How do we feel about canola (rapeseed) oil?

[Elise]

Hi new user here. Just thought I would chime in with my own experience using Canola. I only make soap as a hobby for personal use and I never sell it.

In the UK it's just called 'rapeseed oil'. I am referring to the refined version that is the main constituent of generic 'vegetable oil' that you buy in the supermarket. Currently it's pretty cheap at about £2.80 per litre.

I like to make a 100% canola bar and use it in the shower. Pros of this are:

• as mentioned above, it's dirt cheap
• locally produced. Very important to me as between this, lard and tallow I can make a pretty sustainable bar of soap here in the UK. I do use coconut oil in hand soaps however.
• it makes an ideal 'shampoo bar'. It doesn't make your hair squeak or turn into straw like other soaps do. (disclaimer: I have short man-hair so I can pretty much use anything to wash my hair). I find it's even better than olive oil in this regard.
• doesn't dry skin/scalp (i.e. 'moisturizing' but I hate using that term).
• produces a very thick, creamy lather
• neutral scent

Down sides of 100% canola bar:

• doesn't work as a hand soap (e.g. next to the sink), especially if you live in hard water area. Just doesn't lather well enough. In the shower it lathers fine with warm/hot water and something else to help (hair, cloth, etc).

Using it complimentary to other oils (e.g. as a substitute for olive oil) it's excellent as well. In this manner it's fine to use alongside coconut oil or whatever as a hand soap.

As others have mentioned, it can make softer bars so I get through them quick enough that DOS hasn't been a problem. I've tried hardening them using salt, but if you try this be aware that any more than 1 tsp per 500g oil kills the lather.

I wouldn't recommend using cold-pressed rapeseed for soap. It has a distinct odour and unless you like smelling that way I would avoid. Also it's more expensive and (probably?) contains more unsaponifiable components. I do like to eat cold-pressed rapeseed though because it's made locally and is way cheaper than the disaster that is olive oil at the moment

So in summary I really like canola/rapeseed and I would encourage anyone who is on the fence about it to try it out. I will probably never bother using olive oil again because the properties are so similar and rapeseed is so much cheaper (and importantly: locally produced).

Interesting. Do you only use Rapeseed oil in your hair soap ? Or do you combine it with other oils ?

 

[soapface]

Interesting. Do you only use Rapeseed oil in your hair soap ? Or do you combine it with other oils ?

Yes only 100% rapeseed. I've also tried 100% olive oil (works OK I guess but not better than rapeseed) and 100% tallow (turns hair into dry straw).

I'm tempted to try sunflower and maybe some other stuff, but as I mentioned an important part of this is the locally-sourced ingredients.

 

[DeeAnna]

29.5%, so low oleic. Can I use this and keep it to a %? What would you suggest for the max or should I just keep an eye on longevity in the calculator?Thank you

The "longevity number" in soap recipe c@lculators is the total % of palmitic and stearic acids in the recipe. It's a measure of how long the soap will last when used for bathing. It's an indicator of the physical hardness AND lower water solubility of the soap.

This longevity number has ~nothing~ to do with the shelf life of the soap before use and it tells you nothing about whether a soap is more or less likely to go rancid.

To reduce the chance rancidity, you want to keep the polyunsaturated fatty acids to a minimum. The most common rule of thumb is to keep the combined % of linoleic and linolenic acids at 15% or less in a recipe.

There haven't been any scientific studies done to support this "rule", but it is one of the few "common wisdom" rules that does have a kernel of common sense in it. You can also look at the INS number or the iodine value as a guide