New Soap Lye Calculator, Oil and Soap Recipe Database

[mcnazar]

Hi All,

I got hooked on soap making last year and just finished developing Soapee after being frustrated with existing soap calculators.

Soapee is a Lye calculator and a soap and oil database. It is ad free and I've release the website source code to the public domain (i.e. it is free of copyright) and it can be found on GitHub here.

I would love to hear your ideas and improvements on the dedicated Soapee pages on Facebook and Reddit.

I hope you find Soapee useful

Please accept my sincerest apologies if this is not relevant or if I've violated any group rules on posting website links.

 

[DeeAnna]

There's always room for improvement. Some soap recipe calcs including Soapcalc can be overwhelming until one gets used to using them. That said, I would be frustrated if I were limited to using Soapee as my recipe calc because you limit soapers to defining the water in the recipe based on "water as % of oils". There are some serious issues that can occur by using "water as % of oils" compared with lye solution concentration or water:lye ratio. See http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=53642

 

[mcnazar]

Thank you for the feedback DeeAnne!!

I mostly make KOH based liquid soaps and have never paid that much attention to the lye water ratio.

Super thanks for the link! I've been wanting to know more about that for a while.

 

[DeeAnna]

My criticism of "water as % of oils" is as valid for KOH soap as well as NaOH soap.

 

[kchaystack]

I agree with Dee. I much prefer setting the concentration of my lye solution to using water as % of oils. The default way always gives me issues with lots of ash, or a hard time unmolding. Of course I could just use your site to get the amount of lye to use and calculate my own water amount, but for a new soaper or someone who has problems with math...

I do like the interface, and really like the way it is presented. I might try it out next time I decide to play with a recipe.

 

[not_ally]

I agree with DeeAnna on the lye concentration measure. Otherwise, I really liked the simplicity of this format, I found it easier to find things I was looking for on the page, and loved that there were no ads. Have not yet run through a recipe and saved/printed it so that I can provide a thoughtful assessment, but I give it a thumbs-up at this point!

ETA: Also, it is v. generous of you to make it open-source.

 

[mcnazar]

Thanks all for the feedback!!

I'll add an additional option for the water section to specify concentration rather than % of oils.

My criticism of "water as % of oils" is as valid for KOH soap as well as NaOH soap.

Thank you very much for the feedback for the link regarding using Lye Concentration.

I've gone ahead and implemented an additional option in the "Amount of water in recipe" section where either water as % of oils or lye concentration can be specified

Again, super thanks!!

 

[galaxyMLP]

I really really like it, used it on my phone and it works very well.

I like that you now added the lye % amount. My favorite part is it works perfectly on my phone.

I will probably be using this calculator from now on. Gotta make a few comparisons on it first though.

Oh man, I love the oils tab

 

[not_ally]

I also like that you can save as many recipes as you want, by name and description, unlike w/Soapcalc. And MMS maybe? A while since I used that one.

 

[kumudini]

Nice program, easy to use. Like the fact that you have fragrance as a percentage and not a certain amount ppo. Only thing was, it was difficult to scroll up and down the list of oils on my iPad but the search feature made up for it. It's also very cool that you can look at the soap properties and the fatty acid profile changing as you are adding or removing oils to the recipe. I will definitely be using it once I'm done comparing the lye calculations with the ones on soap calc which I'm using now. The one recipe I tried definitely matched up.
Thank you for making it .

ETA: just wondering if the recipes you have up there are user recipes? Do all the saved recipes with no visibility restrictions go up there?

 

[galaxyMLP]

I was wondering, sometimes I like to look at my formulas in varying units for example, I'll look at my total batch weight in pounds, oils in ounces and fragrance in grams (Maybe I'm crazy like that). Is there any way a "show me ALL the units" option is possible? This is specifically for the % based soap recipes.

And I totally understand if not!!

 

[TeresaT]

Sweet!

 

[tarkus]

Are you a programmer ?

 

[snappyllama]

Nice Interface; Good job!

I really like the functionality on creating a recipe. I have a few thoughts on the print-out... based on how I assume most folks would use it. I'm also a bit freaky about visual clutter... I design business intelligence visualizations for my day job and have a hard time not being nitpicky.

Please don't take all these as any indication I don't like what you've done

1. Move Lye, Water, and FO amounts up near the oils since those are measurements we care about.
2. Move Notes section directly below the measurement section.
3. Under Recipe Totals, do not repeat the word "Weight" instead, make that word appear in a vertical column in front of those rows.
4. Move UOM to their own columns.
5. Right Justify all quantities.
6. Enable multi-select user control over which UOMs are displayed. Grams would be a handy default.
7. Condense rows for Superfat, Lye Concentration, Water:Lye Ratio, Saturated:Unsaturated. You could probably fit that into 2 lines.
8. Remove the word "Ratio".
9. Condense the Fatty Acids to fit 2 per row.
10. Determine MAX length of Oil. Move the UOM and quantities to display closer to to the word.
11. Add check box to right of all measurements.
12. Pick a consistent decimal rounding scheme for all like measurements (especially under the Recipe Totals section... currently some go to three spaces and some go to one space).
13. Differentiate the section headers... Maybe a gray background or all caps?

Whew, sorry I'm a big jerk. I do really like it though!

 

[Jstar]

Love how this works..however is this just for online use? If yes, do you plan on making an option for downloading and using offline?

 

[mcnazar]

just wondering if the recipes you have up there are user recipes? Do all the saved recipes with no visibility restrictions go up there?

I've super happy you like soapee

All the recipes visible on soapee are user submitted and marked as public. Recipes can be marked public (listed on soapee), private (only visible to the author) or friends (only visible to author and friends). Recipe visibility can be changed at any time.

Hope that helps

I was wondering, sometimes I like to look at my formulas in varying units for example, I'll look at my total batch weight in pounds, oils in ounces and fragrance in grams (Maybe I'm crazy like that). Is there any way a "show me ALL the units" option is possible? This is specifically for the % based soap recipes.

And I totally understand if not!!

Soapee almost does that

When in Percentage mode and selecting a unit other than grams, all weights are listed with both the selected unit (i.e. ounces) along with grams. It also converts between the units when switching (i.e. 100g -> 3.5oz)... I thought that was a nice feature

I'll have a think about showing weights in all units on the recipe print-out as I have more space to play with there.

Are you a programmer ?

Guilty as charged

Here is my GitHub page.

I developed soapee because (a) I like making soap and kept loosing all my soapcalc print-outs and notes and (b) I wanted to play with ReactJS.

Fingers crossed React Native will start supporting Android in September after which I plan to develop an Android version of soapee.

I have a few thoughts on the print-out...

Wow!...... WOW!!

THIS! IS! AWESOME!!

Thank you SO MUCH for your time and for sharing your suggestions. UI isn't my strongest suit (I'm more technical than creative) so I'll be studying and implementing as much of these as I can!!

Again, I can't thank you enough!!

Love how this works..however is this just for online use? If yes, do you plan on making an option for downloading and using offline?

Sorry but it's online only for now but I plan on making and Android app in a few months.

 

[galaxyMLP]

Soapee almost does that

When in Percentage mode and selecting a unit other than grams, all weights are listed with both the selected unit (i.e. ounces) along with grams. It also converts between the units when switching (i.e. 100g -> 3.5oz)... I thought that was a nice feature

I'll have a think about showing weights in all units on the recipe print-out as I have more space to play with there.

Yes! I noticed this after I posted this of course!! This will be my go to calc now! I'm very excited!

I'm not sure about anyone else but, I love soapcalc its UI was pretty terrible though. And trying to use it on mobile was always a nightmare for me (and that's usually how I ended up using it so...)

 

[JayJay]

This is wonderful! Thank you for making this. And congratulations on your accomplishment! It's really modern and beautiful. It also feels more current with regard to the social network feel. Nice.

I am not as advanced as most people who have replied. From my perspective, I would like to see my information in grams and also be able to enter my oils as percentages. Maybe my brain has been too trained by soap calc, but I like to record and enter recipes by percentages of oils that total 100.

One more thought-- on another thread, several of us apple users were looking for a soapmaking software (to track inventory, sales, and save recipes) that is compatible with apple. You could stand to make a load of money if you did that. I would be happy to be on your focus group to test it. And I would be happy if you let me have it for free for making the suggestion and "helping" you to develop it.

 

[osso]

First impressions - I really like the format. I just played with the calculator a little bit and haven't printed a recipe yet, but it is very user friendly. Maybe for "water amount" add a lye:water option like soapcalc has available. Not necessary as you can use lye percent, but some people are used to and like that option.

Another thing I think would be cool is a function to discount total water for another additive. (Simple math really, but it would be a neat feature). For example, if I want to add coconut milk in a split method I would make my lye solution at 50% with water and add the rest of whatever my total is with coconut milk. I think there would have to be an option to either use a max lye concentration of 50% or input the weight of the water substitute additive that you would like to use. This is just me going off the deep end though

Also (sorry I haven't seen a printout), populating an ingredients list by weight (with optional additives input by weight) would be cool.

I like the recipe section, the option to save and make private or share, and co7mments.

The oils tab is great as well. I was putting something like it together by spreadsheet...nice job on it.

I appreciate your work on it and applying the feedback here.

 

[not_ally]

Another note/request: would it be poss, for FO/EO amounts, to include a __ oz/ppo option? Not a hard thing to figure out yourself, of course, but many of us are used to this option.