A big test of 100% one oil soaps – part I

Formulating your own soap recipe can be tricky. There are some nice tools estimating the final soap characteristics like hardness, conditioning, bubliness, creaminess of lather like for example soapcalc.

But getting the real feel of it is an experience.

And while this estimate gives you an idea on the final soap characteristics, it won’t tell you how each oil reacts in the saponification process, what would be the color of the soap or how fast it will go rancid (although this can be estimated from the oil shelf life itself)

Therefore I decided to make a test of ten 100% one-oil soaps, to get a feeling about:

• how the oils react in the saponification – e.g. do they trace fast or you have to whip long time?
• the cure time
• the final soap color
• hardness, bubliness, creaminess of lather

I will share with you my experience in two posts. The results are more interesting than I expected – some soaps did not behave according to estimates at all…

The one oil soap experiment set up

1. For molds I used individual 150 ml plastic containers I had from some diary product. Therefore I set up the oil quantity to 50g, so that after adding the lye I still can stir comfortably.
2. I marked the molds with numbers so that I know which contains which oil
3. Because the molds are individual, and loose quickly heat, I tried to have higher oil+lye mixing temperatures – I opted for the recommended 47°C from The Soapmaker’s Companion
4. I also tried to stir first by hand – to find out if the blender is necessary – only if I found it too long (more than 10 minutes), I used the blender – I aimed for thick trace

Table 1 shows the recipe and experimental conditions for each soap. The sodium hydroxide was calculated using SoapCalc.

SAPgroup	Oil	Weight (g)			Superfat	Mixing temperature (°C)		Trace temperature (°C)
		Oil	NaOH	Distilled water		Oil	NaOH
1	Coconut oil	50	8.7	19	5%	48	33	33
2	Palm oil	50	6.7	19	5%	44	49
	Olive oil	50	6.4	19	5%	49	34	29
	Corn oil	50	6.5	19	5%	49	29	30
	Peanut oil	50	6.5	19	4%	30	45	30
	Cocoa butter	50	6.6	19	5%	48	49	NA
3	Castor oil	50	6.1	19	5%	49	50	37
	Shea butter	50	6.1	19	5%	48	40	35
4	Jojoba oil	50	3.1	19	5%	50	47	30
	Beeswax	50	3.2	19	5%	68	68	42

Jojoba oil and beeswax are waxes and need only half of the quantity of sodium hydroxide, because they can contain 50% or more unsaponifiables.

 

100% oil soaps – behavior in trace

 

Table 2 Summarizes how the soap behavior until trace.

Group	Oil	Hand stirring	Blender
				Photo in trace
1	Coconut oil	7 min – no trace	After blender, after very fast thick trace	Forgot to take…
2	Palm oil	11 min – thick trace	Not used
	Olive oil	17 min – no trace	After blender – obtained just light trace
	Corn oil	8 min – no trace	After blender – fast thick trace
	Peanut oil	8 min – no trace	After blender until thick trace
	Cocoa butter	11 min – no trace	After blender – thick trace
3	Castor oil	3 min – fast thick trace	Not used
	Shea butter	Directly thick trace	Not used
4	Jojoba oil	Not used	Used directly blender, after few minutes a trace occured.However, after few minutes separation occured. Next 2 hours I hand stirred the soap every 20-30 minutes, at the end by blender.Every time the stirring helped into trace, however after time the trace always separated.
	Beeswax	Directly thick trace, however, in minutes it dried out and curdled. I had heat it up, add 32g of water (20g, then 12g) in order to get cream consistency.

Castor oil, shea butter, palm oil and beeswax traced without using blender, castor and shea tracing the fastest, followed by palm oil.

Beeswax behavior was rather strange – first it soaked in all the lye solution and then turned into very dry mass. As the temperature decreased, beeswax solidified, so I had to reheat and add more water.  Later I have read that it is better to saponify beeswax by hot process, which is of course logical – so that it does not solidify.

Why to saponify beeswax when 100% beeswax does not foam at all? You can use it as a home-made emulsifier.

Corn oil, coconut oil and peanut oil – needed blender in order to reach trace, but after it traced within seconds.

Olive oil and jojoba oil were the most difficult to trace, even with a mixer. Jojoba oil separated all the time, so I left it separated to cure.

Soaps after 24 hours – unmolding

 

I unmolded soaps after 24 hours. A nice adventure 🙂 Of course, I took pictures and tried soap hardness by thumb imprint before unmolding.

 

SAP group	Soap type	Hardness (thumb test) after 24 hours	Unmolding after 24 hours	Picture before unmolding
1	Coconut oil	No thumb trace	Easy
2	Palm oil	No trace	More difficult
	Olive oil	No trace	Very easy
	Corn oil	No trace, but soap is elastic	Difficult, I broke it
	Peanut oil	Thumb left trace	Impossible to unmold, after 72 hours I put it in the freezer in order to unmold
	Cocoa butter	No trace	Relatively difficult, I had to bend the plastic to get it out
3	Castor oil	No trace	Relatively easy, interestingly quite elastic (the very thin layer unmolded with the soap)
	Shea butter	No trace	Very easy
4	Jojoba oil	Still two phases, the bottom one very soft, top one floating	Impossible, still in two phases
	Beeswax	When touched, changes color to darker, very soft, deep trace	Too soft – probably because of water I added at trace.After 72 hours was put in freezer and unmolded

The softest soap was from peanut oil, the hardest was from cocoa butter.

 

 

Soaps after 24 hours – soap color

 

There were significant differences in color between soaps. The best is to compare color between soaps on one photo. Also, I did not reproduce well the color on the pictures I have taken, however I did my best. Here you have a series of pictures of unmolded soaps that hopefully help you get a feeling…

 

As a bonus, I have made a video.

 

The whitest soap was the coconut oil soap, followed by castor oil soap, which was slightly translucent. Both followed by palm oil soap which was of white-creamy color, a bit more creamy were shea butter and corn oil soaps.

Rather cream yellow was peanut oil soap.

Olive oil soap was yellow-green and started to loose color through expanding white spots within the following days after unmolding.  After two weeks it was completely cream-white.

 

Cocoa butter soap kept the darker yellow color of the cocoa butter and jojoba oil soap – or rather the floating part of it – was bright yellow.

Beeswax soap was beige, interestingly, upon touch it darkened.

 

 

Left – cocoa butter soap, right – castor oil soap

Coconut oil soap

 

Olive oil soap

 

Corn oil soap

 

Cocoa butter soap

Shea butter soap

Although I could unmold the peanut oil soap  with help of freezer after 3 days, it remained very soft.

 

Peanut oil soap after 3 days

See the following part:

1. A big test of 100% one oil soap – soap foaming after 2 weeks of curing and pH test

2. A big test of 100% one oil soaps – after 15 months