Mms → soapcalc

[Miz Jenny]

Been using MMS for quite a while and recently decided to switch to SOAPCALC to further refine my recipes. I've compared all my previous recipes and biggest difference is increase in liquid. I do have to plug my recipes into MMS first, though, to get right %'s for 5lb batch. Don't laugh, I'm strictly right-brained and artsy-fartsy and my head thinks math is Sanskrit.

I've decided to make the yogurt soap from Anne Watson's book. This is my first foray into milk soaps, except for coconut milk.

When I added my recipe to soapcalc, I added the yogurt under MILK FAT, ANY BOVINE. Did I do this correctly? Should I do a water discount because yogurt is added to water for freezing?

Recipe: CO 26.07%, OO 60.84%, yogurt 13.09%, water 861.824 grams, lye 326.147 grams. All soap bar qualities are medium range.

I will add sodium lactate for hardness and sugar for bubbles. Should I figure in some castor oil?

TIA... Jenny

 

[shunt2011]

I would just add my yogurt as part of my water. I don't change anything else when I've done it. I just subtract the amount of yogurt I'm going to add from my total water measurement. I generally add my yogurt to my oils and blend them in well before adding my lye/water mixture to it.

 

[judymoody]

If you're using lowfat yogurt, I'd just use it as if it were water.

If you're using full fat yogurt, then you might want to calculate the milk fat from the nutritional information and then factor it into your recipe.

You might not need extra sugar if you're using yogurt as it has sugars in it naturally.

 

[Miz Jenny]

If you're using lowfat yogurt, I'd just use it as if it were water.

If you're using full fat yogurt, then you might want to calculate the milk fat from the nutritional information and then factor it into your recipe.

I used the MILK FAT FROM BOVINE to figure grams of yogurt to add and figured the % into the 100%. This is IF I can get full fat yogurt.

 

[new12soap]

Been using MMS for quite a while and recently decided to switch to SOAPCALC to further refine my recipes. I've compared all my previous recipes and biggest difference is increase in liquid. I do have to plug my recipes into MMS first, though, to get right %'s for 5lb batch. Don't laugh, I'm strictly right-brained and artsy-fartsy and my head thinks math is Sanskrit.

I've decided to make the yogurt soap from Anne Watson's book. This is my first foray into milk soaps, except for coconut milk.

When I added my recipe to soapcalc, I added the yogurt under MILK FAT, ANY BOVINE. Did I do this correctly? Should I do a water discount because yogurt is added to water for freezing?

Recipe: CO 26.07%, OO 60.84%, yogurt 13.09%, water 861.824 grams, lye 326.147 grams. All soap bar qualities are medium range.

I will add sodium lactate for hardness and sugar for bubbles. Should I figure in some castor oil?

TIA... Jenny

NO!

If I am reading your post correctly, you are adding your full yogurt amount to your recipe of saponifiable oils! You are going to end up with a VERY lye heavy soap if you do that! Even with full fat yogurt, there is still a lot of water content and other things that do not saponify in yogurt. Do NOT add the yogurt into your recipe!!!

Whatever yogurt you end up using, just read the label for the amount of fat (usually in grams) and you can add the fat amount only to the lye calculator if you wish. You really don't have to, but look at the total weight of the yogurt, subtract the fat grams you put into soapcalc, and then just subtract the rest of the yogurt from the water.

You posted your recipe in both percentages and amounts, I can't tell how much soap you are trying to make with that much lye and water, but if you want to go ahead and post your full recipe I would be happy to do the math for you.

I also agree that you do not need to add any sugar or anything else, the yogurt will take care of that.

 

[Miz Jenny]

In rethinking this through, I'm to substitute the yogurt or milk or cream for the water. What was I thinking. DOH! I know better...

This recipe is for a 5 lb batch of soap.

 

[Miz Jenny]

judymoody - I recalculated the recipe.

39.16 % coconut oil
60.84 % olive oil

861.82 grams liquid (yogurt)
332.19 grams lye

I'm appreciating your help. Do I ever feel dumb, though, tonight.

 

[dryalligator]

What happens if you add greek thick yogurt? Do you add water? Would the lye attack the fats and become lumpy?

 

[Obsidian]

I've not used yogurt but I would think if you are using a really thick kind, you would want 50/50 water/yogurt mix. The lye will start to saponify the fats in the yogurt so I would use it fairly soon after mixing, not wait for it to cool way down.
Another option is to save the yogurt to add at trace or blend it directly into the oils before adding the lye water.

 

[Lin]

I've used 2% greek yogurt twice now. The first time I was making castile and just used yogurt as a 'full water' amount without diluting. The second time I did half greek yogurt, half cucumber juice. My bf was helping me with that one and moved slower mixing the lye into it and yes the fats do start to saponify so you want to move as quickly as possible. It was starting to get floaty bits of saponified yogurt when he brought it to me.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Bear in mind that even full fat yoghurt is not 100% fat! There will be a % on the back that gives you how much fat it is made up of. Add this to your fats section in the soap calc.

So if you're using 500g yoghurt (to make my calculations easier!) and the % fat is 20% (again, just an example!), you have 100g fat to add to your oils section as it will react with the lye.

This -----------------
39.16 % coconut oil
60.84 % olive oil

861.82 grams liquid (yogurt)
332.19 grams lye

I'm appreciating your help. Do I ever feel dumb, though, tonight.

__________________

Will mean your soap is hugely supperfatted - there is only enough lye to saponify the olive and coconut oils at a 5% SF (or there abouts) so with another large amount of fat added in to your mix, there will be a lot of olive and CO that doesn't saponify as the lye is used up on your yoghurt fat.

I hope I'm making sense, though.

 

[Miz Jenny]

EG - You make perfect sense. I never used a soap calculator when I started and had no issues with my soap. When I used MMS, I had no problems. Went to SOAPCALC, because this is what majority are using and now I'm seriously in doubt, as to its reliability. Haven't made any soap using it, though. I've also made many soaps using Anne Watson's recipes plugged into MMS, with no problems. My mind is awhirl...

 

[Saponista]

I've only ever used soap calc and it seems to have worked fine every time. None of my soaps have been lye heavy.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

I'm a soapcalc fanboy myself.

The issue isn't with soapcalc on this one, it's something more fundamental -

Oils and fats are mixed with a lye solution. Calculations for the lye and solution are based on how much fat/oil is in your recipe.

In this case, though, your lye solution also contains fat that has not been calculated for. Imagine making a soap with a water lye solution and at some point in the mix just adding in a lot of random oil - your recipe is now all over the place and the amount of lye that you're putting in is not going to be enough - you'll have a massive superfat & going on.

Part of things like milks and milk based products are fat. I am sat here with a carton of milk (will put it back so it doesn't get warm) and on the nutritional information I can see that fat makes up 3.5% of it. This means that if I make a recipe with 100g of oil with a 10% superfat, but use milk, I am actually upping my superfat as I am adding in more fat.

What I need to do (and what Judy said) is that I look at how much of my milk (or yoghurt, in your case) I'm going to use. Let's say I'm making a bigger batch and I'm using 100g milk. That means that I need to add 3.5g of milk fat (Milk Fat, any bovine on Soap Calc) to my oil section so that the calculation includes enough lye. I arrive at the 3.5g milk fat because it's 100g of milk and 3.5% of 100g is 3.5g. If I'm using 200g milk, I need to add 7g milk fat to the oil section.

On the other hand, as new12soap pointed out, as my milk is only 3.5% fat, I shouldn't put the whole weight of my milk in to the oil section as just a small % of it is fat. If I put the total weight of milk in as milk fat, I'll use far too much lye and do myself some serious damage.

Hope this doesn't put you off of using soapcalc.

 

[Miz Jenny]

Okay, now I get it, I think. I'll roll it around in my head and rework the recipe on soapcalc. Since I don't have yogurt, I'll do it with whole milk. Thanks for explaining it so I understand. In school and university word problems were my bane. I'll post back when above is done.

 

[Miz Jenny]

Let's see if this makes sense:

5 lbs
2297 grams

Coconut Oil: 888 grams / 38.66%

Olive Oil: 379 grams / 60.03%

Milk from bovine: 30 grams / 1.31 %

Liquid: 872 grams

Lye: 336 grams

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

On the milk information, the % of fat is about 1.6? Or are you mixing milk with water?

 

[Miz Jenny]

I'm basing this on full milk.

Milk carton says 8 grams fat per 250 ml.

I divided total fats 2340 grams by 250 ml and multiplied this by 8 = 73 grams or 3.11%.

This changed liquid amount to 889 grams and lye to 343 grams.

CO 888 grams / 37.95%

OO 1379 grams / 58.93 %

MILK FAT 73 grams / 3.12%

 

[new12soap]

I'm basing this on full milk.

Milk carton says 8 grams fat per 250 ml.

I divided total fats 2340 grams by 250 ml and multiplied this by 8 = 73 grams or 3.11%.

This changed liquid amount to 889 grams and lye to 343 grams.

CO 888 grams / 37.95%

OO 1379 grams / 58.93 %

MILK FAT 73 grams / 3.12%

I'm not sure why you divided the total fats by 250 ml?

If you are making a 5lb batch of soap, using 62% OO and 38% CO, with a SF of 5% (and you can change that to whatever you like, of course) and using the default water as 38% of your oils (which you can also change, this is just an example), your total water is 861g. If you replace all your water with whole milk, you will used 861g of milk. 861 divided by 250 is 3.44, so then multiply 3.44 (which is basically how many cups of milk you are using) by 8 (the number of grams of fat in one cup of milk) and that = 27.55g of milk fat that you are adding to your recipe.

In other words, using full fat milk to replace all the water in that recipe will increase your superfat by a little over 1%. I really would not bother to calculate the milk fat into your recipe.

If using the MMS soap calculator was working for you, unless there is something in particular you are trying to do that MMS doesn't do and soapcalc does, there's really no reason to switch. Use whichever calc you prefer.

HTH (I really hope I didn't just make it more confusing!)

 

[seven]

why did you use 2340? i tot you were only supposed to count the fat that is in the milk only. if i were you, i would do 2 calculations on soapcalc. i am match challenged big time, and so far this is the easiest way for me to do it that i can understand.

first, calculate the lye and water needed for the oils. second, for the milk fat. let's say your 1st calculation gives you 100 gr lye and 300 gr water. you want to swap water with milk, right? so, 300/250 x 8 = 9.6. on your second calculation, put 9.6 gr as the amount of your milk fat. let's say it gives you 5 gr of lye, you then add 5 + 100 (from your 1st calculation). i wouldn't bother with adding more water, since you already have more than enough anyway.

you can also don't bother with adding more lye, but that means that your SF will increase. if you add more lye to account for the milk fat, your SF stays the same.

i hope i'm not confusing you further with this. i am already confused myself, LOL!

someone pls cmiiw