How to formulate and how to label soap are two topics that always come up in soap making forums. Ingredient selection is specifically important when formulating because each oil and butter brings a unique set of properties to the soap. When formulating, we evaluate each ingredient carefully against hardness, conditioning, cleansing and impact of bubbles. This assessment is usually done using a soap calculator. Soap calculators are basically systems that have mapped the saponification value and properties of the various oils and butters. These systems allow you to select the oils and butters in your formulation, assign a percentage or amount used and give you back critical information. The most critical value of the information provided is the amount of the alkali required to saponify the oils. Soap is made through a chemical process called saponification. Soap is defined as the alkali salt of fatty acids. For cold process soap the alkali used is NaOH (Sodium Hydroxide), generally known as lye. KOH (Potassium Hydroxide), also known as lye is the alkali used to make liquid soap. Lye is a critical ingredient that turns the oils into salts that make the soaps. When the soap is formulated and made correctly there is no lye left in the soap. For properly formulated soaps there is a small amount of oils left unsaponified. This extra amount of oil is called a superfat. The superfat is a technique we use the soap from drying the skin.
Fatty acid profile and soap qualities
Other important information that can be extracted from the soap calculator are the fatty acid profile and soap qualities. The fatty acid profiles such as palmitic acid, oleic acid or stearic acid, among others give an indication of the properties of the soap. Some calculators use the fatty acid profiles and provide the specific soap properties in the form of hardness, cleansing, conditioning and bubbly values.
Formulating and testing ingredients is not only fun but a way to determine what is the best possible soap we can create with ingredients that meet our values. After formulation, usually we move to the design phase of the soap making process. The design phase is also as fulfilling as the formulating phase. To design a handmade soap we look into fragrances, essential oils and colorants that pair wonderfully and create a nice visual appearance. In a lot of cases each bar of soap is a perfect piece of art. Design ideas come from so many places, including nature and personal interests.
Labeling our soaps
You may have seen many different ways in which soap makers label their soaps. The minimum set of requirements is that the package must identify the product as soap, provide the net weight and business location. Most soap makers include the full list of ingredients in various forms. The list of ingredients can be of those that go into the making or those that result after saponification. It is the soap maker decision. For now, we have chosen to label all our soaps using the “what goes in” method. This allows all our customers to know all the rich and skin loving ingredients we have chosen for our soaps.
For the second method of labeling, tests can be done to determine the quantity of each ingredient. This helps determine the order of ingredients to be included in the label. The soap ingredients after saponification are the salts for each of the oils and butters, glycerin and any unsaponified oils or butters.
I hope you found this short article useful and get more insight on how we formulate and label our handcrafted soaps.
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