Oily soap

by Lisa
(CA)

I have used my usual recipe with a base of olive, coconut and castor oils. I used the CPOP method, which I have used successfully with a few batches now. I took it out of the mold after 24 hours and is hard and seems fine, but it has the color and look of soap in the gel phase and there is a slick oil layer on all outer surfaces. It appears to possibly be excess essential oils (I used rosemary and lemon). I sampled it right out of the mold and lathered really nice and felt mild on my skin. Any thoughts?

Answer:

When soap has an oily film it could be an excess of oils in the recipe, either essential oils or base oils.

Try to keep the essential oils to 5% or less of the base oil amount and keep the superfat amount to about 5% - 10%.

Cathy