Pure dairy soap

[Guest]

All recipes I could find for milk soap are regular soap with added milk rather than pure milk soap. I'd like to explore a milk soap with no added oils/fats.

Anybody tried this or have any suggestions?

I plan to try with milk only at first, just to see what happens, and maybe later, I'll add fresh cream to the recipe.

I see some issues, but they are not a big problem to me:

- difficulties calculating the right amount of lye
- the soap may not harden
- it may have a short shelf life

----

I am more comfortable with HP, will this make the soap brown?

I have used butterfat, but never tried a milk soap before.

Maybe some somebody can explain at what temperature does it start to darken in colour.

I found a receipe where they said it must be keept below 100 degrees while mixing in the lye, otherwise it burns.

Which I find confusing, because milk doesn't normally burn below the boiling point of water (over 200 degrees).

 

[adoptapitbull]

Just milk and lye will not make a soap. You need to add oils to actually make "soap". You would end up with just a very stinky caustic liquid if it is only milk mixed with lye.

 

[KnowWhat]

Soap happens when you mix lye with fatty acids (oils).

Without the oils, you will just have a caustic sludge.

 

[Guest]

My plan is to use the fatty acids inside the milk to create soap. With no addition of other oils or fats.

For example, if I am having a 5% fat milk, and enter that in the lye calculator (as "butterfat"), it tells me that I must use about 0.72% lye.

Which should result in a soap that's 95% water, pretty liquid, but maybe can be used as shampoo.

To increase the fat percentage, I could use higher fat diary, such as condensed milk or cream.

 

[IrishLass]

Welcome Starum.

All recipes I could find for milk soap are regular soap with added milk rather than pure milk soap.

There's a very good reason for that. The nature of soap is this: Lye chemically reacts with fats to make soap, and since milk is made mostly of water (cow's milk is roughly around 87% water), you're going to end up with a liquidy, caustic sludge as KnowWhat and adoptapitbull said. While you do need some kind of liquid to mix with the lye to make a lye solution with which to make soap, you absolutely need to have a considerably greater amount of oils/fats in proportion to the liquid amount so that the lye has something to react with in order to make a solid bar of soap. The problem is that the ratio of fat to water in milk is way lopsided in the opposite direction to what you'd want it to be in order to be able to make a good, solid soap.

I'd like to explore a milk soap with no added oils/fats.

I can't stop you from doing so, but I would highly advise against it unless you had considerable experience soaping, and even then I would wonder why you would even want to try it (unless it was a rainy day and you had some excess milk and lye on hand were bored and felt like doing it as an experiment). :wink:

I found a receipe where they said it must be keept below 100 degrees while mixing in the lye, otherwise it burns.

Which I find confusing, because milk doesn't normally burn below the boiling point of water (over 200 degrees).

That's because when one normally heats milk (such as for cooking purposes- puddings, ice cream bases, etc..), one is not adding a highly reactive, caustic chemical to it (lye). Unless you freeze the milk and add the lye to the naked frozen milk slowly, the lye will react to the sugars present in the milk by scorching them.


IrishLass

 

[busymakinsoap!]

Soap is made by saponifying oils or fats. Goats milk contains around 4% fat, cows milk slightly under and coconut milk around 20%. So only that percentage of your milk will become soap - the rest will stay liquid. so it wont work.

I have seen soap made with butter from the supermarket :shock: . I dont know the process of turning milk into butter, but perhaps if you did that, minus the salt and additives, you could actually get a bar that was 100% dairy

 

[soapbuddy]

Soap is made by saponifying oils or fats. Goats milk contains around 4% fat, cows milk slightly under and coconut milk around 20%. So only that percentage of your milk will become soap - the rest will stay liquid. so it wont work.

I have seen soap made with butter from the supermarket :shock: . I dont know the process of turning milk into butter, but perhaps if you did that, minus the salt and additives, you could actually get a bar that was 100% dairy

Butter from cow's milk has butyric acid which would make any milk butter soap extremely stinky.

 

[busymakinsoap!]

Just read on wiki, that comercial butter is 80% fat and and 15% water (although this doesnt = 100% ?)

So could be done. Would LOVE to hear how it goes!

 

[busymakinsoap!]

Soap is made by saponifying oils or fats. Goats milk contains around 4% fat, cows milk slightly under and coconut milk around 20%. So only that percentage of your milk will become soap - the rest will stay liquid. so it wont work.

I have seen soap made with butter from the supermarket :shock: . I dont know the process of turning milk into butter, but perhaps if you did that, minus the salt and additives, you could actually get a bar that was 100% dairy

Butter from cow's milk has butyric acid which would make any milk butter soap extremely stinky.

lol really? I didnt see these ones in person, only on line - perhaps that was a good thing

 

[soapbuddy]

[quote="busymakinsoap!":3gelqohf]Soap is made by saponifying oils or fats. Goats milk contains around 4% fat, cows milk slightly under and coconut milk around 20%. So only that percentage of your milk will become soap - the rest will stay liquid. so it wont work.

I have seen soap made with butter from the supermarket :shock: . I dont know the process of turning milk into butter, but perhaps if you did that, minus the salt and additives, you could actually get a bar that was 100% dairy

Butter from cow's milk has butyric acid which would make any milk butter soap extremely stinky.

lol really? I didnt see these ones in person, only on line - perhaps that was a good thing [/quote:3gelqohf]
I would say that's a good thing.

 

[busymakinsoap!]

I used to make coffees for a job, milk actually burns over 70 deg cel.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your welcome and all suggestions.

I would wonder why you would even want to try it (unless it was a rainy day and you had some excess milk and lye on hand were bored and felt like doing it as an experiment).

For some reason, the idea of milk soap appeals to many people, including me.

And using other oils sounds like cheating. It's like you see a coconut oil shampoo at the supermarket and when you read the label, coconut oil is the least part of it.

 

[busymakinsoap!]

Thanks for your welcome and all suggestions.

I would wonder why you would even want to try it (unless it was a rainy day and you had some excess milk and lye on hand were bored and felt like doing it as an experiment).

For some reason, the idea of milk soap appeals to many people, including me.

And using other oils sounds like cheating. It's like you see a coconut oil shampoo at the supermarket and when you read the label, coconut oil is the least part of it.

You could look at it this way:

If you use full liquid, your milk percentage will still be quite high. For example, my batches contain 700 grams of oil and 266 grams of milk. The oil consists mostly of Olive, which I have at 200grams, therefore my milk is my main ingredient....

 

[adoptapitbull]

I think I get your point. Problem is, it's not "soap" unless there are fats and lye. So you have to add oil to get soap. If not, it's not soap. It's lye mixed with milk.

You could do what busymakingsoap said, and add full milk with small amounts of each oil so that you still have milk as the first ingredient and it's still safe to use and be called "soap".

 

[Bubbles Galore]

You're not going to make anything useable with just milk and lye so good luck with that.

I make milk and cream soaps all the time but I use oils and the resulting soap is just lovely.

 

[JenniferSews]

Is it possible that the idea of "milk soap" that appeals to you isn't actually just milk mixed with lye? Many soaps are marketed as milk soap but none are actually just milk and lye. I guarantee they are oils mixed with lye and some milk added. If someone told you otherwise I don't think that all the other soap makers are cheating by adding oil. I think someone was selling you something they didn't really make and therefore didn't understand the ingredients. Maybe they use a soap base and only add milk and so thought calling it milk only soap was okay? I don't know. I encourage you to try it though. I have learned a lot in life and soap making by experimenting and I have found that sometimes the "experts" are wrong. :wink: If you do decide to try I hope you will let us know how it turned out.

 

[adoptapitbull]

Don't you get it?

SOAP = FATS (oils) + LYE

Adding oils is not "cheating", it's necessary. No oils, no soap. Add as lye to as much milk, cream, yogurt, whatever and you will NOT get soap. You will get a sludge that will burn the crap out of you.

If you think we're a bunch of "cheaters", then that's fine. We're going to keep making soap the way it works, period.

 

[Cirafly24]

I think by "cheating," the OP meant that calling it a "milk soap" may seem slightly misleading to those who don't know how soap is made. I don't think they meant it as an attack on soap makers who make milk soaps. It's so easy to misconstrue tone in written communication

OP, I understand why the idea of soap made with pure milk would be appealing, and I think soap made with milk as the liquid is fantastic. However, using only milk and lye will not work out the way you are hoping.

Milk has some fat which would react with lye, but even if you use heavy whipping cream, the maximum fat percentage would be 40% (whole milk is only 3.25%). That would mean that only 40% of the milk/cream/etc would saponify, and you'd be left with a minimum of 60% unsaponified liquid (96.75% with whole milk). It would not be cleansing, since such a small amount of it would actually be soap.

Since it would be extremely difficult to figure out the amount of lye you would need (since fat percentages vary, even in the same type of product), you could also wind up with a very lye heavy product.

If you have the time, supplies, and the inclination...I say go ahead and experiment, if only to prove to yourself that it won't work. Invest in some pH strips so you can test your results without burning yourself

 

[carebear]

Milk soap is soap made with some milk. It is not soap made entirely from milk. Whole milk is about 3.5% fat, and 85-90% water whereas soaping formulas are generally only about 38% water or less. If you try to soap milk as the only source of oil it'll be a mess. Even evaporated milk is only about 6.5% fat.

Soap can be made from butter. Don't expect it to be very nice if this is your only source of fat. Do expect it to get stinky really fast, though. Remember that buteric acid they throw at the whale ships???

 

[carebear]

And using other oils sounds like cheating. It's like you see a coconut oil shampoo at the supermarket and when you read the label, coconut oil is the least part of it.

Um...