Soap Makers And Users Group (SMAUG)

[Goofy_Bee]

This is what I use instead of stearic acid.
I like that it's a triglyceride so it will liberate glycerine into the soap.

Absolutely. After my bag of stearic acid is empty, I'll try soywax. Do you fully substitute stearic acid 1:1 with soywax?

Q: did you find beeswax added a perceivable improvement?

No not really, but I wanna have something relatetd to my nickname
But to be honest, I never checked, if there is a difference. Is it worth the hassle of making two batches with different fats just to see the difference? Maybe It's like homeopathy, faith helps

does it reduce the lather body given beeswax is very thick and unsaponifiable?

The lather is just fine, compact almost like yogurt (at least not bubbly). Bees wax is saponifiable, no trigycerides but Palmitic acid myricyl ester (mainly). Saponification is just another word for ester hydrolysis, workes here too.

 

[Goofy_Bee]

Historically, tallow had the right properties for long term storage without refrigeration. It had a more neutral scent and taste. It was used for things like cooking fat, soaps and candles.

And because of the tremendous amounts produced, especially in the US, it's cheap. Maybe one of the reasons, why european soapmakers switch to no-tallow formulas. Here in Europe we eat more pork, so beef tallow is not readily available (not more).

 

[nav]

Absolutely. After my bag of stearic acid is empty, I'll try soywax. Do you fully substitute stearic acid 1:1 with soywax?


No not really, but I wanna have something relatetd to my nickname
But to be honest, I never checked, if there is a difference. Is it worth the hassle of making two batches with different fats just to see the difference? Maybe It's like homeopathy, faith helps


The lather is just fine, compact almost like yogurt (at least not bubbly). Bees wax is saponifiable, no trigycerides but Palmitic acid myricyl ester (mainly). Saponification is just another word for ester hydrolysis, workes here too.

Yah, I sub soywax 1:1. It's 87% stearic and 11% Palmitic.

I did often do trial batches to test for differences when making any significant changes, either to the ingredients or sizable quantities of existing recipe.

Like silk, lanolin, superfat %, etc are variables where small amounts lead to a perceivable difference.

I'll try the beeswax soon. I had always read small amounts are added as superfat because it's not saponifiable. So thanks for the clarification!

 

[Goofy_Bee]

I'll try the beeswax soon. I had always read small amounts are added as superfat because it's not saponifiable. So thanks for the clarification!

Cheers.
In some soap calculators you can choose beeswax, so you'll get the right value for the lye concentration. The saponification number is different to triglycerides

 

[GR5233]

What you want to render is a specific type of beef fat called suet. It comes from around the kidneys of beef cattle.

Or leaf fat if you’re using pork fat for lard

I think for beef that is where the bulk of the fat comes from or am I mistaken?

If I’m not mistaken the majority of fat comes from non suet fat

Will the tallow I rendered from my last brisket trimmings not be ok for soap?

Any fat trimmings will work for making soap. Just make sure you get rid of as much of the excess lean as possible

 

[GR5233]

Absolutely! Yeah we have gotten so used to that lather is what shows us how well a soap cleans and that is just frankly false. A lard only soap will clean you very well. No doubt about that. Also, to your point a bit of fragrance, essential oil certainly help to mask the potential pork smell from the unsaponified portion of the lard. Although I have to say that low temperature rendered lard does not smell nearly as "porky" as high temp rendered one.

I haven’t tried low temp rendering yet but it’s definitely something I will look into. I think there might be ways to reduce the smell of lard and tallow besides low temp rendering but I haven’t found much info about it. If you do use fragrance or essential oils in your soap it’s best to let it cool down to below 170°F before adding them from what I’ve read. Doing so helps keep the fragrance at its best

 

[blethenstrom]

Absolutely. After my bag of stearic acid is empty, I'll try soywax. Do you fully substitute stearic acid 1:1 with soywax?


No not really, but I wanna have something relatetd to my nickname
But to be honest, I never checked, if there is a difference. Is it worth the hassle of making two batches with different fats just to see the difference? Maybe It's like homeopathy, faith helps


The lather is just fine, compact almost like yogurt (at least not bubbly). Bees wax is saponifiable, no trigycerides but Palmitic acid myricyl ester (mainly). Saponification is just another word for ester hydrolysis, workes here too.

soywax is mostly stearic acid so very close, but it does have a bit different SAP value than pure stearic acid, so I would just recalculate the lye amount.

 

[blethenstrom]

I haven’t tried low temp rendering yet but it’s definitely something I will look into. I think there might be ways to reduce the smell of lard and tallow besides low temp rendering but I haven’t found much info about it. If you do use fragrance or essential oils in your soap it’s best to let it cool down to below 170°F before adding them from what I’ve read. Doing so helps keep the fragrance at its best

The only thing with low temperature rendering is that the resulting lard/tallow will not be shelf stable, since it is not hydrogenated. Therefore, we freeze what we store longer term, and just have a jar of it in the fridge for current usage.

Yes you do have to be a bit careful with fragrances and temperature. Each fragrance oil/essential oil have a flash point temperature and you want to have your soap mixture below that temperature before you add it. Otherwise you will loose a lot of the scent. You should be able to find this temperature on the sellers datasheet for the fragrance oil/essential oil and it will be different for each one.

 

[Goofy_Bee]

soywax is mostly stearic acid so very close, but it does have a bit different SAP value than pure stearic acid, so I would just recalculate the lye amount.

I always do, if I change something within the composition. Definitely don‘t want unsaponified lye.

 

[blethenstrom]

I was posting in another thread where they were questioning why the shave soap that they were using in the bath made them feel dry and itchy on their skin. I was thinking about it a little bit and I was thinking that this makes perfect sense. I will expand on my post a bit here for all of you. Hopefully it will help and give some insight.

Bath soap and shave soap have quite different ingredients, because the goals of the soaps are different. Shave soap we want mainly a nice strong, stable lather with good slickness. In bath soap we want a soap that cleans and lathers ok, but the lather is usually of the bubbly kind at that, and it should leave our skin feel good.

Shave soap is mainly made up of Stearic Acid, Palmitic Acid. These acid will produce the stable and strong dense, creamy lather that we desire. Oils/fat that contain these are Stearic Acid (usually this is refined from Palm oil), Soybean Wax, Tallow, Palm Kernel Oil and several of the butters like shea, cocoa, mango etc. Then there will be a bit of Coconut oil to make it easier to lather. However, too much coconut oil will make for a bubbly lather which is not what we want.

Now for a conditioning soap you would want Oleic, Linoleic, Linolenic and Ricinoleic Acids in your soap. A conditioning soap is a soap that leaves your skin feel good. The ingredients in shave soap does NOT normally contain high amounts of these conditioning acids, because they reduce the lather formation and defeats the main objective with a shave soap. If you see a shave soaps with larger amounts of olive, canola, safflower, sunflower oils etc, it will not produce a good lather. There is some exceptions to this and that is Castor oil which is as far as I know the only oil that contain Ricinoleic acid and butters. Castor oil also help with the stability of the lather meaning how long it will stay a lather without breaking down. A soap maker that knows what they are doing should add castor oil to make the lather more stable AND for the soap to be more conditioning. You can also have a shave soap high in butter content that will make it conditioning, but butters come at a premium cost.

Now I think why people like tallow based shave soap is that it also contain a good bit of Oleic acid, which will help with the skin feel post shave vs Stearic Acid based which does not. Furthermore, many artisan shave soaps have added clay, usually bentonite clay, for extra slip and this can also contribute to dry skin feeling post shave, because clay will attract moisture. i.e rob it from the skin. Think clay masks that ladies do to clean the pores of their face.

Now I have been using my home made shave soap in the shower without issues of dryness, but I have castor oil in my soap so it may counteract the issues.

I listed four oils/fats in the pictures above. Please pay attention to the conditioning and creamy aspects of the different oils/fats. High creamy numbers helps with the lather density and conditioning with the post shave skin feel. Oftentimes these work against each other with the exception of the shea butter and tallow above. I think this is also the reason why tallow is so popular for shave soap. It is also more balanced.

 

[blethenstrom]

I have been experimenting with single lye shave soap for a bit. I have been trying to come up with a bar that could be used both for shaving and as a bath soap. For a bath soap you need a pretty firm bar so what we know is that a dual lye soap will yield a softer bar so that would be challenging for bath soaps. The reason for this was to come up with a dual purpose soap mainly for travelling so there would be no need to bring both.

I set out on this trek and I have now made two batches with similar results. First one I did I reformulated my regular stearic acid soap to be a bit more conditioning and cleansing for the bath bar's purpose. I did a normal single lye (NaOH) cold process soap and found the soap immediately seizing on me even though I had no fragrance that could accelerate it. Traced instantly in essence. I actually had to save this soap by cooking it so I could get it into molds. The soap consistency was crumbly and hard and I guess that is because of the quite high stearic acid content. Once I let this sit for a few days I did a bath test with it and it worked quite well and after that I did a shave test. Here is where the problem started. It was very difficult to lather and the lather was not abundant either. It was stable lather, but a lot was to be desired. I used it for a handful of shaves and then I resorted to demoting it to a bath soap.

My second test was my normal shave soap oil ratios, but using it with a single lye cold process again. I had learned that I probably needed to soap at a higher temperature to not have it seizing on me. I soaped at around 150F or so and it did want to get hard on me the moment I put in the lye solution, but I was able to stir it into submission. Still it was quite lumpy and not pretty. I forced it into molds and let it sit for a few days. This soap also got super hard and crumbly. I did the bath test and it was just fine. Then I tried my first lather and loading from the puck with the brush I had a hard time getting enough soap on the brush for a good lather. I also tried to use it as a stick for face lathering and that worked much better. I do get a similar lather to my normal shave soap I've made and it is very usable, but it is such a hard soap. I will probably use most of this batch too as a bath soap and I have learned several things.

Shave soap, which is high in stearic and/or palmitic acid needs to be dual lye to lather properly. Second, cold process is not really suitable for shave soap. Maybe you could do a hybrid process, which I have been seen done with some dual lye shave soaps. Even if I am making a bath bar/shave soap combo I still need to use a dual lye recipe. I may not have my normal 60% KOH, 40% NaOH, but something like 30% KOH, 70% NaOH. This would still yield quite a hard bar, but with a bit of softness as well. Hot process is the way to go. Besides using KOH it needs to be. At some point I will have to try this.

If anyone has any ideas or comments on this please do so.