# general questions re: recipe tweaking



## happy vagabonds (Jun 24, 2012)

I have had really good customer reviews on my soap thus far, but I am not totally happy with it yet. I feel like it's too soft even after 4 weeks of curing. I am using only olive and coconut oil and was doing a 6% superfat. i have recently shifted to 5% excess fat, but it hasn't cured out yet and I don't know how much that 1% adjustment will change the bars.

I am also concerned about the length of time it takes my soap to get to a nice lather. Maybe 10 seconds if the bar is wet to begin with. Once it does lather, it's a nice, bubbly lather that becomes very creamy and lotion-like. Is this slow lather time off-putting? I never noticed or cared about this before I started making soaps, so maybe it's not a huge concern for customers?

Once I get more money, I plan on adding shea butter to my soaps, but I am not there yet. i understand that will add hardness and lather, yes? And moisturizing properties..

Should I have any concerns about adding 5% grapeseed oil/ppo to my recipes? I have done a few batches with the grapeseed oil, but they haven't cured out yet, so I haven't tested them. I am concerned about spoilage. I was adding it to the fragrance oils to test the 'fixing of scents' thing.


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## Guest (Nov 19, 2012)

What is your percentage of solid oil (coconut) to your olive oil in your recipe, this can make a difference.. Olive oil does make a softer soap and so does shea butter.I do put Shea butter in my soaps but not enough of it to effect the hardness factor.. does produce a very creamy lather in soaps..
I don't think the amt of time it takes to get your lather will make a diff to your customers.. other than once in a while talking someone into coming over from the dry side/ most people that buy your soaps already know about good soaps and if you have a good product they will buy it.. Have you tried using a soap calculator that shows you the hardness after you have tweaked.. like soapcalc..


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## MF-Alpines (Mar 29, 2010)

What Barb said. Also, what is your lye solution strength? Maybe you can cut down on your liquid, as well, which will shorten cure time.

I have three different formulas that I make routinely, but my oo bar needed help. I was using oo, co and po. I gave Barb a bar and she critiqued me on it. Had me add a wee bit of castor. Totally transformed the bar. Why not send her or one of the long time soapers a bar and have them give you some feedback?


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## happy vagabonds (Jun 24, 2012)

i have been doing 80/20 olive to coconut. Have been thinking to go to 75/25, but don't want to go much lower than that. I am striving for Marseilles style soap. 

i have been using the MMS calc at thesage.com. extensively! yesterday I decided to convert three old solid wood drawers into soap molds and have been calculating like crazy. gonna try to get 27# of soap done today. Is that a lot? Usually I do 7# at a time. 

lye solution... for my 7# mold I have been using 32 oz of milk which works out to be 29.74 fl oz. The soap calc calls for approximately 28 to 42 fluid ounces of liquid.

i shall send a bar of my ugly soap to someone. i am embarrassed for a 'real' soaper to see it. haha 

yet somehow i have been successful with what i have sold... with repeat customers even. it's still kind of blowing my mind!


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## Guest (Nov 19, 2012)

Your soap has a high percentage of Olive, it will take a long time to cure hard.. and you will not get a great lather with it.. A medium lather yes... You can up the coconut, add caster to up the lather.. but being such a high percentage of Olive.. your soap will need a very long time to cure..


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## happy vagabonds (Jun 24, 2012)

you would recommend castor over shea butter, then? 

and what is a "very long time"?


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## Anita Martin (Dec 26, 2007)

Why not switch to using using canola oil or some other cheaper soft oil like soybean, using that to replace most of your olive oil? I always use a little olive oil in each batch but my main oil is canola (because I got a huge amount for free). I also use coconut at around 15 to 20%. The soap is fairly hard after 24 hours under the fan. Fairly hard meaning it takes quite a bit of pressure to make a finger dent in it. I can easily wrap it at a week but usually wait two weeks. The lather is great, the scent comes through well, etc. I only use a large amount of olive oil in my 100% olive oil recipe. Personally, I think olive oil is too expensive to use in a large amount for regular soap.


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## Guest (Nov 19, 2012)

Hard to say, depends on the water amt in your recipe, your humidity where you live.. where you cure it.. etc...


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

Once you have a few batches of soap under your belt, the lowest number for liquid at thesage.com is the highest amount of liquid you ever really want to use. You will want to drastically decrease your liquid when making a high olive oil bar. This take the cure rate down, because there is so little liquid in the bar to wick out. I do a true castile 100% olive oil, but other than this olive is a label appeal product for me and I use very little of it in my bars, most of my oils are sunflower and safflower the olive is very low percentage compared to these. How about cocoa butter for your hard butter rather than too much shea? Castor and Grapeseed are so expensive to use on a basic recipe you are going to use in all your soap for sale. 

Lather sells, American's think that bubbles clean and are moisturizing and nothing is further than the truth. Also know that if it isn't taking a good 20 minutes to trace with your olive oil, you are using a soybean oil blend.....columbus foods pomace is the perfect olive for soaping. There is no way the olive oil at Sams is 100% in my stores. They trace in about 5 minutes, no way. Vicki


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## happy vagabonds (Jun 24, 2012)

OMGosh Vicki! I was just coming to check on this thread and to ask what you all thought of adding the cocoa butter. And yes, I have been thinking of ditching the grapeseed oil (at least for soaping!) I don't like the rancidity potential and I have not added any rosemary eo or GSE or Vit E. 

I'll have to think about what you ladies are saying re: lowering the amount of olive oil. I really see your points. I just like the direction I am going for now with the Marseilles style soap. I like the concept of it. I just want to tweak what I have going on with the recipe. My mother is a BIG fan of olive oil as a part of your skin care routine. My bars seem to be well-received... *I* am just not happy with them. I do like the way they make my skin feel. I like the lather, tho I feel it is a bit slow and *maybe* could be fluffier. But the creaminess of it is nice. I am packaging it at 4 weeks cure. I just tested a bar that's been cured about 6 weeks and I can dent it with very firm pressure. Overall, it's not pretty, but the packaging is! 

I will definitely try reducing my milk for the lye solution. What kind of effect will the reduction of milk have on the moisturizing factor of the soap. Should I then stick with the 6% excess fat, instead of dropping to 5%? I know a lot go with 5%. I went with 6% because when I made my first batch, I didn't understand that column. I noticed at the bottom it gave a range of what soapers tend to go with. I picked 6 because it was at the lower end of the scale and not the extreme. haha That was my logic. 

I never got to make my 27# of soap today.  I will have to recalculate my recipes for the lesser milk. :crazy And no one answered my question re: is 27# a lot of soap? haha It seems it to me, but I am wondering if this what you ladies do regularly. 

and i didn't know that about the trace time and olive oil! i think the last time i did an unscented batch it took about 10 minutes to get to trace. I will have to time it tomorrow. It did seem to get to trace pretty quick with my last batch, but I figured that was because of the fragrance oils.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

27 pounds of soap is a lot of soap to soap when you are not sure of your recipe. I go back down to the old Walmart 7 pound mold when I tweak a scent, or a new recipe, I can easily give away 21 bars of soap without it hurting.....now 27 pounds, just way to much expense to be tweaking it back and forth. The benefits of olive oil on your skin as a leave on product in lotion, body butters or like I do, use it to take makeup off....is not the same thing as when it is an ingredient in soap.... the benefits left after saponification it's gone, all that is left are it's soaping characteristics, which are nearly the same as all soft oils. IT's like your talk of oils going rancid, only if you don't use them up before they do go rancid, once in the soap, the shelf life is gone because there is not grapeseed or vitamin E left, it's all soap and label appeal. 

Recipe first, keep at it until you and your buyers love it.....then scent, then colors, then packaging then marketing....I think you are going about this a little backwards. IF you get a retail account you will be expected to reproduce what you are doing over and over, you do not want to give anyone that many choices of recipes, it's bad enough with scent and color! I regret I ever gave the choices of goatmilk or aloe eucalyptus bars.....even that is a nightmare keeping up with who wants what and having to ask again!!! What are your bars costing you right now?


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## happy vagabonds (Jun 24, 2012)

Well, I was planning to soap the same recipe I have been using, except tweak the lye to 5% excess and now thinking to reduce my milk as well. 

I may be going about this a little backwards, I do agree. But I have had a LOT of pressure from the in-laws to get my soaps out there and once I did, I was hardly expecting that they would be so well received. My plan at the moment is to just get through the Christmas season!

I know that the oils change after going through the saponification process... in fact they are entirely new chemicals. What about the oils that do not interact with the lye? Do they retain their properties? 

And I have read about certain oils going rancid in soap, especially if used in a high percentage and the recipe is superfatted. I have no experience with this myself, but I don't want it to happen to me... so... trying to avoid it. 

I only really plan to make and sell goat milk bars. Maybe now and again I will try a specialty batch just to try something new, but my bread and butter, so to speak, will be the goat milk with oatmeal and honey. Or so that's the plan. 

The last time I calculated, my plain OMH bars are costing .89 (not including packaging). The price has been dropping since I have been selling enough to start buying ingredients in bulk.


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

What about the oils that do not interact with the lye? Do they retain their properties? 
............................

That would mean you would have oil floating on top of your bars, saponification is complete when the bar is hard enough to be cut...too much oil is either giving you a very soft bar or ruined soap. 

The whole superfatted that somehow you can have oil un-saponified is not true, more oil means less lye and very soft bars that are spongy and warp when cured. There is no oil left in the soap to go rancid. And honestly whoever is telling you stuff like this is not wanting you to succeed, I would stop listening to them.

There is also no difference between 5% and 6%, look at the amount of lye it's to small to make a difference, it isn't enough to change anything. I soap right between the two. I normally soap at 33% lye to fluids...but with Olive Oil, I soap at 50%.


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## fattyaddie (Oct 24, 2011)

Dumb question, were do you add the shea/cocoa butters in the walmart recipe?? Just wondering.


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## Guest (Nov 21, 2012)

You tweak your recipe Jenene, by putting it thru a soap calc.... Say for instance.. you take out 10 oz of coconut oil and add in place of it Shea butter.. but they have different sap values, so they take a different amt of lye to make it into soap.. Why you use a caluclator to tell you how much lye to use..


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

And when using a lye calculator to sub out a recipe, you want to use the one that shows you values....like hardness, moisturizing etc....and I have no idea off the top of my head what that .com is


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## 2Sticks (Dec 13, 2007)

soapcalc.com ?


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

Soapcalc is a .net address. So it's www.soapcalc.net


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## 2Sticks (Dec 13, 2007)

Thank you for giving the right address Stacey


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