Help making liquid soap milder?

[kirsten.]

Hello all you lovely, soapy people!

I need some suggestions please. I've been making liquid soap for a couple of years now and I'm confident that I have the process down. My issue is that the soap is stripping, and I'd like to make it more mild somehow.

The recipe I'm currently working with is: Irish Lass's 'My Creamy Cocoa/Shea GLS Tutorial' (thank you @IrishLass )

My paste is properly sequestered and dilutes nicely to a beautiful creamy pearly soap. My issue is that it leaves my skin dry and tight, with that overly squeaky feeling. Is there any way to add something to make it less effective? lol!

I tried a hair conditioner base from purple citrus (https://www.purplecitrus.ca/shop/hair-conditioner-concentrate-complete/) containing Cetearyl Alcohol, PEG-40 Castor Oil, Stearalkonium Chloride - only because I have it on hand - but it kills the bubbling action of the soap and doesn't really make it milder. It was just a shot in the dark. I've also tried adding citric acid to bring the pH down, though at the moment I don't have a great way to actually measure pH accurately. My water isn't overly hard; my usual cold-process bar soaps are fine for me.

Any suggestions?

 

[DeeAnna]

A big problem is people use more soap than is strictly necessary so one strategy to make the soap less drying to the skin (and also to lather better!) is to control the amount of soap dispensed per pump or squeeze.

One strategy for portion control is to dilute the product to a lower percentage of pure soap and use a separate thickener to build the thickness back up.

Another option is to dilute the soap even more and put it in a foamer dispenser rather than a pump or squeeze bottle.

Other strategies --

Use less coconut oil to reduce the tendency of the soap to strip the skin. Many liquid soap recipes are high in the "cleansing" fats such as coconut oil to build the lather. But that also means the soap is more drying to the skin.

Experiment with using other high oleic oils rather than olive and see if that makes a difference. Your link to IL's coco-shea soap doesn't work, so I can't refresh my memory about the blend of fats she uses, but I'm guessing she calls for olive oil as the oleic fat in the recipe. Sometimes people find soaps with olive oil to be more drying to the skin than soaps based on other HO oils.

Sometimes people find stearic acid to leave the skin feeling taut and slightly dry. Since stearic acid is used as a thickener in this soap, it might be the culprit.

 

[AliOop]

If I remember correctly, IrishLass uses polysorbate-80 to add/solubilize some extra super-fat to this recipe. You can try increasing the amount of P80 + SF to see if that helps, as well.

 

[Marsi]

https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/my-creamy-cocoa-shea-gls-tutorial.57974/

 

[kirsten.]

Thanks everyone, and thanks @Marsi for putting up the right link!

I forgot about the polysorbate 80, though I did use it in my last batch, I don't think I used nearly enough. So, I upped the PS 80 amount and added the meadowfoam oil IL suggested. It was still a little harsh, so I added some glycerin and after one last test, popped some olivem 300 in for good measure.

By George, I think I've got it!

I appreciate your help

 

[cmzaha]

What I did when I first started making LS, was I made several single oil versions including CO, HO Sunflower, Lard etc. Once they were all diluted and sequestered for a while I mixed them together in different percentages until I came up with a formula I really liked. It did take a bit of work and you have to take good notes but it worked out well for me and was kind of a fun experiment to see how each oil worked in LS.