I have a question about superfatting bear tallow soap

[tammy sue starks]

with lard soap I superfat at 5%
with tallow superfatting it that low makes my skin feel like it is stretched so I go to six
does anyone have a suggestion for superfatting bear tallow soap besides making a bar and trying it?

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

I would say look at the rest of the recipe before raising or lowering the lye discount. For example, are you using anything like EDTA or sodium citrate? How much coconut oil are you using?

 

[tammy sue starks]

I would say look at the rest of the recipe before raising or lowering the lye discount. For example, are you using anything like EDTA or sodium citrate? How much coconut oil are you using?

I'm not using either of the two and am using 20 percent coconut.

 

[shunt2011]

I would lower the CO. Tallow can be a bit more cleansing so maybe the combination of the two is too much. How old is the soap? It may just need a longer cure.

 

[tammy sue starks]

I haven't made it yet. It looked super soft to me just using bear tallow. I thought it looked super soft just using bear tallow so I'm throwing my questions out there to figure it out

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

So you don't have an issue with the bear tallow soap making your skin feel stretched? Just other tallow soaps?

 

[tammy sue starks]

Lol, I don't know. I've just rendered the tallow as of last night. Putting it in the lye calculator without the coconut oil and lard just made it not look like it would harden much

 

[tammy sue starks]

So you don't have an issue with the bear tallow soap making your skin feel stretched? Just other tallow soaps?

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Sorry, but I am not going to open a pdf attachment for that.

 

[shunt2011]

I'm sorry, you're confusing me. also, you are asking a lot of beginner questions for formulating and such which is concerning since you're also selling already.

 

[DeeAnna]

My suggestion is to compare the fatty acid profiles of the beef and bear tallow soap recipes and think about the differences. They give some hints about what superfat might be appropriate.

Beef tallow is a fat that has about equal parts palmitic, stearic, and oleic with some myristic and lauric. Beef tallow is probably going to be more drying for sensitive skin, so adding 20% coconut might be too much for your skin when combined with the myristic and lauric acids in the tallow.

Bear tallow is a fat high in oleic acid with fairly small amounts of the other fatty acids often found in soap. What conclusion could you draw about what superfat might work best for the bear tallow recipe?

Do you have other recipes that have a similar fatty acid profile? If so, what superfat works well for those recipes?

In the end, it's YOUR skin that has to be happy, not anyone else's, so a test batch is probably a good idea.