This is the second batch of soap I ever made, and it’s become one of my favourites over time. The long curing time is definitely beneficial because I used shea butter as my hard oil (and as far as hard oils go, it’s not very hard). I also used avocado oil, so the bars are loaded with all kinds of rich, nutritious oils.
Shea Butter & Citrus Shampoo Bar
136g olive oil
91g castor oil
68g shea butter
114g coconut oil
68g avocado oil65g lye
162g water20g lemon essential oil
Follow standard soap making procedure. I’d recommend double-checking the amount of lye and water in the recipe using a lye calculator.
Tags: butter, coconut, homemade, instructions, natural, recipe, shea butter, soap
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After my patchouli lavender batch of what I’d like to call sodium cocoate (just saponified coconut oil) for my laundry soap, I’m going to get my hands into something like this. Thanks for sharing!!!!
It’s amazing to think that I could stretch my washes out by this. I have a no poo method already but struggle to get past day 3
Really looking forward to this and to give it a try.
Any more shampoo bars you can hand out the recipes on I’d definitely gobble up or rather, my hair could gobble up.
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Patchouli lavender—I must try that blend! It sounds awesome!
I’m with you on the no-poo thing—it is HARD to get very far! Plus, I found I really missed washing my hair. There’s just something really lovely about working up a beautiful lather and giving yourself a wee scalp massage. When you start stretching out your washes you’ll definitely have a few greasy days (generally one at the end of each cycle), but I’ve developed some coping mechanisms—you can read about them here, here and here.
Here’s a couple other shampoo bars for you: Latté Shampoo andGingerbread Shampoo!
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Can you get by without using the lye. I have Sebhorric dermititis and I am afraid it will irritate my skin?
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Long story short—definitely not. Lye is what actually makes soap, well, soap! The chemical reaction between lye and fat is what produces soap. If you don’t use it, you will just have a big batch of fat (or perhaps very greasy quasi-lotion if you manage to get the water and fats to emulsify without the lye). Ick, haha.
You’re right, though—lye can be irritating if the soap is not made properly. Soap makers use superfatting to avoid any possible irritation from the lye. That means they use extra fat, so the amount of lye they use cannot turn all of it into soap. So, if you needed 10g of lye to turn 20g of soap into fat, you might use 25g of fat so the lye would turn the first 20g into soap, and then have 5g left over as fat. This extra fat ups the moisturizing properties of the soap and ensures there is no leftover, un-reacted lye to irritate your skin (recommended superfat is 5–10%; anything more makes a soft bar of soap that can go rancid on you). If you can use commercially made bar soap, this won’t irritate your skin—in fact, it will probably irritate your skin far less as it doesn’t have any sodium lauryl sulfate or artificial fragrances in it. You can increase the superfat to somewhere around 7% to make it extra gentle, and give yourself a little extra wiggle room. Just be sure to use a scale and a good soap calculator, and you will be totally fine! Have fun, and feel free to get in touch with any other questions
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Thank you very much for the information. Do you have any soap recipes that don’t use the lye, maybe a different process?
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Uh… no. The definition of “soap” is “A substance used with water for washing and cleaning, made of a compound of natural oils or fats with sodium hydroxide or another strong alkali, and typically having perfume and coloring added”. So, it’s not really soap if there’s no lye involved. The lye is really not an issue though—it is entirely used up/neutralized in the saponification reaction. If you can use soap from the store, you can use homemade soap. That, said, your alternatives would be:
- Making liquid soap (which uses potassium hydroxide instead of sodium hydroxide—this is still a powerful alkali, though, and really not much different… and it would still be used up in the reaction process, so it’s still not an issue when it comes to skin sensitivity)
- Using a melt & pour base—there is still lye involved here, though, it’s just that someone else combined the raw lye with the fats. There are also often other irritating chemicals in melt and pour bases, like sodium lauryl sulfate
- You can also create lather by using a surfactant, like sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), to water. This is what cheap soaps and shampoos are, but if you are worried about irritation, adding SLS is not a good way to avoid it—SLS is known for irritating sensitive skin.
You really shouldn’t be worried about homemade soap being irritating
As long as you measure things properly, all the lye will be used up in the reaction, like how baking soda is used up when you make a cake (so you can’t taste it in the final product). Try buying a bar of homemade soap from a market or health food store and giving it a try—hopefully that will convince you that it’s perfectly fine for your skin
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Hmmm….I know I said I didn’t want to make my own bars, but I’m starting to think about it.
How much does it cost, ballpark, to make a batch?
How long does it take?
How many bars do you get?Off to read your basic soap making post
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Hmmm… time for some math! For the cost, as with all things, your initial investment cost is going to be the highest. I probably spent ~$20 at Value Village to get my initial supplies (pot, spoons, etc.—it’s all mentioned in the basic soaping post). I’d definitely recommend ordering your ingredients online as the prices are far, far better. I shop at http://www.newdirectionsaromatics.ca and the prices there work out to be:
- Olive oil: $7.00/493mL
- Castor oil: $4.10/473mL
- Shea butter: $2.20/100g
- RBD Coconut oil: $22.03/5L
- Avocado oil: $7.25/493mL
- 5 Fold Lemon EO: $10.82/100mL
- Lye: Roughly $10/kg
So, that’s a total of about $60, using the smallest packages of each oil that would give you enough for this 500g recipe (yes, 5L really is the smallest package of RBD Coconut oil they sell). I’m sure you can see that all those ingredients would get you far more than one batch of soap, though. Each 500g batch of soap gives me 12 bars of soap or shampoo.
Making the soap might take an hour, curing takes at least 3 weeks.
Have fun!
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