# Olive oil suppliers



## smithurmonds (Jan 20, 2011)

Where does everyone get their olive oil? We use a high percentage in our soap and I'm having some sourcing issues.


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## Greylady (Mar 28, 2012)

you can get some at Columbus Soap Supplies


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

Restaurant Depot for me.


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## smithurmonds (Jan 20, 2011)

Thanks- I emailed restaurant depot. I was purchasing it by the gallon at Costco at a reasonable price (less than what I'd be paying with shipping), but then all of the sudden they stopped carrying it.

Does anyone here use sunflower oil in large quantity in their soaps? I have a local source for non-GMO sunflower oil by the barrel.


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## MF-Alpines (Mar 29, 2010)

I use some, but not a large percentage as it is a soft oil. I like a greater portion of hard oils vs soft oils.


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## smithurmonds (Jan 20, 2011)

Would it be suitable in replacing a portion of the olive oil in my recipe or is it not going to function in a similar way? I use quite a bit of shea butter in my recipe and even with a high percentage of olive oil my bars have not been soft. I'd like to bring the cost per bar down without sacrificing quality and the sunflower oil is the only thing I've found locally that I can purchase in such a large quantity.


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## smithurmonds (Jan 20, 2011)

Betty- thanks for the Columbus foods suggestion. Even with shipping it's looking pretty darn good.


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## Faye Farms (Sep 14, 2009)

I'd give it a try replacing a good portion of your Olive oil with Sunflower. Seems to me there was a somewhat recent thread on doing just that.


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## MF-Alpines (Mar 29, 2010)

Faye Farms said:


> I'd give it a try replacing a good portion of your Olive oil with Sunflower. Seems to me there was a somewhat recent thread on doing just that.


Yes, I think there was. I remember something about that.


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## smithurmonds (Jan 20, 2011)

I will check it out- thanks!


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

I use a mixture of olive pomace and safflower, then I buy local sunflower oil, with my Kroger card I can get it cheaper than I can buy it from Columbus Foods. I just pump the olive and safflower into gallon jugs, add my sunflower myself and write MIXED and store it in the cabinet. They are all soft oils, all with nearly identical sap values, in fact I would defy anyone to make a sunflower castile and be able to tell it is or is not your olive bar. I use about 40% soft oils, so these three work out really well and look attractive on the label. Plus I can infuse them for further label appeal. Other than olive manufactured in other countries, I don't believe a lot of the olive bottled in america is real, not when you can trace after a minute or so like some report, not olive. So pomace it is for me.


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## smithurmonds (Jan 20, 2011)

Great to hear! Especially since I'm picking up 200 lbs next week. :crazy


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## smithurmonds (Jan 20, 2011)

I wanted to update this now that I've done a couple batches with the sunflower oil. My first impression- holy smokes does this unrefined sunflower oil smell AMAZING! Wow! Second impression- I'm not getting as hard a bar as I do with the same (or higher) percentage of olive oil. I've used as high as 80% olive oil in my recipes and gotten a really hard bar, even several days to a week after cutting and it just gets harder over time. Does it take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to trace? Yes, but it's not a soft bar. The sunflower on the other hand is giving me a fairly soft bar at just 30%. We'll see how it cures, but I can quite clearly feel the difference to olive.


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## Dorit (Apr 20, 2011)

I like buying from Columbus but the shipping is killing me. I find sunflower more expensive than OO. I buy OO at Sam's, the least expensive they offer, the most refined and lighter in color. I have yet to find a better price. I had gotten Sunflower and didn't use it much so I tried Vicki's suggestion, I mixed the two more or less equally and didn't notice anything different than all OO. Dorit


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## Aja-Sammati (Oct 26, 2007)

> They are all soft oils, all with nearly identical sap values, in fact I would defy anyone to make a sunflower castile and be able to tell it is or is not your olive bar.


I have tried this exact experiment- it behaves a lot differently, especially in curing, and doesn't feel quite the same as a finished soap, even with exact percentages. I like to use sunflower instead of OO if I want a very light colored soap. I use pomace, also, and it will produce a darker colored bar than straight sunflower.


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## smithurmonds (Jan 20, 2011)

At what percentage of hard oils are you able to avoid a soft bar using sunflower oil, Michelle? We're not using palm oil, which has not been an issue when using olive oil but the coconut oil and shea don't seem to be offsetting the softness of the sunflower oil at the same percentage.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Something else new you can do, is put some of your EVOO in the fridge, it should thicken if it is actually olive oil. http://gma.yahoo.com/exclusive-grou...gredients-090412537--abc-news-topstories.html

It's so much more widespread than we even thought.

When folks are on here saying their olive oil soaps trace in just 3 or 4 pulses of their stick blender, really think it is really 100% olive oil? vicki


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## smithurmonds (Jan 20, 2011)

I have wondered that myself since my 80% OO takes at least 30 minutes to trace at 100 degrees using a regular hand mixer or paint mixer & drill- usually longer!


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## Dorit (Apr 20, 2011)

Doesn't the FDA check those things? How can a vendor sell at Walmart/Sams and lie on the label? Dorit


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## Aja-Sammati (Oct 26, 2007)

If I have a high soft oils recipe and I want a bar that hardens quickly I would use safflower or rice bran oil before I would use sunflower if I weren't using palm. I have a great recipe that is just coconut and a soft oil...it is hard in no time  I have two recipes that are 50% sunflower and are not soft, but they do have a longer cure time (by a couple of weeks). Try subbing cocoa butter for palm, (not shea, as it can actually make a sticky, longer curing bar without the right balance of other oils.) I do use palm in some of my recipes, the organic, sustainable kind, and I pay a pretty penny for it!

When I use extra virgin OO the trace takes forever, but pomace is known to have a quicker trace, and that is what I usually use. Lots of things change tracing time, including water discount, oil & room temperature, humidity, the speed of the stick blender...just too many variables to make a definite call on dilution unless you are lab testing it...like the government was supposed to do, haha.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

All palm is organic since it has no natural pests. No palm is cruelty free, because they patrol the property with machine guns to kill the orangutans and other primates that love to eat the palm fruit. Hundreds of acres of forest and jungles are cut down to make these huge single species plantations, there is zero sustainable anything about that. Some oils, like palm, lard, tallow, simply have such bad PR, they are rarely worth using anymore.


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## smithurmonds (Jan 20, 2011)

Yeah, we're not going to use palm. Sunflower is what I have available locally, so I'll keep fiddling with it until I find a recipe I like. The bars are hard enough to unmold and cut at 24 hours no problem, so maybe my expectations about how hard they should be at this point are a little skewed by the OO recipe I've been using and I just need to plan for a longer cure.


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## Aja-Sammati (Oct 26, 2007)

> All palm is organic since it has no natural pests. No palm is cruelty free, because they patrol the property with machine guns to kill the orangutans and other primates that love to eat the palm fruit. Hundreds of acres of forest and jungles are cut down to make these huge single species plantations, there is zero sustainable anything about that.


Sustainable palm is grown in South America, no orangutans there, and is grown without deforestation practices. Nothing is organic unless it is certified as such, no matter how it is grown! Someone has to get their chunk of money before it can go on a label. There is no sustainable palm that is not organic, though, at least not that I have found.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

No, they do not kill orangutans there they just kill the South American capuchin monkey, "Cebus apella, has a high degree of ... manual dexterity and small teeth, which are useless for cracking hard-shelled palm nuts....so they let them sit out for a few days after picking them and bash them with rocks". I have a whole list of why you should not use palm, sent to me on facebook  There are actually 5 more south American monkeys that destroy the trees and eat the palm meats to. 

Surely the same can be said of shea nuts, and coconuts, I do not get why there is this palm movement like this.


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## Greylady (Mar 28, 2012)

Quote:[Surely the same can be said of shea nuts, and coconuts, I do not get why there is this palm movement like this. ]

Could it be a marketing ploy? Or maybe palm is used more than the others in products?


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