HI! Looking for advice regarding this liquid soap recipe.

[HappyLittleSloth]

Hello fellow soapers! I am for the most part a "cp" soaper, however I have made liquid soap before using mainly OO. But I did it by following an online tutorial, so it was not my recipe. It was a little thin, but other than that, it came out great and was a great hand washing soap. I want to make my own recipe and my son and niece want me to make them a liquid soap to use as body wash and my niece is allergic to coconut oil so I can't use that ingredient. I also want to make sure I am selecting the correct KoH. Would anyone like to give me advice and or critique my recipe? I'd be so grateful! Thanks!!

Dawn

 

[DeeAnna]

You've formulated this soap to be more like a bar soap than a liquid soap. The lauric-myristic acid content is zero, so the soap will not lather much. Don't expect the castor to add bubbles -- it is a lather stabilizer, not a lather producer.

The stearic-palmitic content is rather high for a liquid soap due to the lard and butters. I would expect this soap to be cloudy. I'd also not be surprised if you see some separation due to the high amount of fairly insoluble palmitic and stearic soaps. The shea and mango butters will add unsaponifiable content which may contribute to cloudiness and possible separation of unsaponifiable solids.

The oleic acid content is on the edge of being too high -- I shoot for closer to 50% oleic. It may be a difficult soap to dilute if you intend to dilute to a stable honey-thick product. The high oleic content may cause the soap to keep shifting to an unpourable jelly, rather than stay a pourable liquid, until the soap is diluted to a very low pure soap content. But that's just a guess strictly from looking at the fatty acid profile. It may dilute just fine.

Only you can know whether you've selected the correct purity for KOH -- check the documentation from your supplier.

You can use https://www.soapmakingfriend.com/soap-making-recipe-builder-lye-calculator/ or http://soapee.com/calculator both of which will allow you to enter the actual purity of the KOH, rather than be limited to 90% or 100% purity on Soapcalc.

 

[HappyLittleSloth]

You've formulated this soap to be more like a bar soap than a liquid soap. The lauric-myristic acid content is zero, so the soap will not lather much. Don't expect the castor to add bubbles -- it is a lather stabilizer, not a lather producer.

The stearic-palmitic content is rather high for a liquid soap due to the lard and butters. I would expect this soap to be cloudy. I'd also not be surprised if you see some separation due to the high amount of fairly insoluble palmitic and stearic soaps. The shea and mango butters will add unsaponifiable content which may contribute to cloudiness and possible separation of unsaponifiable solids.

The oleic acid content is on the edge of being too high -- I shoot for closer to 50% oleic. It may be a difficult soap to dilute if you intend to dilute to a stable honey-thick product. The high oleic content may cause the soap to keep shifting to an unpourable jelly, rather than stay a pourable liquid, until the soap is diluted to a very low pure soap content. But that's just a guess strictly from looking at the fatty acid profile. It may dilute just fine.

Only you can know whether you've selected the correct purity for KOH -- check the documentation from your supplier.

You can use https://www.soapmakingfriend.com/soap-making-recipe-builder-lye-calculator/ or http://soapee.com/calculator both of which will allow you to enter the actual purity of the KOH, rather than be limited to 90% or 100% purity on Soapcalc.

Thanks!! I've reformulated my recipe and will take your notes and apply it to the new recipe (which doesn't include lard or mango).

 

[DeeAnna]

Another thing I wanted to mention is that olive oil and HO sunflower are very similar. You could use one or the other if that makes more sense to you. Or use both if you're just trying to use up dribs and drabs. I use HO sunflower exclusively as my high oleic oil.

Everyone's different in their expectations about liquid soap. When I first started making it, I too wanted to adapt a bar soap recipe and make a LS version. There's nothing theoretically wrong with that idea as long as you respect the superfat limitations of LS and make sure you account for the KOH purity. But after some experience, I think most people come to the conclusion that a great bar soap recipe is not necessarily a great liquid soap recipe.

I made a batch with 78% lard awhile back. It is cloudy and always has a thin layer of white stuff floating on top. It's not a bad soap, but it doesn't suds much and it's unappealing to look at.

 

[HappyLittleSloth]

Another thing I wanted to mention is that olive oil and HO sunflower are very similar. You could use one or the other if that makes more sense to you. Or use both if you're just trying to use up dribs and drabs. I use HO sunflower exclusively as my high oleic oil.

Everyone's different in their expectations about liquid soap. When I first started making it, I too wanted to adapt a bar soap recipe and make a LS version. There's nothing theoretically wrong with that idea as long as you respect the superfat limitations of LS and make sure you account for the KOH purity. But after some experience, I think most people come to the conclusion that a great bar soap recipe is not necessarily a great liquid soap recipe.

I made a batch with 78% lard awhile back. It is cloudy and always has a thin layer of white stuff floating on top. It's not a bad soap, but it doesn't suds much and it's unappealing to look at.

Thanks! I'm making some now. So far so good. It's taking a little longer, I'm guessing because I did not use glycerin. I found a great article on coming up with recipes and being able to calculate it without using a soap calculator. I know it will probably be a little cloudy because of my use of Shea butter at 5 percent and castor at 5 percent as well as Olive at 50 %, Sunflower HO at 20% and Coconut oil 76 at 20 percent. I'm gonna try to post a pic of my cook now.

This is how it looks now while cooking

 

[DeeAnna]

Once the paste reaches a stable trace (like in your photo), you're pretty much done. Cook 1/2 hour longer if you think you need to, but you can simply stop at that point, turn off any heat, cover the soap pot, and walk away. There's no need to cook for hours as many tutorials advise. Honestly, really, truly you don't.

 

[cmzaha]

DeeAnna is correct just cover the pot and remove from the heat. It will form paste on its own. It looks like a little burnt spot in the paste so I would certainly take it off the heat, lower right in the pic.

Even for LS you really should use a soap calculator.

 

[HappyLittleSloth]

Thanks everyone. I appreciate everyone's help I did run thru the soap cal and all was good. And my dilution is just about done. I've made LS before, but it was a castille soap. So now I can say I've made a different recipe. Yay!!