Liquid soapmaking is 1000 times harder than I thought, seriously!

[Rune]

I don't think it will be as high as 11 when dilluted. I made a clarity test, which of course did not come out clear because of the mica I added (and maybe also because of unsaponifiables and superfatting). I did test the PH with PH-strips. I had dilluted way more than 50/50 soap paste and water (which I understand is the proper way of PH-testing), and the PH were 8,5 approximately. I did a zap test as well, and no zapping. The soap had loosened up quite a lot, and was way more translucent. I think it is done. But I will give it two days more before I dillute.

I will test the PH after dillution. I have no clue how things work in liquid soap, but the rotting/sequestering time, wouldn't that make the PH drop further down, like it drops when curing bar soaps?

I will test the soap paste right now (without dilluting 50/50 because it is not easy to dillute, and I don't have an accurate enough scale).

Result: I did not manage to PH test the soap paste. It was too thick, didn't soak into the paper. I took some paste in my hand and washed with as little water as possible. But I had to make it thinner. I tested and it was around 8,5 again. But my PH paper is not of the fancy kind with 4 dots that should match up. It is just yellow paper strips. I know that it is not the most accurate. But if the test is somewhat accurate, it looks far from PH 10 and 11.

I have decided to use preservatives. It feels too risky not using anything. Especially since my "production facilities" aka the ordinary kitchen in an ordinary house, is not a sterile place, and will never be. And I know for sure that tap water definately contains bacterias, perhaps mould and yeast too, plus minerals important for building cell membranes of bacterias. So for this batch, I definately will need a preservative. Later I can go for distilled water, but I will preserve anyway. Maybe not use the max amount, but enough to kill off unwanted stuff that can grow into invisible dangers.

The scary thing is that products with dangerous amounts of dangerous bacterias don't show any sign of anything until the very last stages. No smell and no visible changes. So it's impossible to tell if a product is totally fine or very hazardous, without access to a microscope or other equipment. I will definately preserve, yes.

But I will not preserve sugar scrubs (which I have promised my sister to make for her), I will choose a container that eliminates the need for preservatives. Since I have soap paste, it will be a foaming sugar scrub

The commercial ones can have hidden preservatives. For example a preservative that also is a fragrance. Or adjusted the PH upwards, or something.

Isn't soap alkali salts of fatty acids? Salt, maybe that is the secret?

but when I have time I hope to do a little more digging to see what I can come up that's specific to LS.

Let me know if you find something interesting

 

[DeeAnna]

"...I hope we can agree that whether or not to use a preservative in LS is a matter of personal preference...."

Did you read my Post #12? Last paragraph? I thought that made my point of view pretty clear, Zany. I know there's a lot of controversy about this issue.

If people aren't loading their LS with bug food, I think preservative is an optional thing even if the pH isn't quite as high as the Making Skincare article recommends. If someone feels the need to add goat milk, aloe, tea, or other stuff and doesn't want to use a preservative, I'd not touch their LS with a 10 foot pole, much less wash with it. I'm far less concerned about a trace amount of formaldehyde (check out the formaldehyde content in apples sometime!) than I am about washing with soap that contains a high % of microbes.

 

[Zany_in_CO]

Post #12 ...Yes, I add preservative to diluted liquid soap. Personal preference only -- it doesn't greatly bother me that others choose to not use preservative if I know they are also sensible about the ingredients in their soap.

Good. We agree then. Let's leave it there for now.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Again, it was your sweeping blanket statement which is the issue. "Liquid soap is alkaline and therefore it doesn't need a preservative" or something along those lines. But that is not strictly true, as DeeAnna says you can add all sorts of stuff to your liquid soap which means it can still develop nasties even in the high pH environment.

When things are nuanced, making statements which suggest it is black and white is irresponsible at best and not something a soaper with so much experience should engage in.

 

[DeeAnna]

Good. We agree then. Let's leave it there for now.

I'm perfectly willing to "leave it there" permanently. It sounds like you think I want to argue about this, and I don't. I don't recall that I've ever tried to make people feel they must always add preservative to diluted liquid soap. I do question people, however, when they want to load their LS up with bug food and then blindly expect the high pH alone to preserve it.

 

[Rune]

I ordered Plantaserve E (mix of phenoxyethanol and ethylhexylglycerin). Those you, DeeAnna recommended, are not widely available here. I could only find Suttocide, but I don't want to risk my soaps turning pink because of interaction with citrus essential oils, so I left that one behind. The fragrance oils I have a bunch of, more or less all of them contains citrus top notes, to my frustration. Essential oils or synthetic or both, I have no idea.

The solubility of preservatives are not the easiest to find. It should be, but it isn't. Some say water, some say oil and others say glycol. So I bought Polysorbate 20, just to be sure I can use the preservative both in oil and water. I think that is how Polysorbate 20 works. We will see. I will anyway use it to mix some water in the body butter I will make for my two sisters, to lighten it up a notch.

I guess it should be quite easy to find out if dilluted liquid soap with a PH under 10 and without bugfood will need a preservative or not. I understand that in the EU, those who sell liquid soaps have to have a PET test done (preservative efficacy test). Such tests are done with the preserved product and an unpreserved sample. If it is possible to get hold on some test reports, it should be possible to find out how unpreserved liquid soaps performs. If the added bacterias, mold and yeast spread like crazy, then we know for sure that a preservative is needed. If not, well, then it is unnecessary.

I found an unpreserved liquid castile soap base in the UK, but also found out that the PH was 10,9. I have not researched any further, I just stumbled upon it.

 

[Rune]

So, now my liquid soap is done and all bottled up. My preservative came yesterday, so that's why it took so long.

Everything went smooth and the soap looks beautiful and smells fantastic! NOOO!!! I am soooo angry right now. I were more angry yesterday. The soap is totally ruined, more or less.

So, what happened? Everything went smooth until I added the fragrance mixed with polysorbate 20. The soap looked stunning, golden (from the gold mica). It did have a strange off-smell, like toasted seeds/nuts. I have to find out where that smell comes from. The soap paste itself had it, and it didn't get worse by dillution, but not better either. I dilluted in the crockpot for several hours.

I think the off-smell can either come from one of the oils (I will test them one by one on my hands and see if I can smell anything), or from the making of the soap paste. Maybe I burned some of the soap while microwaving it?

I have a bunch of fragrance oils from Eroma in Australia. Produced by Luxaroma. I tested some of them to find out what I would use in my soap. I took cotton pads and put in small plastic things with a lid, so that I could get a feel of what they would smell like.

I thought I would have something with oud/agarwood. Because the soap was golden, and that would fit perfectly. I had bought all the scents that Eroma had with oud in them. Those I tested smelled nothing like oud at all. So I was disappointed. I had a coffee soap from Yves Rocher that I liked a lot. So I decided to use my coffee fragrance oil. It did smell nice from the cotton pad. I mixed the fragrance 50/50 with polysorbate 20, and dumped it in the soap. It became totally cloudy and went back to a very dull color (that the soap paste had), not the golden glory from the dilluted soap. And the scent, oh lord! It smelled horrible! I got panic, and thought, I have to save it somewhat. I figured out that I would need something sweet. I found a fragrance oil called Italian spiced chocolated. I dumped some of that in, without smelling it first. It got ten times worse than it was.

I was so angry, and did regret that I did not use the fragrance oil called Petra, which is an amazing scent. I did regret putting polysorbate 20 in the fragrance oil. I knew the soap was ruined, but had no idea what to do. It was late night, so I just went to bed.
I was thinking of cooking the fragrance out and add something else. But I thought it maybe would not disappear completely. So I bottled it up. The nutty off-smell is still there. Maybe the coffee fragrance would have been nice if the soap itself was without any off-smell, I don't know. The scent is also too strong. I used a fragrance calculator and fragranced it between light scent and moderate scent. Tested, and it had no scent at all. Maybe I had sniffed so many fragrance oils that I could not smell a fainter scent? Or maybe it had to spread in the soap for some time? I dumped in some more coffee, and I could now smell it, but did not like it. Dumped in the chocolate, and it became all together too much.

I will have another try at making liquid soap. And hopefully learn from my mistakes this time. The polysorbate 20 will now be stucked as far away as possible. And I will dillute a little bit of fragrance oil in a little bit of dilluted soap, to test how it fill be in the final product, before I dump it in the whole batch.

I tested the castor oil, the sunflower oil and the olive oil that I used. Non of them really did have that nutty scent. But it might come from the olive oil, since it is refined mixed with extra virgin. It does have a scent on its own, so that might have morphed during heating or in contact with lye or something. I must test the Flott Matfett with shea as well. I will not use that for my next soap. It will be a very simple one with only high-oleic sunflower or olive oil, coconut oil and castor oil. Nothing more.

There is one positive thing, though. I did manage to get the consistency of the soap just perfect. It was dilluted with 1.5 times as much water as soap paste. And I took off some undilluted soap and dilluted it on its own, before I poured it into the crockpot again. I turned off the crockpot, and by next morning, everything was perfectly dilluted and fairly thick.

I'm actually most angry at my scents. I did not test them when I bought them. I have oud perfume oils, several of them, so I sort of know what it is supposed to smell like. My oud fragrance oils does not smell like oud. Non of those I tested had an arabic perfume vibe to them, even if they had names like "Oud, amber and musk", a classic combination in arabic perfumery. So I am disappointed. What do the oud fragrances smell like? I don't know. The oriental vibe is missing. It is more fresh and "western". It does not have the depth I'm used to from my perfume oils. I tried to really sniff them, to see if I could pick up some oud, at least, but no. I have some more of them to try, so I hope at least one will have an oud scent.

 

[IrishLass]

I find that my handmade, unscented liquid soap, whether in paste form or diluted form, has a scent of its own.....and it's pretty much the same kind of scent no matter which formula I may have used. It's hard to describe it, but it's not unpleasant.....just very distinctive.

When testing fragrances in your liquid soap, instead of adding the scent to the whole batch, just remove a small 1 ounce portion of the diluted soap and add an appropriately scaled amount of scent to it to see how it fares before deciding whether or not to add it to the whole batch.


IrishLass

 

[Rune]

Thank you

Yes, I will definately do that next time, and not ruin my whole batch. The good thing is that I have learned - the hard way.

I sniffed my cotton pads just now, to see if they had changed since yesterday. Or if I would like them better. Out of 6 samples, I really, really like 1 of them. I did not mark them, just put the bottle in the back of every sample. But I removed the bottles yesterday, so I'm not sure, but I think it is Black musk and pear. In another, I can smell some oud-ish notes (which I think was not there yesterday). And it is quite pleasant. The third is also a fresh type of thing, and I don't know which scent it is. I will find out when I need to find out, because I have only opened the seals of the bottles I tested, the rest are sealed. So I like 3 out of 6 tested.

One of those I didn't like have a sharp scent. I'm quite sure it is Antique sandalwood. It does not smell like sandalwood at all, more like cedarwood-ish. But I think that scent might work in cold or hot processed soap, since the long cure time might evaporate some or all of the sharpness, and change it into a pleasant woody scent. I bought it because it was on sale, and I know I looove sandalwood. Little did I know that it had a scent like cheap toilet air freshener. But I can't judge it just based on consentrated scents on cotton pads. I think I will make a batch of simple cold processed soap with the cheapest oils, split it up in several plastic cups and add different scents to each, then mold it, mark it and let it cure, for then to find out what scents I like or dislike.

Now I have to find out how to make a car freshener. I want to make one with a scent I absolutely love, which is called Petra (from Petra in the desert of Jordan). It smells expensive and very pleasant. And I just now found out it is a dupe of some perfume. And the scent is actually called Petra type. Well, well, I don't like too much that fragrance companies copies perfumes. It might be legal, but I don't think it is very fair. Instead they should hire someone to create unique scents for them, instead of copying others. But I guess they are pushed agains copying because of customers demanding dupes of this and that perfumes and everything from Lush especially.

 

[Susie]

You can buy the air freshener paper products many places. Here is one: http://www.candlesandsupplies.net/Air-Fresheners/Air-Freshener-Paper?CAPCID={CREATIVE}&msclkid=a3b21a9415bd17dc03ae41df64c6f120&CA_6C15C=1073996918

 

[Diana Smith]

Concerning LS I was wondering as a new to LS soapmaking. I have a natural dead lake about 40 miles from my house plus a mile hike up a hill. The water within it is naturally acidic that nothing other than leeches, bullfrogs, bugs, and a few plants can survive in there. Fish and most plants just plain die. Soap's most neutral pH is a 7.0, skin is around 4.5 - 5.0. What if I bottled say a few gallons of water from this lake, stuffed them in my backpack and hiked it down the hill and used the water to make a more acidic LS? Would this work or would it cause problems with saponification? Could I use it after saponification to drop the pH to say 6.5 making it a more body friendly soap?

 

[NsMar42111]

As Irishlass said, liquid soap has its own odor. I've asked around because I thought it was just me and nope, it does. I can't quite get over it myself. Testing in CP soap isn't going to tell you how it'll smell in liquid soap , two different animals.

What I did for scent testing in liquid soap is pick up a bunch of empty "travel kits" from the $1 store- 3 bottles and lids for $1. I added an ounce of liquid soap (diluted with Poly 20 added to the whole batch [instead of bottle by bottle]). Then I figured out the FO amount. I started with .5 oz per pound of diluted soap, divided by 16 (because 16 oz in a pound, and I was doing 1 oz). That equals 0.03125of an oz of FO per bottle. Convert that to milliliters, 0.924171875 Milliliters. Considering my pipette is tricky to read, I converted to drops....14.2499927 Drops. No, it's not 100% accurate but for testing purposes it works. So I added 14 drops of FO to each bottle, and shook the heck out of them. Then I let them set for a week. A few immediatly showed issues like thickening or thinning the batch. I had some that morphed into something awful, some that didn't cover the "base" smell at all, and some that were ok. The weak ones I added 7 more drops (to get .75 oz pps) and then upped it to 7 more on that (so 28 total).

 

[shunt2011]

Concerning LS I was wondering as a new to LS soapmaking. I have a natural dead lake about 40 miles from my house plus a mile hike up a hill. The water within it is naturally acidic that nothing other than leeches, bullfrogs, bugs, and a few plants can survive in there. Fish and most plants just plain die. Soap's most neutral pH is a 7.0, skin is around 4.5 - 5.0. What if I bottled say a few gallons of water from this lake, stuffed them in my backpack and hiked it down the hill and used the water to make a more acidic LS? Would this work or would it cause problems with saponification? Could I use it after saponification to drop the pH to say 6.5 making it a more body friendly soap?

Nope, soap is naturally 8-10.5 PH. Dropping it lower will cause separation and won't be soap.

 

[IrishLass]

Ditto what Shari said^^^. Lye-based soap (whether liquid or solid) will always measure on the alkaline side of the pH scale, because by definition, soap is an "alkaline salt of a fatty acid". If its pH got as low as 7 (neutral), it would separate and lose its ability to clean (i.e., cease to be soap).


IrishLass