Lye Heavy Question - advice needed please :)

[lizardesigns]

Hi all - newbie here I have been looking around but haven't seen an answer to my small problem.

I just made 2 batches of CP on the weekend. Both were from The Handmade Soap Book by Melinda Coss.

The first soap I made was the Pink Lavender & Lime soap. Making it was fine. But afterwards, I was doing some reading and most of the reviews mentioned that the recipes tended to be lye heavy. Well I didn't run it through a calculator before making but I did afterwards......and it is 16g too much lye.

Now will this be a problem with the finished soap? DH & I tongue tested it and it felt a bit tingly (but I can't get past the soap taste - ick!) lol

To help, here is the recipe:

227g tallow

227g coconut oil

454g vegetable fat (has the same SAP value listed as peanut oil)

134g lye

389g distilled water

The only other ingredients are colour & EO.

I did run the second recipe through the lye calc before making, so I am pretty sure it is safe

Cheers, Liz

[Carrie]

Welcome to our soap addiction!

Please, always remember to run every recipe through a lye calculator.

When I run that through the lye calc at MMS, it tells me that the superfat is about .5%. I would be more likely to use that for laundry soap than on my skin.

Go here. http://www.thesage.com/calcs/lyecalc2.php

Make sure to change the units to grams and plug in your recipe. When you hit calculate, another page will come up with different lye amounts for the different superfat percentages. I love this calculator just for this feature.

Good Luck.

[lizardesigns]

Thanks for that I guess it is lesson learnt not to make a batch without calculating first

Now I just need to learn how to rebatch lol

Cheers!