Lard LS

[Servant4Christ]

Paging @IrishLass @Susie @DeeAnna @AliOop and anyone else who may have experience here.

I've been reading the everlong LS thread posted by Irishlass ~10 yrs ago (loved reading Deanna's reactions and step by step with temps).... Anyway, I'm considering using the same method with a different recipe using high lard. Would the PS80 keep the pearly look from falling to the bottom? I'm not a stranger to making LS, but I'm far from a pro and I would seriously love not having to cook my paste on the stove or in the crockpot.

 

[AliOop]

You can make any LS recipe by the cold process method if you start with melted oils and hot KOH solution. Just mix to paste stage, cover, and let it saponify.

However, dilution with stearic acid is going to require heat, including hot water. Otherwise, the stearic will solidify, and you will have white hard bits in your soap. Ask me how I know.

To answer your question, I honestly don’t know if the PS80 is needed to prevent separation of the pearliness. I thought it was used to speed up dilution, and to keep the SF and fragrance emulsified or at least solubilized in the final product.

 

[Servant4Christ]

You can make any LS recipe by the cold process method if you start with melted oils and hot KOH solution. Just mix to paste stage, cover, and let it saponify.

However, dilution with stearic acid is going to require heat, including hot water. Otherwise, the stearic will solidify, and you will have white hard bits in your soap. Ask me how I know.

To answer your question, I honestly don’t know if the PS80 is needed to prevent separation of the pearliness. I thought it was used to speed up dilution, and to keep the SF and fragrance emulsified or at least solubilized in the final product.

Stearic? I'm not looking at the creamy cocoa shea recipe, but the 3bees one. Dilution is with SL to help speed it up in a canning jar in a hot water bath. Or are you referring to the stearic already present in the lard? I keep reading that the pearly stuff eventually separates from the diluted soap and the snow falls to the bottom and has to be shaken to recombine. That's why I'm wondering if the PS80 would work. Sounds like an experiment is in order.

 

[DeeAnna]

It would help if you'd post a recipe you're thinking of using. I'm not sure I understand what you want to do without a recipe to look at.

I've made LS with a high % of lard but no added stearic. The soap is milky looking, but it definitely isn't pearly. Example:

Castor Bean Oil 5%
Coconut Oil 76° 15%
Lard 80%

I'm looking at some of this soap right now. There is a thin scum of white material floating on the top and some white sediment on the bottom. The soap in the middle has a translucent milky appearance. If I shake the jar to mix the solids with the liquid soap, the mixed soap gets a bit more opaque, but the soap definitely is not pearly.

It's the addition of stearic acid to the finished, diluted soap that creates the pearly look. The stearic acid also functions as a thickener and superfat.

IIRC, Irish Lass added about 2% stearic after dilution. The % is based on total weight of fats. You calculate the soap recipe without this added stearic -- you want the stearic to remain intact, not be converted into soap.

 

[AliOop]

Stearic? I'm not looking at the creamy cocoa shea recipe, but the 3bees one. Dilution is with SL to help speed it up in a canning jar in a hot water bath. Or are you referring to the stearic already present in the lard? I keep reading that the pearly stuff eventually separates from the diluted soap and the snow falls to the bottom and has to be shaken to recombine. That's why I'm wondering if the PS80 would work. Sounds like an experiment is in order.

Sorry, I assumed you were talking about the Creamy Cocoa-Shea recipe, since that's the one with the pearly look. I haven't looked at the 3bees recipe for a long time but don't remember that it was advertised as being pearly (which is why it didn't come to mind as the recipe you were talking about).

EDIT: Just saw DeeAnna's post, above. I agree that the stearic creates the pearly look, and that lard alone doesn't do that. I've also experienced the same phenomena, i.e., separated white stuff on both the top and the bottom. This has happened both in my high lard recipes, and in the Creamy Cocoa-Shea recipe with the stearic. Adding more PS80 helped, but didn't completely prevent it.

To go on a bit of a rabbit trail from your original post, I've actually moved away from using stearic acid since realizing that everyone in our house really prefers foaming hand soap. Using the foamer pumps requires very high dilution (often 5:1 water-paste). Stearic acid, or any other thickener, would be counterproductive to that end goal.

This high dilution, combined with removing the stearic, has also eliminated the white separated layers. All I need is a little PS80 for the SF and the FO/EO, and this is what I get (pic of LS with zero separation that was diluted and bottled on Sept 29):

Anyway, I'm sorry for going off topic a bit about your original question, but hopefully having that info will come in handy as you experiment with your recipe. Let us know how it turns out!

 

[Servant4Christ]

That is very helpful. I thought the stearic in lard gave that pearly look. I didn't realize it's the added pure stearic acid. Thank you for clarifying this for me. @AliOop, can I ask how much SF and FO/EO you are using in your diluted lard LS? I'd like to try it. My boys will love foaming soap and I'll enjoy it not being concentrated enough to strip my already dry, sensitive skin.
If I decide to attempt the added stearic for a pearly look, I'll try it with a high olive or high oleic sunflower recipe. I'd use the 3bees recipe, but that's too much coconut for my skin in any soap. Sensitive, highly reactive skin is a real pain sometimes.

 

[AliOop]

My high-lard LS recipe has the same ingredients as @DeeAnna's but with different ratios:

55% lard
25% castor oil (it's wonderful in LS!)
20% coconut oil

2% SF
1% fragrance (EO or FO).

Usually I make the paste at 0% SF and add meadowfoam seed oil as SF during dilution (since my skin loves it). But you can make the paste with the 2% SF included if you prefer.

The weight of my PS80 equals the combined weight of SF + fragrance. However, some EOs and FOs seem to require a bit more PS80 to remain in solution. So if I see some separation after a couple of days, I just stir in a bit more PS80.

 

[Servant4Christ]

Mine will be a bit different from both of yours.

70 lard
20 castor
10 coconut

I definitely like the idea of 0 SF for the paste to lower the possibility of oils going rancid in the paste.

Thank you both for replying so quickly! I'm going to make paste tonight. I just ordered some PS80 and the FO/EO I want to use for this, so I'll wait to dilute when they arrive next week.

 

[AliOop]

Mine will be a bit different from both of yours.

70 lard
20 castor
10 coconut

I definitely like the idea of 0 SF for the paste to lower the possibility of oils going rancid in the paste.

That's a solid recipe, and yes, that's exactly why I don't SF the paste. Just in case, I also store the paste in a zip-top bag in the fridge until I'm ready to dilute more of it.

We go through it fairly quickly, so I don't add a preservative to the diluted soap. Living life on the edge, we are.

 

[Servant4Christ]

I don't use a preservative in LS, but it probably makes sense to if it's diluted enough for a foamer, I suppose. Pretty sure we'll go through it fast enough not to need one either. Now, if I were diluting soap for foamer bottles intended to give as gifts, I'd be asking more questions about if I should use a preservative.

 

[DeeAnna]

That is very helpful. I thought the stearic in lard gave that pearly look.,,,

The stearic acid in the lard is turned into soap, so it isn't just stearic acid anymore. I don't know how you could prevent the stearic acid in lard from saponifying.

 

[Servant4Christ]

The stearic acid in the lard is turned into soap, so it isn't just stearic acid anymore. I don't know how you could prevent the stearic acid in lard from saponifying.

Thank you. That makes complete sense.
I went ahead and made an olive heavy recipe that I've used enough times to be comfortable with to test out this new to me method.
70 olive
20 castor
10 coconut

0 superfat
20% lye concentration

I used aloe vera liquid for the water amount (equal to the amount of 90% KOH), and used glycerin for the rest of the liquid (3X the amount of KOH).

I dissolved the KOH in the aloe vera liquid then dumped this into the glycerin and stirred thoroughly. I then added the hot KOH solution to my warmed oils and stickblended. I stopped stickblending after about 10 minutes (sb/stir/sb/stir), and left my jar covered for about 45 minutes. Then I hand stirred and the mix quickly thickened enough that I decided not to bother stickblending again and just covered it up and left it overnight.

This morning, my paste is still nice and thick, but soft and stirrable at the same time. I haven't ever had paste that's stirrable before. No zap, but failed the clarity test. Looks like white soapy water. Could this be because the aloe vera?

Transparency is nice but not necessary, as this is a small batch (25Og total oils) made for the purpose of experimenting. I'm more than willing to try the stearic acid trick for a portion of this batch.

 

[Servant4Christ]

I stickblended just to see if the paste would thicken or harden into a paste that is the consistency I am familiar with. Based on the paler color, I think all I accomplished was whipping the soap paste.
I went ahead and began diluting. I added distilled water at the same amount as the soap paste (my usual method for this recipe usually works out to needing 1.5x the amount of the paste to fully dilute and get that skin off the top of the diluted soap) and added in sodium lactate at 3% of the paste weight. The jar is sealed and in my makeshift canner warming now. I have PS80 and FO/EO on it's way so I can add them in when they arrive.

 

[AliOop]

Hmm, that's a fairly low lye concentration of 20%. Remember that a significant amount of liquid will evaporate during the HP cook, resulting in a harder paste. That doesn't happen with CP-LS. Ergo, if you use the same lye concentration for CP as you previously used for HP, you will end up with a softer paste due to higher liquid content after saponification. Make sense?

FWIW, my normal lye concentration for CPLS is 25%, or 3:1. Sorry I didn't think to mention that when we discussed switching from HP to CP! Like you, I do use equal water to KOH to dissolve it, and then glycerin for the remainder. But because my total liquid:lye ratio is significantly lower than yours, I've never had as much glycerin in my paste as you do with this one. So... I'm wondering if all that "extra" glycerin ("extra" meaning "beyond my experience") might also have contributed to the softer outcome. Added sugar in the aloe vera could be a contributing factor, too. But mostly I think the difference was caused by not cooking the soap, or alternatively, adjusting/raising the lye concentration for CP.

No worries, it will still make LS! And on the plus side, a softer paste makes for a faster dilution, so yay for that! I'm interested to see how this all works out for you.

 

[Servant4Christ]

The soap diluted in under 30 minutes of simmering covered in a hot water bath on the stove. I'm still waiting for the bubbly foam to dissipate.

When reading the thread about @IrishLass's glycerin method using 3bees recipe, it says she used 1 part water to 1 part KOH and then the full 3 parts glycerin from her original method, but that she compensated for the additional liquid with a reduced amount of water in her dilution. That's where I came up with 20% lye concentration.

 

[AliOop]

The soap diluted in under 30 minutes of simmering covered in a hot water bath on the stove. I'm still waiting for the bubbly foam to dissipate.

When reading the thread about @IrishLass's glycerin method using 3bees recipe, it says she used 1 part water to 1 part KOH and then the full 3 parts glycerin from her original method, but that she compensated for the additional liquid with a reduced amount of water in her dilution. That's where I came up with 20% lye concentration.

Oh to be sure, there is nothing wrong with using that low lye concentration - and it does make for quick dilution! I was just responding to your question about why the paste was different than previous batches. My understanding was that you had previously used HP for this recipe, and were trying CP for the first time with it. If so, that's why the consistency was different than last time. No harm, no foul - just different.