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patka

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    soap
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    Georgia, Gwinnett County

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  1. Katshe, I don't know about the lye calculations for the soap recipe listed here, but it is my understanding that to make good quality liquid soap one needs to formulate a recipe using potassium hydroxide and not sodium hydroxide. I tried to dilute a regular NaOH soap and while it was usable, I would not share the product with anyone else, even as a gift. When I used the liquid soap recipe from the tutorial on this website, I got a very nice soap, using KOH. I just modified the recipe to include a slight superfat, using the summerbee calculator, because the way the tutorial recipe is formulated could, in my opinion, result in a lye heavy soap. So I run the recipe through the summerbeemeadow calculator, put 2-3% superfat and use that as my recipe. It results in a nice clear liquid soap.
  2. 3bees, may I ask, do you use 0% superfat and then neutralize any potential excess of lye with citric acid? Or do you leave some superfat in the soap according to the Summerbee calculator? I have been playing with making liquid soap recently and was wondering about this.
  3. Top, thank you for the suggestions and for the link to the article. I may try the rosemary oleoresin since it seems that it could help. I can try to reduce the amount of olive oil as well and then perhaps increase the amount of the hard oils. That will be some new experimenting for me, since I have usually kept the hard oils between 55-59%. I am thinking I can increase the palm perhaps. I agree that the actual superfat in the soap is likely a little higher than we calculate, I have thought about that too, since the calculations assume the lye is at 100%, which it never is, mostly because of moisture. But I understand from the article that reformulating the soap may be more effective in increasing the shelf life of the soaps (and the rosemary oleoresin as well), so I will try to work on that too. Thanks so much!
  4. Thank you for all your replies. I agree that some soap recipes hold up better than others, but ultimately, after a few weeks at 100 F and near 100% humidity, the excess oil will start sweating out of most of them and sooner or later some of the soaps will develop DOS. I am actually not using any of the unstable oils and my oils are usually quite fresh. I think my recipes are fairly balanced, maybe not very hard, but ok, usually around 55%-60% of hard oils. I usually use about 25-27% coconut, 25-27% palm, 5% some type of butter, 5% castor and the rest olive, sometimes olive and high oleic sunflower, (no DOS on the soaps with sunflower oil yet, since they are more recent) The only soap that does not mind the climate is my laundry stick with 0% SF. The salt bars did not get DOS either. One thing that seems to help is wrapping the soap (in cellophane, or cellophane bags, not in paper) before the heat comes. I don't see DOS on ony of the wrapped soap, so that may be a way to go for the future. I understand about the de-humidifier, but it is not an option where I have my soaps now. I am surprised that even 0% superfat soap developed in DOS in the experiment that Top is mentioning. I thought it was the unsaponified fat that would go bad in the soap creating DOS. My thought process about the SF amount was that the less unsaponified fat in the final product, the less fat to go bad in the heat. Maybe it is the glycerin that is produced in the process then? I will still try to make soap with about 3% SF and see if it helps any. I just wondered if the soap will get harsher when there is less fat in the finished soap, but I guess I will find out when I make it. I think 3% SF is enough for the safety margin since I know the exact SAP value of most of my oils.
  5. I would like to know if there is anyone who is using a lower percentage of superfat than 5% in soap. I am having trouble with my soap getting DOS during the hot and humid Georgia summer. I never get DOS any other time, and my soaps that I took abroad into a mild climate have been doing fine for several years, but here during the summer, my soaps start sweating oil and eventually some of them will get DOS, regardless of recipe (there is no airconditioning where I keep my soaps). I will try to manage the issue by making less soap before the summer months hit, but I would like to see if making a soap with lower SF would help increase the shelf-life of my soaps. I am curious to find out if anyone has tried a lower, say 3%, superfat and if yes, what was the soap like, will the soap maybe become too harsh if the SF is lower than 5%? I would be comfortable with 3% from the point of view of soap safety, since I usually make at least 4lb batches and I know the exact SAP value of most of my oils, but is the 5% SF that most people use needed to make the soap milder? Thanks in advance for sharing your experience!
  6. It is nice light orange all over (it is not DOS). I used litsea and orange EOs. I have used orange EO before in a number of soaps without any color though. I think I read somewhere on this board that someone's soap with honey turned out orange color. I wonder if natural sugar would do the same.
  7. Greetings! I have come back from a long trip and re-started making soaps. I made a 5-oil recipe: olive, coconut, palm, castor oil and cocoa butter. Scented with essential oils I had used before without any problems. One thing I did differently - I added some sugar to see if I would get more bubbles. I used natural sugar, which has a little tint, not really brown, but not white either. When I made the soap, it was white. When I cut it the next day, it was also white. When I looked at it about a week later, it was a beautiful light orange color. And it has retained that color till now, about another week later. I am not sure what to think of it. The soap seems ok. Has anyone had a similar issue with soap? Could the sugar have reacted in the soap somehow turning it orange? Thanks in advance!
  8. I melt the oils in the container. If it is sunny outside, I put the bottle in my car where it is warm enough or in front of the window where the sun comes in. If it is cold outside, I put the bottle in the kitchen and stand it on the stove when I am cooking (not on the hot surface, of course, but in the middle). The area is warm enough to melt the oil to the point where I can get it out of the bottle.
  9. Thanks Jeana, I think I will try to boil the tea for half an hour or so. I think you can get a lot out of the herb that way. (I think it is called 'decoction' and it is suitable way of processing some herbs and making skin preparations from them. I am not an herbalist, so someone correct me if needed:))
  10. I really appreciate the feedback. It is new info for me that lye could damage glass. I always thought glass was a somehow universally inert material. Well, I have learned my lesson now and will use the suggested plastic for my lye solution. 8-Gran, I had put the glass jug into a stainless steel container and both in my kitchen sink, before I started mixing the solution, so I did not have the lye running loose, thankfully. The jug lasted me a year, but I am done with experimenting with a glass container for lye solution.
  11. Thank you all, I will take your advice and go look for a plastic pitcher. The one I used a while back that did not take the heat was the hard plastic, kind of like plexiglass. It cracked, although it did not leak, so I managed to use the liquid, but did not use it again. I will look for the #5 plastic. I use cold water for the solution, but it still got way too hot I guess for the glass jug. Thanks again:)
  12. Greetings, I wanted to ask what type of container everyone uses for making lye solution? I had a glass container (which was heat resistant, at least to a boiling point) crack today (I had it sat in the sink of course, as a precaution) with a 30% lye solution, which got really hot. I had tried a sturdy plastic, but it got damaged by the heat too. I know stainless steel would be fine temperaturewise, but I was trying to avoid metal, somehow I feel the metal could leach from the stainless steel into the soap (I may be wrong on that). I do use a SS pot for mixing the soap, but not for the straight lye solution. I would love to know what you all use for this purpose. Thanks a lot!
  13. Jeana, that is an interesting information. I may try again, using this way. Did you steep the chamomile flowers in hot water, and let them sit for a few days, or cold water to start with?
  14. I have tried floral/herbal teas and infusions, such as lavender, mint, chamomile etc. Used heaps of herbs and hardly could detect any scent in the final soap. I would say good quality essential oils are the way to go if you would like to scent your soaps naturally.
  15. Thanks. I'll check it out. I guess there is always something new to try!
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