This is a basic liquid soap formula for those just starting out into liquid soapmaking. It uses only 3 commonly used oils in soapmaking - nothing fancy, but makes a wonderful soap. As you get a handle on making liquid soap, you can venture into using different liquids for your lye water, different oil combinations to get the properties you are looking for in a soap and so on in formulating for your own creations.
1% superfat – no neutralization needed
Summerbee Meadow calculator used.
70% Olive Oil
20% Coconut Oil
10% Castor Oil
20 ounce oil batch
14 ounces olive oil
4 ounces coconut oil
2 ounces castor oil
4 ounces glycerin (from the initial water amount – this will
help speed up the process of getting to the cooking stage)
4.27 ounces (121 grams) KOH
8 ounces distilled water (12 ounces liquid needed, the other
4 ounces is the glycerin added to the oils (This is optional and you can remove the glycerin and use 12
ounces of distilled water.)
I have split the required water amount into part water, part
glycerin. Using glycerin in place
of part or all of your water will speed up the entire process of getting your paste to
the cook stage and the cook in general. Formulas high in
olive oil tend to take quite a long time to get to trace. You can omit the glycerin if you would
like and use all water too. Use
enough water so that you can fully dissolve your lye. My rule of thumb for minimum water amount is 1.1:1 water:lye
ratio. You can also replace all the water with glycerin, but this will require a different method to dissolve your lye. I have other tutorials on using all glycerin too.