Adventures With The Sage

In this recipe, I used Coconut Oil for some lather. I have found that many people have this idea that if there is not any lather, the soap must not be working. Lather seems to be a requirement for any “cleansing” product. It is a good thing Coconut Oil is here to the rescue!

I also used Olive Oil in this formulation. Olive Oil is reputed to be mild on the skin which is part of why 100% Olive Oil soap is so popular. Olive Oil is also an easily found oil in the kitchen. I wanted this recipe to be simple and easy for many soap makers to obtain or even use the ingredients they have on hand.

Recipe: Makes 20 oz of Soap Paste or 40 oz of Liquid Soap

Weigh the oils into a container. Heat until warm. Add the lye to the water to for a lye solution. Start with very warm temperatures just after heating and mixing lye into water. Mix the oils and lye solution and blend until trace is achieved.  I let the soap sit in my beaker while it saponifies. 2 -12 hours after the soap has gone through gel phase, I added 20 oz of water to my soap paste. Mix well. Pour your liquid soap into bottles. Seal, label and enjoy! After all, you just made your own liquid soap!

I added Ground Apricot Seeds for the exfoliant. It is very fine and at a lower usage rate, it perfect for a face or even body scrub.

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Recipe:

Scoop the soap paste into a plastic bag. Add the Ground Apricot Seeds and two ounces of water. Close the bag and knead until the water is completely mixed in. Add the water a little bit at a time and mix it in completely. Repeat until all of the water has been incorporated. Package into containers. Enjoy!

I chose some oils to create some lather. I wanted the base to have some lather when you rub it into the skin. These are some of my favorite types of face scrubs. One of the first oils I chose for this soap base was coconut oil. Coconut oil is a wonderful oil to have in your soaping cupboard and mine in the blog kitchen is no exception! It adds lather to your soaps and great tactile properties to lip balms, scrubs and lotions.

I also used Olive Oil. Olive Oil also contributes a smoother moisturizing feel to the soap. When making a product for the face, it is important to be gentle to the delicate skin of the face. It is also important to moisturize to keep the skin soft, supple and healthy.

We will make this liquid soap paste  today and then tomorrow we will use this base to create a nice scrub for the face.

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Recipe:

Weigh the oils into a container. Heat until warm. Add the lye to the water to for a lye solution. Allow the lye solution to cool. Mix the oils and lye solution and blend until trace is achieved. I let the soap sit in my beaker while it saponifies as tomorrow, we will be adding to it. Cover your container with plastic wrap and allow to sit until the oils have completely saponified.

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To begin making my liquid soap, I weighed and poured my Olive Oil into the crock pot. I turned the crock pot on and waited for the oil to heat. My desired temperature is around 160° F. This temperature does not need to be precise. This took about 10 minutes to heat the oil to 157° F. As this is close enough, I weighed the Potassium Hydroxide and then added it to my water. I’ve made three other batches of liquid soap, so this time the boiling sound did not bother me. Once the Potassium Hydroxide solution was completely mixed, I added it to the oil in the crock pot. Don’t forget to pour in a slow and steady stream to help prevent splashing oil or clumping of the ingredients.

I used the immersion blender and began mixing to combine the Potassium Hydroxide solution and oils. It will take a longer time to mix together because Olive Oil takes a long time to saponify. It actually took about 20 minutes before the soap reached to cottage cheese stage! I would switch my motor for the immersion blender out with another motor to prevent myself from frying the motor. I probably switched between the two motors every 5 minutes.

After the soap finally reached the cottage cheese stage, it still took another 30 minutes just to finally reach that thick & sticky stage that is called the “sticky, saltwater taffy” stage. I could no longer use the immersion blender as the soap was so thick. I grabbed the whisk attachment for the blender, switched out the blending blade for the whisk and continued to mix the soap.

This batch of soap was behaving much more slowly than the other batches that I have made so far. Another indicator was that the soap never puffed, which I was ok with. I don’t like worrying if my soap is going to overflow! I continued cooking the soap and stirring every 20 minutes. I remained in the blog kitchen working on other projects so I could keep an eye out for any problems with the soap.

After 3 hours of stirring the soap every 20 minutes, the soap still had an off-white appearance with some translucent spots. Since it was the end of the work day, I took the crock pot home with me. I continued to cook the soap for another hour I stirred the soap every 20 minutes. After that additional hour of cooking, I the soap was completely translucent. When the soap reached this translucent stage, I boiled 2 ounces of water and added 1 oz of soap to the water. After stirring until the soap was completely dissolved, I allowed the soap sample to cool. Yippee! The sample was completely clear.

I turned off the crock pot and allowed to soap to cool completely in the pot. The next morning, I took the soap back to work and dumped it into a large pot for dilution. I added 64 ounces of tap water to the pot and cooked the soap for 1 hour on low heat to allow the soap to dilute slowly. After 1 hour of cooking, there were still clumps of soap, so I added another 32 ounces of tap water. I cooked the soap for another hour and finally the soap was completely diluted. I poured the soap into a 2 gallon pail to cool and covered it. Then I cleaned all of the remaining tools and pots.

I left the pail sitting on the counter overnight and when I came back the next morning, I was VERY surprised to find my soap had become a thick gel that was like in rubber cement in consistency. Ack! What did I do wrong? I asked our Technical Support team and they asked me what water I had used for dilution. Ahh, there was my problem. I used tap water and since we have a water softener, there was a higher salt content to the water. This caused the soap to thicken so much. I asked if it was possible to fix my soap or if I had really messed up. Luckily, I was told that I could dilute the soap gel with either distilled water or reverse osmosis water and have a fluid soap again.

I pulled out my clean pot and scraped the soap gel into the pot and added 32 ounces of reverse osmosis water to dilute the soap. I cooked the soap for 1 hour on low heat to allow the soap to dilute slowly. After 1 hour of cooking, there were still clumps of soap, so I added another 32 ounces of reverse osmosis water. I cooked the soap for another hour and finally the soap was completely diluted. I poured the diluted soap in a clean 2 gallon bucket and covered the bucket. The next day, I checked on the soap and was so excited to find that it was still liquid.

The Olive Oil Liquid Soap samples have been sent to the Shipping Department to send out in orders. I’m excited to say I have approximately 80 samples of this liquid soap! I would love to hear your comments about this liquid soap. I hope that anyone wanting a sample soap will request one with their order and if we have any samples we will send them to you.

I hope you have found this post to be entertaining as well as educational. Stay tuned for some great upcoming posts including a special bar soap for a special person, lotions that are perfect for the spring weather and even some food recipes!

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This batch of soap was made just like the soap on Monday and I didn’t have any incidents, so I was very excited to have a normally behaving batch of soap. The oils were 160° F when the Potassium Hydroxide solution was added. The soap proceeded to mix well through the cottage cheese and then the sticky taffy stages. When the soap started to puff, I was a little nervous since I didn’t want a soap overflow again. The soap did not overflow and eventually settled to the dense paste again. I covered the crock pot with the lid and let the soap cook for 3 hours and stirred every 20 minutes.

When the soap reached this translucent stage, I boiled 2 ounces of water and added 1 oz of soap to the water. After stirring until the soap was completely dissolved, I allowed the soap sample to cool. This soap sample was completely clear. This meant the soap could be diluted with 64 ounces of water. I allowed the soap to cook for about an hour. This allowed the dilution to occur slowly without adding lots of bubbles.

I wasn’t completely sure how to answer some of the questions that have been asked, so I have written these Interview Questions and my responses. The questions are posed as from the Blog Editor. Enjoy!

Blog Editor: What did you like about this soap?
Andee: I enjoyed making this soap. It was easy and a boost in my confidence after my overflowing batch earlier this week.

BE: Why did you chose the oils that you did?
A: I chose the oils for various reasons that were noted in Catherine Failor’s book. I chose the Coconut and Palm Kernel Oils because these oils have an excellent cleaning properties that produced a quick lather with big bubbles. The Sweet Almond Oil was picked for the persistent lather and the mild cleansing action. The Castor Oil was selected for the long lasting lather that it could contribute. I also wanted to use the Wheat Germ Oil because it naturally contains Vitamin E and is great to use on the skin.

BE: Would you consider a stainless steel potato masher to keep the puffing down?
A: I don’t think so. The puffing reminds me of a jam or jelly that is coming to a full rolling boil. It needs to be vigorously stirred down.

BE: When it got to the edges did you have a scoop to make sure it didn’t overflow?
A: No. I just used the whisk attachment and stirred well to keep the puffing soap down.

BE: What are your questions to yourself about liquid soap making?
A: I have lots of questions and each one brings more questions after it.

1. Why does Catherine Failor use a excess of KOH when a 2% superfat doesn’t require the neutralization that her recipes need? I would be intrigued to learn how she learned to make liquid soap and what the primary resources for information were during the writing of the book.
2. How would this work on the glass cooktop? Would the cycling heat affect how the soap cooks?
3. Is there a better option to make a liquid soap rather than small batches?
4. Is there a way to mass produce liquid soap as a small home soapmaker? Even this batch that I made would only fill ten 16 fl oz bottles. When you are selling product, I would think you would want the ability to make more product that 10 bottles at a time. I figure you are looking at 4 to 5 hours from start to finish, so wouldn’t it be best to make the best of your time?

BE: If you had to show this to someone else what would you want them to see or question or challenge?
A: I want people to see that liquid soap is easy to make, if you are well prepared. I think people see a complicated process and they don’t see that other products they already make have a similar process, maybe not as time intensive, but just as complicated looking in the beginning. I would hope that people would challenge the recipes I formulated and try to make a recipe that works best for them.

The Day 3 Liquid Soap samples have been sent to the Shipping Department to send out in orders. I’m excited to say I have approximately 80 samples of this liquid soap! I would love to hear your comments about this liquid soap. I hope that anyone wanting a sample soap will request one with their order and if we have any samples we will send them to you.

If you want instructions for a good batch of liquid soap, I would recommend reading Monday’s blog post.

Overall, the information from the first chapter of this book is good and I do not have any argument with most of it. However, I would like to clarify a part about preservatives and antioxidants of the “Other Key Ingredients” section. The difference between a preservative and an antioxidant is this: A preservative helps prevent the growth of Yeast, Mold, or Bacteria or a combination thereof. An antioxidant helps slow the oxidation rate of any excess fats. Since liquid soap is diluted, we do need to take precaution if we don’t know the end user and treat our products so. Bar soaps do not need this extra precaution because they are a solid bar and not diluted at all. This would mean that our liquid soaps require the use of a preservative like Liquid Germall Plus. You can also add an antioxidant like Vitamin E or Rosemary Oleoresin (Rosemary Oil Extract) if you desire.

Now, are you ready to start making liquid soap?

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To begin making my liquid soap, I started preheating my crock pot since according to the book, my oils needed to be around 160° F. This temperature does not need to be precise. As the crock pot heated, I weighed my oils and melted them in the microwave until they had reached the recommended temperature. I poured the hot oils into the heated crock pot and then weighed the Potassium Hydroxide. Now it is time to add the Potassium Hydroxide to the water. When I combined the two and stirred, I was very surprised to hear an odd boiling sound coming from my beaker. This reminded me of the sounds that a canner can make when used to seal jars in a hot water bath during the food preservation process. I was a little nervous at first, but I soon relaxed as the sound stopped after the solution was completely mixed. At this point, the Potassium Hydroxide solution should have cleared out and can now be added to oils in the crock pot. It is best to add the solution in a slow and steady stream to prevent splashing or clumping in the pot.

Now we can start stirring to combine the Potassium Hydroxide solution and oils. I used the immersion blender and began mixing. It takes a longer time to mix together than if I was making cold process soap. At first this odd concoction doesn’t want to mix at all and it looks like a badly behaving soap that has soap chunks with lots of extra water and oil! Yikes! I continued stirring as the book directed and as everything started to mix better, this mess in the crock pot started to thicken and actually resemble a soap batter that had failed and now looked like cottage cheese. The soap was not so fluid any more and then almost instantly the soap turned into a thick, sticky batter. At that point, I saw what Failor had meant of a consistency of “sticky, saltwater taffy.” I would have said the soap looked like a shaggy, sticky quick-bread dough, but the sticky, saltwater taffy description works well and is easily imagined. I could no longer use the immersion blender as the soap was so thick. I grabbed the whisk attachment for the blender, switched out the blending blade for the whisk and continued to mix the soap.

Right after I had switched the mixing attachments, the soap started to puff and I had to stir well to prevent a soap overflow in the blog kitchen! I was able to stir the soap down and the puffing stopped after about 3 minutes. Once the puffing was over, I was able to place the lid on the crock pot and set a timer for 20 minutes. I remained in the blog kitchen working on other projects so I could keep an eye out for any problems with the soap.

After 20 minutes, I stirred the soap. The soap still had an off-white appearance, but I wasn’t worried. I continued to stir the soap every 20 minutes until 3 hours had passed. I watched the soap change from looking like an off-white lumpy mass to look like a translucent chunky petroleum jelly. When the soap reached this translucent stage, I boiled 2 ounces of water and added 1 oz of soap to the water. After stirring until the soap was completely dissolved, I allowed the soap sample to cool. Yippee! The sample was completely clear and I was so excited about having a clear soap sample that I think I scared everyone who was working in the vicinity of the blog kitchen. Whoops!

Once I had the cooled sample, I could start diluting my soap into a liquid soap instead of making a paste. I added 64 ounces of water to the crock pot and allowed the soap to cook for about an hour. This allowed the dilution occur slowly without adding lots of bubbles.

Since I had used a superfat of 2%, my soap did not need to have any adjustments for the pH. I verified this by adding 30 grams of diluted soap to 20 grams of phenolphthalein (fee-nol-THA-leen) and the mixture remained clear. According to the book, this means that there are extra fatty acids that are good for the soap.

Notes:
In one way, I did not follow Failor’s instructions. I did not feel comfortable with making a soap that had an excess of Potassium Hydroxide, so I used the Lye Calculator and calculated a 2% superfat. I figured that if the soap was cloudy, it would still be usable and just be a learning experience.

The Coconut Oil & Sweet Almond Oil Liquid Soap samples have been sent to the Shipping Department to send out in orders. I’m excited to say I have approximately 100 samples of this liquid soap! I would love to hear your comments about this liquid soap. I hope that anyone wanting a sample soap will request one with their order and if we have any samples we will send them to you.

How cool is this? We’ve just finished our first batch of liquid soap!

Tomorrow I will show you how to make an Olive Oil and Coconut Oil soap that was requested by Amy. She wanted to see a batch that used these oils so she could try making liquid soap again!

Here is my experience making liquid soap in the crock pot.

I choose the crock pot for the liquid soap for two reasons: 1) time; 2) I don’t have an older stove and I’ve heard that flat- top stoves don’t provide consistent heat – so I don’t want to take a chance.

Finding a recipe can be challenging and I just don’t know enough about the science behind liquid soap making to create my own. I decided to take the recipe from MMS (recipe section – liquid soaps – there’s only one) and try it in the crock pot rather than let it rest for a few days. Not having the shortening, I used Soybean Oil and double-checked the Lye. If I remember correctly, it was nearly identical.

After mixing the lye mixture in with the oils and putting the crock pot on high temperature, it didn’t take long to look like this.

It almost went over! (Yes, I’ve had that happen.)

I kept my eyes on it and stirred it every 30 minutes. After 3 hours, it looked like this.

Here is when I test it – I check at 3 hours with phenolphthalein. If it doesn’t turn pink, the lye has been neutralized. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but it is clear.

Next, I weighed about half of the neutralized soap and put it in a stainless steel pot on the stove with the same water weight. I brought it to a low simmer. The other half I let cool down, sealed it, and then put it in the refrigerator for future use.

The hard part for me was trying to determine the correct amount water to add to the paste. The goal is to get the soap paste to dissolve. I ended up going over double the weight of water and it was still a little thick. Then I added a mix of Lemon Sugar and Cotton Candy fragrances and stirred to incorporate the foam.

Here is what it looks like before I get ready to pour it into the soap containers (after I’ve spritzed it with rubbing alcohol to remove the remaining bubbles).

And the final finished product is.

It didn’t get all poured that night. The next day I added a little more fragrance and it looked very nice. It’s still pretty thick and I may need to add water to it periodically, but it still works and lathers well.

I’ll use the remainder of the batch with when we get low on liquid soap. I can use a different fragrance combination as well. This half batch has resulted in about 4 – 10 oz. containers.

Other than creating the recipe, the hardest part for me is getting the consistency correct. The last time I made it (from a different recipe), it was too thin. Still, I haven’t had to throw any away and I think it is much nicer than what you buy in the store. My hands aren’t all dried out. It will take a little more practice before the soap can be given to others.

The next time, I’ll try it the way the recipe is stated on the MMS site. It certainly seems a lot simpler.

Has anyone else made liquid soap and had success? If so, I’d really like to hear your words of wisdom.

shelikesspring

Update:

This last weekend, I worked with the batch I had placed in the refrigerator. Here’s what it looked like.

This time I added 3 times the water. Here is what it looked like with the paste nearly dissolved.

Here it is with Purple Raspberry colorant and scented with Rooibos Tea and Red Currant. Sad to say, it’s still a little thicker than I would like.