Testing liquid soap?

[GuacamoleSalad]

How can I tell if my liquid soap is ... soaping? I made a castile soap paste yesterday for the first time and it's still quite cloudy in solution with water, but it's been on the heat/ mixing and hydrating for more than 12 hours so I don't think it's going to get less cloudy. I think it's fully saponified. There is no zap to the paste.

Is there any way to tell with a finished liquid soap paste whether it's properly soap? It's my first liquid castile so I don't have anything to compare it to.

 

[DeeAnna]

We need a full recipe -- ALL ingredients all in weights -- to be able to troubleshoot your problem. Also how did you make the soap -- explain your method too, please. A photo would also be helpful.

The word castile is fairly meaningless. To purists, it's a 100% olive oil soap, but legally it is any soap made from all vegetable oils. It's way better to just give the recipe to eliminate the inevitable questions.

 

[GuacamoleSalad]

We need a full recipe -- ALL ingredients all in weights -- to be able to troubleshoot your problem. Also how did you make the soap -- explain your method too, please. A photo would also be helpful.

The word castile is fairly meaningless. To purists, it's a 100% olive oil soap, but legally it is any soap made from all vegetable oils. It's way better to just give the recipe to eliminate the inevitable questions.

Thanks, @DeeAnna . This is actually the same liquid soap you saw the recipe for in another thread. You kindly explained that it could have fully been "done" in 15 minutes since there was glycerin in the recipe (which I hadn't known was an accelerant).

This is the recipe:

185 g KOH
907 g olive oil
327 g water
227 g glycerin

I've been using the soap for nearly a month now. It cleans my hands but it's still cloudy and there's a white sediment at the bottom of the bottle of soap. I didn't use distilled water, though, so I'm imagining it's probably some kind of mineral deposits.

 

[DeeAnna]

Appreciate the info. Your recipe calculates out at 3% superfat assuming 90% KOH purity. That's a bit higher than I'd do nowadays -- I think the trend is to reduce the superfat to 1-2% at most. That seems to work a little more reliably for most people.

But I think you're also right that the tap water is causing some or all of the white sediment and cloudiness.