Which Lye Calculator is Best?

[anya]

Hi
Which lye calc is the best one to use?
When I punch in recipe ingredients in Soap Calc I get different lye and water amounts than when I punch in the same recipe(and % discounts) in Magic Mountain Sage.
Other lye calcs such as Bramble Berry give different quantities again. The other thing with MMS is the huge variation in the amount of water you could use in the recipe.

Soap Calc certainly gives a lot more information on the properties of the soap which is nice to have.

Which one is the best :?:

 

[NancyRogers]

I have always used soapcalc with good results, but I'm sure that all of the ones you mentioned are fine. While there may be minor differences in the calculations, your lye discount should make up for that. As far as water amounts go, everyone seems to eventually find the concentration that works for them. I like to use a 33% lye concentration for most of my soaps, maybe more for high or full OO soaps. You can select your own concentration in soapcalc, and I'd recommend using the lye concentration option rather than percentage of oils. I think soapcalc's default lye concentration (if you don't manually change it) is between 26% and 27%. HTH

 

[anya]

Hi Nancy

Thanks, that's helpful.
I had been using the water % of oils calculation previously but I'll use the lye concentration option.

 

[jennikate]

For me its all mms. Soapcalc and I don't get along that well. There are minor differences between sites but whichever you like should be fine. Personal choice.

 

[IrishLass]

SoapCalc here, too, but not that the others are bad (because they aren't)- it's just that SoapCalc has more detailed info and fits my needs better.

The reason why the various calculators can differ from each other has to do with the source of their SAP numbers. SAP numbers are not uniform across the board. They can (and do) slightly differ depending on where and how the oil was sourced and the growing conditions it went through, etc..., but as NancyRogers said, our lye discount makes up for that.

IrishLass

 

[bluevervain]

When I first started making soap I noticed exactly what you are talking about, that different calculators offered different lye/water weights for the same oils. Sometimes I would run a recipe through three or four different calculators (it only takes a minute or two) and see where most of them landed. Now I have a couple of recipes I like a lot and I just use them over and over and change the colors, eos and other additives. I like the summer bee meadows one. www.summerbeemeadow.com they have a basic and an advanced calculator.

 

[MeadowHillFarmCT]

I actually use the excel based one. Soapers choice has SAP listed for each oil. I actually change the excel spreadsheet to reflect the actual SAP number for the oil I am using.

Soapcalc and other programs use a sap number which is generic. I prefer to be able to change mine based on supplier.

 

[anya]

Thank you all for your posts. All your replies were very much appreciated.

It seems that there is no 'best' lye calculator and it's really a matter of finding what best suits your needs.

It also seems that while the science is an important part of soapmaking, it is an art as much as it is a science.

 

[craftgirl08]

What does lye discount actually mean?

 

[Dragonkaz]

What does lye discount actually mean?

This is my simplified understanding ... reduce the amount of lye and this means that some oils are left 'free' in the soap mix.

I use SoapCalc and the default lye discount is 5%, which means that 5% of the oils are left unsaponified in your soap. The other way of writing this is that my soap is superfatted at 5%.

I think this means, that this 5% is excess oil which gives the soap skin conditioning qualities.

There is a discussion on this forum about what you % we superfat at. It appears many superfat at 6 and 7% ... and some either higher.

 

[lsg]

I use SoapCalc also. Most of the time I just use the default 5% superfat.

 

[Iris Reola]

I generally use Soapcalc to create and calculate my recipes, but if I'm unsure of the batch yield, I use BB's since it'll give an approximation.