Teach Soap

I am new to this, I have made about 5 batches of CP. I love it! The problem is, my soap is very drying.

I used recipes from Alicia Grosso's book, so I didn't run those thru a lye calc. After I got all dry and itchy and ran her recipe thru the BB lye calc, it called for about .2 ounces less lye, and about 2 ounces less liquid, for a 2lb batch. Is it that I am using too much lye?

OR could it be that I get my lye from the hardware store? It is 100% lye, but crystals, not flakes. Does that make a difference?

OR could it be that I was using cocount oil from the grocery store instead of a soap supplier? Now I have some BB coconut oil. I have a batch curing now with BB cocount oil, made from a recipe that I ran thru BB's lye calc.

Every batch I have made, including one with goats milk, has gone into full gell. I cure for 5-6 weeks before use.

Thanks in advance for any tips.

Always run any recipe through a soap calc. Mistakes can and will happen. If it was a small batch, I would convert the recipe into grams for more accurate measuring. It's possible that the soap is lye heavy. Some people find coconut oil over 20% drying. what was your superfat amount? What is the exact recipe that you used?

_________________
Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

The recipe was:

4.8 oz lye
12 oz water
18 oz olive
8 oz coco nut
6 oz palm
1Tlbl castor, as 5% superfat.


Another, with the same result was:

4.8 oz lye
12 oz water
21 oz olive
10.5 oz coconut
1 Tbl castor, as 5% superfat

You cannot superfat with any oil or butter, unless you add it after the cook. The lye is still active at this point and it will take whatever it wants. Add all your oils/butters up front. 1 TBS. is not an accurate measure. I would get a good scale. For that size batch, 1 TBS. will not add much.

I would superfat at 7% of the whole batch. For the first recipe I calculated your castor at 0.31% or 0.1 oz.
So you have:

Olive 56.07%
Coconut 24.92%
Palm 18.69%
Castor 0.31%

For that size batch, I woul use 10 oz. of water and 4.44 ozs. of lye. You can round the lye down to 4.4 ozs.
You have 4.8 ozs. of lye which is less than 0% superfat. So it looks like you have too much lye in the first recipe.
I bet that would be extremely drying. It's lye heavy.

_________________
Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Thank you