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How to make a white soap & good foam?
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Hi all, I was just assigned by the owner to make GOAT MILK SOAP as the prospect here is very good. First, I just try to mix palm oil (40%), coconut oil (30%) & castor oil (30%). I used fresh goat milk (frozen) as the substitution for water and dissolve the lye in it. After the trial, the result was :
1. The color of the soap is yellowish. Is it true that the choice of oil will affect the color of soap? I want to have white, milky soap.
2. The foam produced was not enough. What about this? How to increase the foam?
I just really need some clues here. Many thanks in advance.
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1) The colour of the soap base will vary with the colour quality of the oils used. To cover this up a lot of commercial soap millers will add titanium dioxide or other pigment.
2) I would check that your saponification has gone to completion, as the milk may well react with the lye you've added, reducing the effective concentration you've added. If you have a significant amount of un-converted oil in there it will probably kill the foam appreciably
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Thx Duncan for the info.
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The economic decision for making soap versus buying soap is strongly weighted in favor of buying plain soap in bulk and then mixing in your additional ingredients. The cost of buying this soap from the big manufacturers is actually subsidised by the fact that they are able to pull most of the excess glycerin (from saponifying triglycerides - 3 molecules of soap, 1 of glycerin) out of the soap mass, and then sell the soap and the glycerin seperately.You're apparently leaving the glycerin in your soap, which makes it more expensive and may add to the yellowing. That much glycerin may be reducing the foam level also. One way around this, (so you don't have to figure out how to get the glycerin out) is to add fatty acids to your formula - stearic acid is most common, and probably cheapest. This should also help with the yellowing, but if you want bright, milky white, you're going to have to add a little titanium dioxide.Traditional soap is also hard to process/package without specialized equipment, but it is possible to improvise.You should also look into what's called "melt-and-pour" soap, also called glycerin soap. This is a translucent/transparent soap that is much, much easier to process. It is also possible to buy base for this, although the make vs. buy decision is harder, since it is more expensive.There is a huge amount of information on the web about this, for people who make their own soap in their kitchens up to people who are running small businesses - I'm still wading through it.Lastly, please remember that you need to cook most or all of the water out of your soap, and that it needs time to cure.
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I forgot to add - we check the saponification by checking the pH. You can check either with paper strips, a surface-reading pH probe, or (the way we do it) by dissolving 10 grams of soap in 60 grams of water and 30 grams of ethanol, and reading the pH of the solution.
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Thx a lot Robert..Hope with this guidance I'll have better result in the next trial..:)
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