Salty Madder Soap

[Mobjack Bay]

I’m revisiting some natural colorants this winter and also playing around with salt. This is the result of using salty lye water + madder tea (added to lye water) + 3% salt (added at trace) with a base that is 46% oleic (sunflower + lard), 25% CO, 25 longevity, and 2% sugar, 1.5% sodium citrate TOW. I added 2% castor over recipe TOW + 3% floral-leaning EOs when I reached the shy side of light trace. With the castor included, the SF is close to 4%. The soap was made using a 40% lye concentration.

The madder tea stock was 5 g BB madder powder steeped overnight in 100 g DI water. The water was around 180F when I added the powder. The lighter top layer of soap used .25x the madder tea in the bottom layer, with DI water added to make up the liquid weight difference in the tea.

The secret swirl, which looks less feather-like than planned, was lightened with TD. The color variation for the swirl was quite apparent when I layered the batter in the mold, but there was no sign of the swirl when I cut the soap, or on Day 2. The photo above is from this morning, a week after the soap was made. Is the swirl visible a week later because the lighter pink base soap darkened up a bit over the week? Or maybe it’s a pigment density-related effect as the soap dries? I really have no idea!.

I’m playing around with lowish salt concentrations in my regular recipes because traditional salt bars at 25%-100% salt are not producing exciting lather in the softened but high tds water at my house, even after 2-3 years of curing. As of this morning, this soap is making a dense creamy/foamy lather with some big bubbles.

 

[HoliHealerz]

That is a beautiful soap. So natural looking and colorful too. Well done.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Thanks for the pic, I now know what you're talking about. Just like the 99.999% of people who aren't you, I can at best guess about your original intentions (remake/adaption of the May 2020 challenge winner?). I think it's a pretty colour and a neat design (c'mon, you should be chuffed about that straight line alone!). Sure things to tweak with the contrast, but for an early prototype + salt, it's not that bad. (If you want to make the secret feather pop out more, you could reverse the pale/dark batter portions.)

In the light parts, the borders appear a bit too white IMHO. Has you camera overdone pseudo-HDR? Or is there some partial gel involved?

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I made the solid loaf to test the base recipe and then decided to add the madder to test the effect of salt on the color. The loaf with the swirl was totally on the fly. I had batter leftover from the first batch and mb’d oils and lye sitting around.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I just noticed this thread in the “similar thread” section and thought I would pop in to give an update, especially since we’ve been discussing salt bars lately. This batch, which has 3% salt by TOW, was my first try at a “low salt” salt bar. I like it so much that I’m hoarding a few bars. It’s one of the most bubbly soaps I‘ve made and it does not leave my hands squeaky clean feeling. The recipe I gave above is a little odd because I decided to add the castor in at the last minute. The calculated longevity is a bit lower than my usual recipes, which typically range between 28-30% for a balanced recipe, and the CO is at the high range of what I use (25%) with the SF at approx. 4%. I asked three soap loving friends to test this one and they all like it. We all started using our bars at around the four month mark.