This weekend I made all natural liquid soap
and it looks great! Haven't "tested" it yet, thought it best to allow it to "rest" for a week or so just to make sure everything was saponified
well.First thing I did was to mix my potassium hydroxide
into my water... it makes a hissing, popping sort of sound that lye generally doesn't, but heats up and cools down in pretty much the same manner.
Then I measured out my oils (coconut oil
, sunflower oil
, and castor oil
) and warmed them up to about 150 degrees. This was a little different from cold process soap, those I generally only warm to about 100 degrees and I allow my lye
to cool to about the same temperature. Liquid soap is mixed at a higher temperature, so I made sure to turn on the exhaust fan and to wear rubber gloves just to be safe. Didn't want any risk of chemical burns!I mixed my potassium hydroxide solution with my oils and stirred with my stick blender
till the mixture reached a heavy trace... looked like really thick pudding... then put the mixture on the stove in a double boiler and began to cook, stirring about every 15 minutes or so... I let it cook about 4 hours till I got a really thick, transparent gel.
Scraped the gel into a bucket and added boiled water at a ratio of 2 to 1... I might go a little less next time as the end result is a bit thinner than I wanted. I let the gel/water sit overnight, stirring every hour or two, till the gel dissolved in the water...
Put the mixture back into the soap pot and heated it back up to a simmer, added rosemary essential oil (my favorite, plus it's wonderful for hair, and I plan to use this for shampoo), stirred well then poured the mixture into two half gallon glass jars to wait... plan to bottle the liquid soap in 8 ounce plastic bottles, label and Tah Dah... liquid soap!
Super excited!
Okay, you made that look so stinkin' easy. I've been wanting to do liquid soap but have been too afraid. I don't have that phenothalein (sp) stuff. I don't want to have to neutralize with borax. Yada yada yada. Did you have to do any of that or was your method different? Did you superfat making no neutralization necessary? Hmmmm, now I really need to get going on liquid soap. Great Job!
ReplyDeleteDidn't use the phenothalein stuff... didn't borax it at all... superfatted to 6 percent. It was more time consuming than cold process but not hard... I did dilute it a little too much and it came out a bit thin, but I'm cooking it down and reducing the water content... so far it's doing great and it lathers, smells and feels great... makes your hair feel nice too.
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