Recipe Question

[SweetBubbleTreat]

Please move this if I have posted to the wrong forum....

I have a few questions on recipes.

Do you have one recipe you use all the time and just add different additives to it like natural scent and color??

Or

Do you have different recipes formulated for different purposes and additives?

if you have different recipes How many approximately do you have??
for example....different clay bars, activated charcoal bar, sugar bar, pumice bar, all with a different recipe.....

I have like 20 different recipes each recipe is a different bar with different additives and different oils. Have I made too many different recipes??

Should I simplify my recipes to say one or two base recipes and just add different additives??

Would using one or two base recipes with different additives make them different soaps as far as characteristics like clensing and bubbly and lather is concerned??

I realize that adding stuff like silk, sugar, and clay does change a soap....does it make a big difference in your soap or is it a subtle change??

 

[Wyredgirl]

For me, a little of both. I have my go to standard recipe that I'll use. And I have my spa/shampoo/specialty/ vegan bar recipes too. I have a vegan "line" that uses my vegan recipe but I do play with formulations

 

[Wyredgirl]

Adding salt hardens, sugar creates lather, so naturally tweaking those recipes is a good idea. My salt bars are mainly CO and are superfatted much higher than normal.

I'd find a recipe or 2 that you LOVE and work from there. I may use other oils in my base recipe, but it's all very similar. You even hafta think that the liquids you use in place of water have an effect on how the soap performs.

I have 7 very different recipes:
Spa bars
"Medicated" bars - bars for problem skin
Basic-any skin type bars
Dry skin bars
Oily skin bars
Vegan bars
Shampoo bars

From there I use additives/fragrances/Colorants that may give me 100+ varieties

 

[Susie]

Please move this if I have posted to the wrong forum....

I have a few questions on recipes.

Do you have one recipe you use all the time and just add different additives to it like natural scent and color??

Or

Do you have different recipes formulated for different purposes and additives?

if you have different recipes How many approximately do you have??
for example....different clay bars, activated charcoal bar, sugar bar, pumice bar, all with a different recipe.....

I have like 20 different recipes each recipe is a different bar with different additives and different oils. Have I made too many different recipes??

Should I simplify my recipes to say one or two base recipes and just add different additives??

Would using one or two base recipes with different additives make them different soaps as far as characteristics like clensing and bubbly and lather is concerned??

I realize that adding stuff like silk, sugar, and clay does change a soap....does it make a big difference in your soap or is it a subtle change??

I have a short list of base oil recipes I like enough to repeat them over and over. I have tried more complicated recipes with more expensive oils, and I figured out that I like the 4 oil recipes the best.

I have tried using 5-10% of this or that oil/butter/beeswax/stearic acid/etc, and figured out that I truly can't detect any change with anything but castor oil. That one is necessary!

My base recipes consist of varying amounts of the following:
Lard
CO
OO

I always use castor oil at 5%, as that hits the correct balance of stabilizing my lather without making my soap sticky.

Everything else can be completely different-EOs, colors, etc. I don't sell, so I have only myself and my family to please.

You may have a completely different set of circumstances and preferences. No one can tell you if you are right or wrong. Only you can determine that.

I will say, though, that if you are questioning this, then maybe you do feel you could simplify your "menu" of recipes a bit. Only you can say.

If you are looking to simplify, what I would do first is some "blind" testing to see if you can eliminate base oils that you use less than 15% of. Test a batch with, then test a batch without. See which one you prefer. But you are going to have to make it as objective as possible. Same scents, additives, and other oils, just one has X oil or butter and one does not.

 

[IrishLass]

I can relate. During my first few years of soaping, I had more formulas than the digits on both my hands and feet, as well as my 2 eyeballs, my nose and head and the rest of my body parts. lol

I'm down to a more practical handful now-a-days, but I daresay that I think I still might have more than most people here have (I have about 10 now). Below are all the formulas in my soapy repertoire. The 2 top ones are my main formulas that I make the most of for ourselves and also for general gift-giving):

1) All-veggie soap
2) Tallow/Lard soap
3) Shaving formula
4) Facial bar formula
5) 100% coconut oil formula, which also doubles my salt bar formula with a few modifications.
6) 70% CO/30% Mango butter formula
7) 100% Castile formula
8 ) Pearly/creamy cocoa/shea liquid glycerin soap formula
9) 65% OO liquid glycerin soap formula
10) Stain stick formula (a new one that I added to the list, even though I haven't actually made it yet)

Besides being 'stand alone' soaps, my 2 top main formulas are the also ones I use as a base for my 'specialt'y soaps, such as milk soaps, avocado puree soaps, carrot soaps, oatmeal soaps, honey/beeswax soaps, etc., etc....

And my 100% CO soap formula doubles as my salt soap formula with the addition of salt and coconut milk.

The rest of my formulas are pretty much 'stand alone' formulas that I make for different uses, although I sometimes add extra things to some of them if the fancy happens to strike me.

Have I made too many different recipes??

Only you can decide how many are too many for yourself , but having been where you are now, I must say that it has helped me tremendously to narrow things down to a more practical level. Hopefully my above list can help you to be able to organize your soaps into categories, and then from there, you can whittle them down even further to an amount that's more practical.


IrishLass

 

[Obsidian]

I have a base recipe I use for most bath soap, gifts or trades. I do have a few specialty recipes such as, a shampoo bar, a basic salt bar, a luxury vegan bar. Of course I still experiment with different oils and I'm currently testing a new base recipe.

I also have a shave soap recipe but thats not something I will make often since I'm the only one who uses it.

 

[dibbles]

I've only been making CP for not quite a year, and it seems that I just can't help but to try using different oils. I'm getting to the point now that I want to just settle on a couple of recipes - one veggie, one lard - and then add butters or a different oil to that. I'm ready to streamline the obsession a bit.

 

[LoveOscar]

I think it's getting the first major exploration out of the way, trying out the different combinations and saturations of oils to see what you can create. Then you start to narrow down your favorites. So no, for now if ever, there aren't to many.

I'm kind of skipping that first major rush. I want to find my favorite combination now and explore later hahaha.

 

[kumudini]

I have been using some 8 or 9 fats and over the past 11 months, I have narrowed down to four base recipes using those, but I want to try other oils so I recently bought some more and I'm hoping to create more wonderful recipes. But how many recipes you want to make depends on your users I guess. If they are mostly concerned with colors and scents, you could just use few good base recipes and concentrate more on the colors and scents. But if they are soap savvy, they might want you to make different recipes.

 

[songwind]

I think a smaller number of recipes is probably easier to keep track of for the soap and easier to understand for the consumer.

Then again, maybe I'm just not thinking of enough unique "roles" for the soaps to play.

 

[shunt2011]

I think 3-4 recipes are sufficient in my experience. I sell so the less combinations of stuff I have to do the better. I master batch my most common bar in 5 gallon buckets. Too many recipes would take just too much time.

I have my basic, facial type, salt and mostly olive bastille. I can switch up the additives with any of them. I also have a shave soap.

 

[dixiedragon]

As long as you are enjoying yourself, able to keep track of your recipes and aren't bankrupting yourself, I don't think you can have "too many" recipes. I have 1 main recipe - it has lard. I haven't yet developed an all-veg recipe that I LOVE - I'm still tweaking. I LIKE what I've made so far, but IMO, it's not as good as my lard one. I also make a 100% coconut salt bar. I don't really consider that a "recipe" - it's got 4 ingredients - water, coconut oil, lye and salt.

When it comes to additives - silk, clay, etc, I don't have a separate recipe. My honey soap and milk & honey soap is slightly differently b/c it has 5% beeswax, but I just replace 5% of the lard in my main recipe with beeswax, it's not a totally new recipe.

 

[dixiedragon]

I think a smaller number of recipes is probably easier to keep track of for the soap and easier to understand for the consumer.

Then again, maybe I'm just not thinking of enough unique "roles" for the soaps to play.

If you are a super meticulous person, maybe you think that, "Hmm, clay inhibits lather so in my soaps with clay I will have 21% of coconut instead of 20%" and have little tweaks like that, I can see getting up to 20 or more recipes that regularly appear in your line up.

And if a person decided to really focus on shampoo bars and do a lot of testing and develop bars for different hair types, that would probably be at least 5-6 different recipes right there.

 

[cmzaha]

I have quite a few recipes I use and some depend on my fragrance. But over the years I downed my base oils to
100% Palm Shortening
Lard
Tallow
Avocado (favorite)
Safflower HO
Coconut
Pko
Sunflower HO
OO (least favorite)
Well darn, does not look like I shaved them down much But I have customers allergic coconut, avocado and olive oil, so I have to make a variety of soaps with varying recipes. All veggie, non veggie, no coconut, no olive, no avocado etc etc. Selling is tough here and one needs all the edge they can get

 

[nframe]

6) 70% CO/30% Mango butter formula

IrishLass

Your soap no. 6 seems strange. What is it like? You must have a very high SF to cope with 70% coconut. Do you use 20% SF?

 

[IrishLass]

Your soap no. 6 seems strange. What is it like? You must have a very high SF to cope with 70% coconut. Do you use 20% SF?

Hey- who's calling my soap strange?! LOL

Well, actually, it's my tweaked variation of Deity12_05's famous 100% CO/20% superfatted formula that I came up with in order to prevent it from melting away as fast as the 100% CO seems to do for me- and yes- I do superfat it fairly high (15%). It's not for everybody, of course, but my hubby, son and I love it. It's super bubbly just like the 100% CO bars, but has more of a life-span in my shower.


IrishLass

 

[nframe]

Hey- who's calling my soap strange?! LOL

Well, actually, it's my tweaked variation of Deity12_05's famous 100% CO/20% superfatted formula that I came up with in order to prevent it from melting away as fast as the 100% CO seems to do for me- and yes- I do superfat it fairly high (15%). It's not for everybody, of course, but my hubby, son and I love it. It's super bubbly just like the 100% CO bars, but has more of a life-span in my shower.
IrishLass

Thanks a lot. I did not really mean strange as in strange-odd. I meant strange as strange-unusual. Forgive me, but English is not my mother tongue...

 

[IrishLass]

Thanks a lot. I did not really mean strange as in strange-odd. I meant strange as strange-unusual. Forgive me, but English is not my mother tongue...

No worries, nframe- you have nothing to be forgiven for. That was just my attempt at silly/goofy humor. :mrgreen:


IrishLass