Comparing some good soaps

[brothers]

I've been asked to compare the following soaps:

• The soaps I made at home
  LA Shaving Soap Topanga Fougere
  Strop Shoppe Black Tie tallow
  Synergy Cavendish and Lavender/Cedar

The request suggested the top 3, but while I'm at it, I'm throwing in Synergy, from HowToGrowAMustache. I've used all of the above over the past several days. I received unsolicited samples of #2 and #3 from a respected member of the shaving forums. I was glad to receive his kind offer of some samples, because I hadn't used them before now. I have been using Synergy off and on for almost a month it seems. I've been using my home made soap for about 4 months. I have no negative comments to offer on any of the listed soaps, and would be perfectly happy with 2, 3, and/or 4 if mine wasn't around.

Here are the qualities of these soaps that I really like --- They all make a thick rich and abundant protective brush lather with very hot tap water. (We have hard tap water, and some soaps - not on this list - make crappy lather unless I use distilled water. That's a thing of the past now.) The lather loads to the brush within a maximum of 15 to 20 seconds. Fragrances #2,3, and 4 smell great, and I have no comment on mine. These soaps are outstanding examples of the relatively new offerings from artisan USA-based soapmakers. The person who makes and sells LA Shaving Soaps posted his recipe and that's one of the recipes I use. The other is the recipe posted by Chris Moss.

[ShadowsDad]

Thanks for that Gary! I haven't used any of those commercially available products.

Yes indeed, it's the golden age of blade shaving. I'm quite serious about that and couldn't be happier about it since I'm a recipient of the largess.

Soaps, blades, razors, after shaves, balms, brushes, the finest of the finest are available, and lots of folks to test the products for us to pan the gold from out of the crud.

[tester]

Gary,

Likewise I've embraced using the recipes posted here by Chris and some respected posters from B&B to give the artisan formula a try in my kitchen. For me, its working out marvelously and I'm getting the shaves of a lifetime from the very simple MdC reverse engineered recipe.

Call it some OCD, but I've been doing a lot of reading on the subject and I'd like to share some information regarding the basics and SoapCalc. A great source of information is http://www.soapmakingforum.com/ and I've got lost in there for hours at a time.

1. All great soaps have Stearic Acid, and lots of it. Typically 40% or even higher. Stearic Acid can be derived from either animal or vegetable sources, but once its processed into Stearic Acid, its all the same.

2. Lye - Soaps made with KOH (potassium hydroxide) give a more water soluble shave soap than those made of NaOH (sodium hydroxide). KOH soaps are softer and work better with harder water. Its also easier to load the brush.

3. SoapCalc - There's lots of "noise" on the left side of SoapCalc...stuff about the characteristics of soaps and types of acids. In our case as wet shavers, we are making a specialty soap. We are not concerned about "cleaning", since most people I assume shave with a clean face. The better shave soaps have low hardness, low cleaning, moderate bubbly, high conditioning, and high creamy. High creamy gives the best soaps, but too high a "bubbly" give you a sudsy later that breaks down fast. High creamy, high conditioning, medium bubbly, low hardness, low cleansing is the way to go for a specialty shave soap.

4. By playing around with SoapCalc recipes, the highest "creamy" number I can get is 59 while still following the guidelines above in para 3 to get a great shave soap. There are artisans out there claiming to get a "creamy" number of 79 and their recipes are a closely guarded secret since it is a business. I can only wish to make such a soap at home.

5. For me personally, this is the biggest wake up. Tallow and/or lard is not the "be all and end all" when it comes to shave soap. The numbers on SoapCalc don't lie, and it boils down to preference. I used to think tallow was necessary to make a spectacular soap and now the knock off MdC recipe has blown that conception to smithereens. Breaking a fat, oil, or butter from any animal or vegetable source down to its constituent acids opened up my eyes to how great shave soaps are made.

[JRTASTER]

wow, another interesting thread to follow. Thanks, Gary and Tester!
Re: tallow. Tester is undoubtedly correct, but for me the notion of "perception" is all important.
It's difficult to express, sorry, but of all the shave soaps in my rotation- too many at 7 right now-
all are tallow-based. All of the soaps I've tried and rejected have been non-tallow.
Totally non-scientific and all that, but my face tells me it likes tallow soaps better.
Also, it seems to me that the 3 or 4 "artisan" soap makers getting a lot of the current buzz (Mike's,
Stirling, B&M, Mystic Waters) have generally chosen to stake out their market position on the
strength of their tallow soap products.
And Valobra, which makes a couple of flavors of non-tallow semi-hard soaps, has made a reasonably
big splash with the introduction of several new tallow pucks, though it could have expanded the non-
tallow range.
Of course, I am being a bit selective on which makers to single out, but it still seems to me that a
significant number of wet shavers are voting their wallets for tallow soaps. Maybe more are buying
into the non-tallow soaps, but I don't see (or want to see?) that groundswell.
Let the debate begin...again!

[tester]

Hi JRTASTER,

This is what is useful about a tool like SoapCalc.

I can look at an ingredient like beef tallow, and see that that it has three main constituent acids - oleic, palmitic, and stearic. These same three constituent acids are contained in roughly the same proportions in cocoa butter.

If I'm a mass producer of shave soaps, I'm going to use beef tallow since the cost is so low and it is so abundant. If I'm a shave soap artisan trying to create a niche product, I might chose the costlier cocoa butter to achieve the same purpose.

In my kitchen I'm sticking with the cheapest ingredients available with a proven track record - tallow, lard, coconut oil, palm oil. I've ordered some of the more exotic ingredients (shea, cocoa, avocado, mango) to play around with at a later date.

[JRTASTER]

Tester,
I am beginning to understand your thought and soap-making process... I think.
In any case, hope you'll continue to try to enlighten tallow-freaks like me.
Thanks!

[dosco]

wow, another interesting thread to follow. Thanks, Gary and Tester!
Re: tallow. Tester is undoubtedly correct, but for me the notion of "perception" is all important.
It's difficult to express, sorry, but of all the shave soaps in my rotation- too many at 7 right now-
all are tallow-based.

Apologies for being pedantic ... as explained in the beginnings of the "Rolling My Own" thread stearic is the key ingredient. It is thought that old tallow soaps were made from hydrogenated beef tallow wherein the hydrogenation process converted much of the fatty acids into stearic acid. This is significant to note because it is possible/likely that the tallow being used in many of these formulations is not hydrogenated. (it is possible that some of the artisans out there are purchasing or making their own hydrogenated beef tallow). For example if you go out and purchase tallow from a soapmaking supplier you will find the stuff to be non-hydrogenated and the resulting soap, if used by itself, to be crapola. I tried it, wondering about the 'magic of tallow.'

Only when mixed/rebatched with stearic and coconut will the tallow soap be anything remotely useful.

With that said I am skeptical of the 50-50 stearic and coconut soaps ... I made one of those as well and was not happy with the result. So I am firmly in the tallow camp ... I do need to adjust my recipe, however, and will probably be exchanging some beef tallow for coconut.

Cheers-
Dave

[fallingwickets]

excellent thread.....thanks

clive

p.s. I continue in my belief that the la shaving soap is nothing to write home about.....I must be the only one on the forums

[brothers]

Clive, you know what we see a lot on SMF: You must have got a bad puck! (PM coming your way!)

Regarding tallow, Panna Crema soaps have tallow. I'd sure as shootin' like to get a quick peek at Marco's recipe for that one! Sounds like one of those extra creamy super secret recipes that tester posted about.

[John Parker]

Watching and waiting with the greatest interest!

[tester]

I decided to dig out some of the creamiest soaps I know of from their frozen storage in my basement freezer and their respective boxes. I have 1kg each of Cella, P. 160 Duro, P. 160 Morbido. The ingredients are obviously listed on the boxes.

Each version of P. 160 uses Coconut oil, Stearic, Palm Oil, and tallow. Cella does not use Palm Oil - it only uses Coconut, Tallow, Stearic.

"Playing" around with SoapCalc I can come up with a very very "creamy" soap, but it may be lacking on the bubbly and conditioning. I can tell you from experience the hardness is misleading. This would come out like a croap. I may give it a go in a few days when my palm kernel flakes arrive (same stuff as palm oil, but easier to work with). In the meantime I going to find out what constituent acid I need to add and get the conditioning up, and from what fat source.

Once again, I'm only playing around with SoapCalc, and not making any claims of what this is supposed to be. In this case the "creamy" is 81.



In this case:
hardness 89, cleansing 9, conditioning 8, bubbly 9, creamy 81.

In the case of the knock off MdC I'm raving about:
hardness 89, cleansing 32, conditioning 5, bubbly 32, creamy 57.

From what little I know, I can boost the "bubbly" "and "conditioning" by adding a little castor, and obviously withdrawing from somewhere else.

[tester]

Castor oil added...more bubbly, more conditioning, and even more creamy!

[JRTASTER]

Tester,
Note that in your second version Sodium hydroxide was substituted for Potassium Hydroxide.
In practical terms, how would you expect the soap derived from the NaOH to "perform" compared
to the Potassium lye version. To me it seems the SoapCalc predicts pretty similar overall results.
Or am I totally misinterpreting the charts?
Either way, really captivated by the input from you home/artisan soap makers! This from a guy
who has never made anything "from scratch..." or at least not since HS chem labs!

[tester]

JRTASTER,

Typo on my part, as is the weight at the top. Bottom line is ratios or % will remain the same using KOH or NaOH. The Lye is just to saponify - KOH will yield a softer soap than NaoH, but the amounts of fats/oils/butters used will be the same regardless of the choice of lye, and the characteristics of the soap on the left of SoapCalc will remain the same regardless of the choice of lye.

[Squire]

tester that's an impressive amount of work.

[brothers]

Effort expended is commensurate with passion!

[Squire]

Speaking of which how well are those keeping in the freezer?

[fallingwickets]

We are not concerned about "cleaning", since most people I assume shave with a clean face. The better shave soaps have low hardness, low cleaning, moderate bubbly, high conditioning, and high creamy.

So, all the doodz that relegate bad shave soaps to the shower/bath are all smelly? ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

clive

[tester]

Squire,

The soaps that I store in my freezer are fine. They are in their original boxes, and again sealed within a heavy ziplock storage freezer bag. Cutting a small portion while they are still frozen couldn't be easier.

[John Parker]

To you esteemed makers of soap, a couple questions. About how much do you make at a time? A pound or two? And do you use crockpots or pans? You see where this is leading!!! Thanks!!