We've had a lot of discussion about liquid soap making on the Candle and Soap Making Forum lately -- especially about the whole notion of "neutralizing" the paste. Over the paste couple of years, a lot of information has been written about liquid soap making by folks like Steve at Summer Bee Meadow (a true expert at liquid soap making.) My article on Making Natural Liquid Soap, presents the more "traditional" view when I say, "If you run most recipes through a lye calculator you'll see that there seems to be way too much lye! Indeed, liquid soap recipes are usually formulated with about a 10% lye EXCESS. This is to ensure that all of the oils are saponified." This is indeed true. But there's more to the story.
Catherine Failor's book Making Natural Liquid Soaps has been, and still is the "Bible" of liquid soap making. Even though I've been making liquid soap for a while, I still refer back to it every time. The information and the recipes in the book are great. But...I always like to run all my recipes, even ones out of famous books through lye calculators. I was a bit dismayed to find out that Failor's recipes have about a 10-12% lye EXCESS in them. She goes through a neutralization process...but still...10-12% always seemed like a lot of excess lye. The recipes worked...and didn't burn my skin off...so I didn't think much about it...until recently. Here's some new information that sheds a whole lot of light on liquid soap making!
Comments