams of fats.

For troubleshooting, it's always best to give weights for everything, not percentages.