Superfatting with shea butter?

[Petalskin]

Hello everyone, I'm quite new to soapmaking (5-6 batches?) and to this forum (been hovering around reading threads but first post!) and I just want to say how wonderful I found most of the replies I see here -- everyone is so friendly and helpful

That said, I have a question of my own.

I just received some unrefined shea butter and have been wanting to add it to my recipe, but I read somewhere that some people superfat with shea butter at a rate of 1tbs per 3lbs of oil? And this might be a silly question, but if I wanted to use shea butter to superfat, would that mean that I would put 0% superfat when I put my oils (excluding the shea butter) in my lye calculator (I use brambleberry's lye calc), or would I still want to add, say, 5% superfat plus the 1tbs shea butter per 3lbs oil? On the other hand, does it really matter whether I use shea butter to superfat or in my base oil recipe? I was thinking maybe if it was used to superfat, it'll be more effectively moisturizing.. but is that just a myth?

Thanks!

 

[PuddinAndPeanuts]

Hey! I believe that unless you are doing a rebatch, you can't really pick which butter or oil makes up the superfat. With cold process, the lye kind of chooses at will what it's going to saponify before it's used up, and then what is left over makes up the superfact. However, if you are rebatching, I guess what you could do would be to make the soap with 0% superfat, and then when you rebatch it, add how ever much shea you need to make it the superfat % you want. Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken- I'm REAL new to all of this!

 

[DeeAnna]

Use shea at 5% or more in a soap recipe. At 1 tbl per 3 lb of oil, you'll be adding it just for "label appeal".

If you are doing cold process soap, just include the shea as one of your fats in your recipe and pick the lye discount that you prefer. You cannot do anything to prevent any or all of the shea from being saponified when making cold process soap. That includes adding a fat at trace -- the lye is still very active at that point, so the idea sounds nice, but it really doesn't work.

If it is important that only the shea be your superfat, you need to hot process the soap and add the shea after the cook is complete so all the lye is used up.

edit: Or rebatch and add the shea during the rebatch as Puddin suggests.

 

[new12soap]

I believe people that are adding 1 tbsp to 3lbs are adding a luxury oil to a Melt and Pour base.

 

[DeeAnna]

Oh... That makes sense now! Thanks for bringing that up about M&P, New12soap.

For CP or HP soap, I'd sure use more. My friend Renae likes shea at about 10% in her CP soap, and I like how that turns out for her.

 

[Petalskin]

That all makes sense! Thanks for all the help, guys!

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Just for clarity, you can selectively superfat using hot process. I specify that as it is not what I would class as rebatch, as you're not rebatching but starting off that way from the beginning