Making Liquid Laundry Soap

So a while ago, I said that I would do a post on making liquid laundry soap. Here it is: YAY!!!!! I find that making liquid soap is not only a lot more forgiving than making bar soap. I am sure that most people won't agree with me, but this is my blog so I can say what I want.

I make laundry soap from 100% coconut oil because in my research I've read that soap made from coconut oil a lot better than soap with other oil bases. It's also relatively easy obtain coconut oil, it's sold in the grocery store. I don't buy my coconut oil from the grocery store unless I'm in a bind and don't have any other option but it is doable.

The first thing you need to do is determine how much soap you want to end up with by weight. This is important because you need to know the total weight before you can figure out how much soap paste you need to make. I usually make a gallon of laundry soap at a time. A gallon of water weighs about 133.5 oz, so that's the number we're going to use. Please keep in mind I'm talking about weight not volume. When making liquid soap made from 100% coconut oil about 40% of the total weight of your finished product needs to be the soap paste (we'll get to this term later).

NOTE: The 40% ratio does not apply if other oils other/addition to coconut oil is used, to determine the dilution ratios look in Making Natural Liquid Soaps by Catherine Failor, this a a great book that is EXTREMELY necessary when making liquid soap. Please buy it before you try this.

You need 53.4 oz of soap paste to end up with a gallon of laundry soap.

 53.4 = 133.5 x 0.4

Catherine Failor suggests that the water needed to make your lye solution be 70% of total oils used for liquid soap. Also, there is no superfatting in liquid soap. Plug this info into your lye calculator and it will give you the following measurements for making your soap. (PLEASE REMEMBER THAT LIQUID SOAP REQUIRES POTASSIUM HYDROXIDE)

Total oil weight 53.4 Water as percent of oil weight 70 % Super Fat/Discount 0 % Lye Concentration 26.855 % Water : Lye Ratio 2.724:1

Sat : Unsat Ratio 89 : 11 Iodine INS Fragrance Ratio .7 Fragrance Weight 2.336 Oz

Ingredient	Pounds	Ounces	Grams
Water	2.336	37.38	1059.704
Lye - KOH	0.858	13.724	389.063

#	√	Oil/Fat	%	Pounds	Ounces	Grams
1		Coconut Oil, 76 deg	100	3.338	53.4	1513.863
		Totals	100	3.338	53.4	1513.863

Once you've gotten all this information, you basically follow the same method as making hot process soap. Check and stir the mixture every 30 minutes for about 3 hours on low, the translucent blob that you end up with after 3 hours is called soap paste. 

Once your soap paste is made you have two options 1) dilute it now or 2) store and dilute later. I dilute all my soap paste after I finish making it. Soap doesn't go bad so in my opinion it's better to just dilute it and be done. 

To dilute the soap paste you need to boil enough water equal to 60% of the total amount of laundry soap desired, in this instance that would be 80.1 oz. I would suggest boiling the water first and then measuring it, rather than measuring than boiling. Pour the boiling water in the crockpot, turn the crockpot on high, put the top on and walk away for about 30-45 minutes. After 30-45 minutes the soap paste should have softened and no longer stuck to the bottom of the crockpot. Using a metal spoon try to break the soap paste into smaller pieces, come back and check the soap about every 30 minutes until the soap paste is fully diluted. Fortunately soap made with an all coconut oil base the soap should be relatively easy to dilute. 

The next step is to neutralize the soap, because soap made from coconut oil will not thicken when borax is add, it doesn't make sense to add more than necessary, it's not going to get any thicker. Dissolve 0.85 oz of borax into 1.7oz of boiling water and add the mixture into the diluted soap.

After you've let the soap cool for a little while, any fragrances or essential oils that you want to add can be mixed in and the soap bottled. The amount of fragrance/essential oil depends on the manufacturer's recommendations. I use .7 oz per lb of soap paste. That's it your done. 

Each large load of clothes needs 1 oz of laundry soap, I happen to have a 1 oz scoop but if you don't 1/2 tbsp is the same thing. The gallon will do about 133 loads. This can also be used for baby clothes, just decrease or take out the fragrance/essential oils. 

While this is a long process, it really doesn't require a lot of your attention. The crockpot does most of the work. I guess the real question is if this is economical, well let's do the math shall we. 

7 lbs of coconut oil: $17.95

8 oz Lemongrass EO: $11.55

32 oz KOH: $16.51

7 lb = 112 oz

17.95 / 112 = $0.16/oz coconut oil

11.55 / 8 = $1.45/oz lemongrass EO

16.51 / 32 = $0.52/oz KOH

($0.16 x 53.4)+($1.45 x 2.35)+($0.52 x 13.72) = $19.09/gal liquid laundry soap

$19.09 / 133 = $0.14/load

Until next time, 

Kellan

CrockPot Hot Process Soap: Attempt 2

I recently decided that I was going to make my own soap, preferably castile soap (soap make from 100% olive oil). I did A LOT of online research and talked to a few people, it was time to take the plunge. I will admit that I was scared but I did it. I decided to make castile soap because I usually buy Dr. Bronner's (even though Dr. Bronner's isn't true castile soap) and I can get olive oil for cheap. Cold process soap has a 2-3 month wait before the soap could be used.........I don't have the kind of time, Christmas is exactly three months away and people are getting soap this year! I found three good posts for making bar soap using the crockpot hot process method that I followed (liquid soap is another day), they were from Soap-Making-Essentials, Such Treasures and Orthogonal Thought.

So I setup my lye prep area. Professional soap makers will probably laugh at me but hey, it's my first time.

And I setup my mixing and cooking area

I mixed my lye together and let it cool. In my research I found that the temperature of my lye didn't really matter. There's an ideology about soapmaking called the room temperature method, which basically says that I can mix my lye the night before, leave it overnight and use it the next day. I don't have children, so this is a great option for me. I really didn't want to fool with taking the temperature of the lye solution and the heating the oil. If you have kids and/or pets, but don't have a room that you can lock them out of this would probably be a bad idea. I've read a lot of horror stories about kids that accidentally poured lye on themselves.

I measured out my lye and water, I find out how much lye and water I needed at SoapCalc

Poured the lye into the water while stirring, and continued to stir until the water turned relatively clear again. I don't remember anyone saying that the water would get cloudy, so I was a little freaked out when the water turned white. You MUST do this in a well ventilated area. This chemical reaction kicks out A LOT of heat and A LOT of fumes.  

After the lye solution cools down, pour it in the oils (I'm using all olive oil so it didn't need to be heated). It immediately started to saponify, which is what made the light color under the oil. 

It took me 15 minutes of blending and stirring to reach trace. I hear that it takes longer to achieve trace with 100% olive oil soap, than with mixtures of oils. When I made Attempt 1, I used 85% olive oil to 15% coconut oil, I think it traced in about 10 minutes.

From here I turned the crockpot on low, put the lid on and let it go for about an hour or so. While I was waiting I cleaned everything in hot soapy water with LOTS of vinegar and started making oreo cookies (that's the next post). After an hour, I stirred my soap and it looked like this:

It wasn't quite done it, it was still soupy, kind of the texture of applesauce. So I put the top back on and let it for another 30-45 minutes or so. At that point I achieved the mash potato stage, which means my soap is done cooking........YAY!

I spooned this into a glass loaf pan that I covered in plastic wrap, during Attempt 1 I used unlined muffin pans but I had a very hard time getting the soap out. It works great......it's just not the prettiest because of the skewer marks from digging the soap out. Anyways, this is what the soap looks like now:

I'll come back tomorrow once I get it out the loaf pan. It's interesting because at one point last night it turned a really dark green. I think this is because I used really good extra virgin olive oil for this. I know what you're thinking why would I use high quality olive oil to make soap? Well, the gourmet market by my house sells it for $2.99/lb so it was the most economical option. I haven't gotten to adding fragrance and color yet but soon.

I'll post more on this tomorrow. Until then.....

Kellan