Need Suggestion for Increasing Lather

[Arlo]

I'm a novice and over six months have made two batches of the same soap. Input now from a family member is that there's not enough lather. Here's the recipe I use:
950 g olive oil
50 g coconut oil
200 g water
133 g sodium hydroxide

For both makes, it took a long time to reach trace, and then a long time to harden before cutting. But once cured (4 or more weeks), it was fine, until the comment about the lather! I agree there's not much lather but it didn't really bother me.

I'd love a suggestion for an easy way to increase lather. Thank you.

 

[lsg]

With only 5% coconut oil, you will not have much lather. Try using at least 20% coconut oil and 5% Castor oil, 20% palm oil, and 55% olive oil. If you don't want to use palm, you can substitute lard or tallow for the palm. Just make sure to run the recipe through the lye calculator.

 

[atiz]

Translated to percentages, this is 95% OO and 5% CO. For very high % OO soaps you have to wait a lot to get any bubbles (and even then not much). CO helps with bubbles a lot, you can use anywhere between 15% and 25% for a not overly drying bar.

 

[Arlo]

Translated to percentages, this is 95% OO and 5% CO. For very high % OO soaps you have to wait a lot to get any bubbles (and even then not much). CO helps with bubbles a lot, you can use anywhere between 15% and 25% for a not overly drying bar.

When you say "wait a lot to get any bubbles", do you mean keep lathering under water until bubbles appear? Anyway, I like your idea of just increasing the % of CO. I think I would start with 15% to test it. Thank you!

With only 5% coconut oil, you will not have much lather. Try using at least 20% coconut oil and 5% Castor oil, 20% palm oil, and 55% olive oil. If you don't want to use palm, you can substitute lard or tallow for the palm. Just make sure to run the recipe through the lye calculator.

Thank you. This is a major recipe change for me! What qualities does castor oil add to a soap?

 

[earlene]

Castor oil plays a supporting role in fostering large bubbles in soap and contributes to lather. Olive oil is not considered an oil that produces a lot of lathers.

But you mentioned lather. Bubbles and lather are not the same thing.

Read this link to see what oils you could add to foster more lather.
Specifically this section:

"If you are looking to stabilize or sustain lather in your soap recipe, try:

• Using castor oil at 5% to 10% of your recipe. (Be forewarned, using more than 15% castor oil tends to make the bar sticky, tacky, and rubbery.)
• Adding or increasing oils that support lather, like almond oil, lard, tallow, cocoa butter, palm oil, shea butter, or sunflower oil
• Decreasing oils that do not contribute a lot to lather (or hinder it), like olive oil"
  
  

 

[atiz]

When you say "wait a lot to get any bubbles", do you mean keep lathering under water until bubbles appear? Anyway, I like your idea of just increasing the % of CO. I think I would start with 15% to test it. Thank you!

Sorry, that was ambiguous --- I meant a long cure (like 6 months). CO and Castor are much more bubble-friendly

ETA: right, bubbles ≠ lather. But they are lather-friendly too.

 

[Arimara]

Sorry, that was ambiguous --- I meant a long cure (like 6 months). CO and Castor are much more bubble-friendly

ETA: right, bubbles ≠ lather. But they are lather-friendly too.

A 6-month cure for 95% OO soap? It's just shy of being a castile soap. OP, I suggest you keep a bar from that batch and use it after letting it cure for a year. That would give you a better understanding of curing and whether you like that recipe or not. First recipes is one of many factors in how we can mark are progress.

 

[dibbles]

Subbing aloe juice for some or all of your water will also increase bubbles. I dissolve sugar in my water before adding the lye to boost bubbles. @cmzaha uses sorbitol, and likes that for increasing bubbles.

 

[Arlo]

I guess I need an explanation of why bubbles and lather are different. It sounds like you can have one without the other. Does anyone have a link to an explanation? Thanks.

A 6-month cure for 95% OO soap? It's just shy of being a castile soap. OP, I suggest you keep a bar from that batch and use it after letting it cure for a year. That would give you a better understanding of curing and whether you like that recipe or not. First recipes is one of many factors in how we can mark are progress.

Good idea. I will do that.

 

[Zany_in_CO]

Arlo, what you have there is a castile soap -- which is known to have stingy lather. As others have said, you can improve the lather by using 10% coconut and 5% castor; sugar also bumps the lather a bit. Then you will have what we call a "bastile" soap.

While you're at it, does your soap have stringy lather? That's what we call "slime" (among other names) and also what some folks like about castile soap. If that's not the case, you may want to try making Zany's No Slime Castile -- with the above recommended amounts of Coconut, Castor, and Sugar.

For a bar of soap with copious amounts of dense lather, you will need to try a more balanced bar. Go to the Beginner's Forum and check out the Beginner's Learn to Soap Online thread for a variety of tried & true recipes to try.

To understand what a "balanced bar" is, I just posted a new thread in the Beginner's Forum:

Basic Trinity of Oils Starter Formula

Happy soaping!

 

[Andrew]

This is a nice bastille recipe. Castile is 100% olive oil while batille is commonly accepted as 70% olive oil or more. If you want the cure time to be shorter, try cutting down the water a bit. 175g will make demolding a lot faster. Castile soap has great lather, but you have to wait months for it.

In terms of oils that increase lather, your best options are coconut and castor. 5% castor will make a big difference. Castor also accelerates trace so you should be happy about that.

Olive oil based soaps greatly benefit from sodium lactate. Try one tablespoon sodium lactate per 1kg oils. It also is a humectant and increases lather.

You can try any and all of these. Probably the easiest would be to add sodium citrate at a dosage of 1% of oils. Or 10g of citric acid and 6g extra NaOH of lye to your lye water.

https://www.modernsoapmaking.com/updated-lather-lovers-additive-testing/

 

[earlene]

I guess I need an explanation of why bubbles and lather are different. It sounds like you can have one without the other. Does anyone have a link to an explanation? Thanks.

No specific link, but I will share my experience. Some soaps make huge bubbles, some small bubbles, and all sizes in between are obtainable with variations of a soap formula.

Lather made up of tiny tiny bubbles tends to be really thick and often creamy, in my experience. Some recipes make copious lather, I mean like shaving cream copious; too much perhaps for normal hand washing and so forth.

Whereas, the lather that follows big gigantic bubbles, is sparser, harder to obtain and maintain (requiring more rubbing and scrubbing to work up a lather). In my experience. Not sure why. And it may not be the case is all situations, that's just my experience.

So bubbles don't always give lots of lather. But the size of bubbles might, if what I have experienced carries out.

But keep in mind, I don't use soaps with animal fats, (except if I briefly test it with gloved hands when I make it for family). So how bubbles and lather work in soaps with animal fats is not my forte.

ETA: I found a link for you: https://wikidiff.com/lather/bubble

 

[Dawni]

My high olive oil soap lathers well enough... looks like this at less than a month, and this was 100% pomace, no additives other than salt (which supposedly cuts lather), less water and no superfat. I'm sure it'll get better with a much longer cure so don't let the lack of bubbles now deter you from making more of the same, if it works for you

That being said, most add sugar to their liquid before adding the lye, or aloe juice as mentioned above. Anything with sugar helps, beer and milks also do to some extent but are trickier to use.

I find that with sugar, I personally don't need castor oil in some recipes (cost cutting lol), especially high butter ones and/or without lard, but I do agree that it helps if you're the type who likes bubbly soap more than the denser, creamy type.

To test you can try just increasing your coconut oil amount slightly, even without using castor oil, and see how you like it. I now don't use more than 20% and mostly use between 16-18% after gradually experimenting and decreasing from the 25% I used when I was very new to soaping. Add the castor if it's still lacking. Good luck!

 

[Arlo]

Thanks to all. In the end, here’s the recipe I used: 88% olive oil, 8% coconut, 4% castor. Next time I’ll try sugar because castor oil is pricey I learned. (Dawni, I didn’t see your reply in time) I won’t know for a while about lather obviously. My first two batches (ever) we’re 95% olive, 5% coco and my sister said it was great for her dry hands, it was my husband who wanted more lather. I hope the new recipe will please both. I guess sugar would be a way for me to maintain the high OO percentage. What percentage sugar is needed? I have some troubleshooting questions but will start a new post.

 

[atiz]

Thanks to all. In the end, here’s the recipe I used: 88% olive oil, 8% coconut, 4% castor. Next time I’ll try sugar because castor oil is pricey I learned. (Dawni, I didn’t see your reply in time) I won’t know for a while about lather obviously. My first two batches (ever) we’re 95% olive, 5% coco and my sister said it was great for her dry hands, it was my husband who wanted more lather. I hope the new recipe will please both. I guess sugar would be a way for me to maintain the high OO percentage. What percentage sugar is needed? I have some troubleshooting questions but will start a new post.

I use about 1 tbsp per pound of oils, mixed in the water before the lye.

 

[Susie]

Sugar helps CREATE bubbles/lather. Castor oil helps SUSTAIN bubbles/lather. If your bubbles/lather sticks around, then when you make the next pass with the soap, then you add more. Thereby increasing your lather. I like both sugar and castor oil. I do not use SL, but neither do I make high olive oil soaps.

 

[earlene]

The price of castor oil from Soaper's Choice (in Des Plaines, IL) is far cheaper per ounce than if you are buying it from WalMart or a pharmacy. At such low percentages that it is used in soap, it really is a reasonably low price comparitively. I don't always use it myself, but not for cost reasons. I just don't always have it with me when I soap (like when I travel), or I have run out and soaped without it. But the only way you will know if it matters as an ingredient to you is to do some comparison soaps to test side-by-side.

 

[KiwiMoose]

Hi Arlo,
How about trying a further test with 80% OO, 15% Coconut, and 5% Castor? ( Like @Zany_in_CO's recipe she has mentioned)
Unfortunately if you have one person wanting a gentle bar, and another wanting more bubbles, then you may not be able to have the same bar doing both. Most people with very dry hands and/or eczema are not fond of too much coconut oil.
Having said that - I use coconut oil at 20% in all my recipes and my sister in law (with eczema) LOVES my soap. She has thrown away all her commercial liquid soaps now, saying the dry her hands out. Mind you I do have several other ingredients in there to which no doubt all contribute.
Good luck!

 

[atiz]

I just tested a soap I made a few weeks ago with 23% Babassu (no CO) which I had never used before. Oh my. It is the bubbliest soap I have ever made or used, and not drying at all. Babassu is on the more expensive side but might be worth a try if you make soap primarily for yourself.

 

[KiwiMoose]

I just tested a soap I made a few weeks ago with 23% Babassu (no CO) which I had never used before. Oh my. It is the bubbliest soap I have ever made or used, and not drying at all. Babassu is on the more expensive side but might be worth a try if you make soap primarily for yourself.

I used to use Babassu in conjunction with Coconut Oil 10% of one and 15% of the other, but I ended up dropping the Babassu due to cost.