I live in a hard water area and want to try adding citric acid to my soaps but I also like to masterbatch using 50/50 solution. I'm really bad with math but how do I account for the extra lye needed? Can I still use Citric Acid Amount x .624?
Masterbatching and Citric Acid
- Thread starter ewhitake
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I don’t want to deal with extra math for every recipe, so I use sodium citrate instead of citric acid. (Same thing, but already converted.) I use 50:50 masterbatched lye. In a separate container, I heat the additional water to dissolve the sodium citrate plus sorbitol. Sodium lactate and/or honey is added if the recipe calls for it. When all is dissolved in the additional water, I add it to the measured MB lye. Food grade sodium citrate is available from Amazon.
Great suggestion!! I’ve been using Sodium Lactate but it doesn’t seem to help with the hard water in my area. Thought I’d try something different.
Using your suggestion, if the extra liquid is some form of milk, are your directions the same?
If you use the SoapMakingFriend.com calculator, it accounts for the citric acid in the lye calculation and will tell you how much citric acid to use based on a % of oils.
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The sodium lactate should help your batch harden faster for unmolding and cutting. The sodium citrate will help with the soap scum and hard water. My process is similar to @ScentimentallyYours, I just don’t bother to heat the extra liquid. I would think you could do this with milk as your extra liquid, but haven’t tried it myself with milk.
@ewhitake, Yes. MB lye solution plus additional liquid, which may be water, goat milk, liquid aloe, etc.
