My CP recipes - advice please!

[JustBeachy]

I make a soap without Palm or animal fats and it's hard enough to cut 18 hours later. I use 10%cocoa butter in the recipe to give it hardness and water discount a bit. Also, I've found that larger %s of shea butter reduce the lather, so I keep it at 5-6%. This is what time and experimentation will teach you. Keep plugging away!

I have to join you on the butter wagon. I have 8% butter in my main recipe. It adjusts a little up and down, whether i'm using shea, mango or cocoa. No lard, no tallow, no palm. I'm cutting anywhere from 16 to 18 hours with no problems.

I've tested some runs with and without butters. Three oil recipes, just to see the effects. No offense to those who say they can't tell the difference, but to me it's a very noticeable difference. And with the amount in the recipe, it's just not that expensive for the difference it makes. Just my opinion.

 

[Susie]

That's part of the beauty of this forum. We all give our opinions and then people get to try multiple ways, or just one way that sounds good to them.

 

[JustBeachy]

That's part of the beauty of this forum. We all give our opinions and then people get to try multiple ways, or just one way that sounds good to them.

I agree wholeheartedly. This forum is really good about differing opinions without the typical "I'm right/you're wrong" attitudes. Makes for a great learning and information forum.

So in keeping with my spirit of experimentation and not doing something, just because it's the way I like it, I ran a experiment. I did this experiment back on the 16th of Nov, so the soaps are at the 4 week mark now.

Gent made a point that by using shea butter i was effectively using something with the same "soapy" values as Palm. I can't argue with the numbers on the calc. But I have always had a perceived difference when I used Shea. So I took an old recipe of mine with 20% palm and 8% Shea butter and made it as my control bar.

We'll call it Bar 1

Next I took the same recipe, removed the shea butter and moved the palm to 28%

We'll call it Bar 2

Last I took the same recipe and removed the palm, upped the Shea butter to 28%

That would be Bar 3.

Results : I did a shower test with all three bars over the last couple of days. Bar 1 produced a creamy and somewhat bubbly lather. Skin felt smooth after the fact. The bar is hard, but still a little bit of curing would help.

Bar 2 was about the same hardness, more bubbly than Bar 1, but felt a little more drying after the shower.

Bar 3 was hard as a rock. Hardly any bubbles, but a really rich creamy lather. An hour since I took a shower with it and my skin still feels soft and silky.

If I had to pick a bar it would probably be number one, because number 3 was closer to a Castille soap. But I would say without a doubt, I could tell the difference. According to the numbers, maybe there shouldn't be a difference, but apparently the soap never read that article.

I'm not saying throw out all the numbers, just that some items bring things to the soap that can't be substituted by similar items. I'll stick to my proven recipe, exclude the palm and keep the butters. I've been using mango butter in place of shea in the last 5 or 6 batches. While the oldest one with mango is only three weeks old, I can feel a difference in how the bar "feels" when rubbing it. Sorry, I'll stay a believer in the butters.

 

[IrishLass]

Great experiment!

I'm not saying throw out all the numbers, just that some items bring things to the soap that can't be substituted by similar items.

True that. One of the nice things that shea brings to the table is that it has about 8% unsaponifiables, which contain anti-inflammatory constituents (according to the info I got from Swiftcraftymonkey's blog).


IrishLass