Soapcalc question..

[tisci]

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but the lye section on soapcalc confuses me a bit. I normally just leave it on the default because I'm afraid to mess it. The recipe I'm thinking of trying says to do a 5% lye discount. The options on Soapcalc are "water as % of oils," "lye concentration," & "water:lye ratio." How would I use any of these to give it a 5% discount? I did use the search function on here, but can't find a concrete answer in my results. I was going to just take the default 38% on Soapcalc & change it to 33% but since I don't know if that's correct, I'm hesitant to just do it w/o checking first.

Thank you.

 

[TessC]

The "5% lye discount" your recipe mentions is the Super Fat % on SoapCalc.

 

[AmyW]

I've been leaving the water discount section alone unless I make a high olive oil batch(used 38% for 11 out of 12 batches), then I drop it the water amount down. What is your recipe?

 

[tisci]

I didn't realize that Tess. Thank you. I feel like such an idiot.

Amy, it's 30% coconut, 20% palm oil & 50% olive pomace. I've been having issues w/the recipe I came up with, so I figured I would give this one a go. Someone called it their "old faithful." They said to discount the lye by 5%.

I guess I will just leave Soapcalc at the default 38% for the water % of oils & keep the 5% superfat. I'm just getting really discouraged lately so I wanted to make sure I had this one right so it hopefully came out good.

 

[AmyW]

For me, being new myself, I would do a batch just like that, 38% with 5% discount. If it traces well and the bar sets up nicely, keep it. For myself, if it takes a long time to trace, I would lower the water a small bit. I might also increase the discount on future batches just to see if it creates a nicer bar. But for the first batch, those numbers are a good starting point.