Today I want to talk about water discounting. As I continue to learn and do research, I believe that it is important to understand the chemistry of soapmaking so that I can become more knowledgeable of the craft and improve on my soapmaking abilities to become a better soap maker.
You need water to dissolve sodium hydroxide/lye and it is that lye solution that is mixed with your oils and butters (base oils) that starts a chemical reaction, and turns that mixture into soap, and then it will cure for 4 to 6 weeks. During the curing process, water will evaporate from the soap to harden the bars.
The amount of water you use in your formulation will determine how fast the soap will cure. And that is where water discounting comes into play.
With the soap calculator that I use, I tend to use the “Water as percentage of oils” with its default of 38%. Which means that I am using 38% water of my total base oils in grams. My research says that this is too much water, and if you use a lot of water in your recipe your curing time will be longer. Meaning that it will take longer for the water to evaporate from the soap bars (I do wait the 4 to 6 weeks for my soap bars to cure).
The bars above are at 38%. For the next batch of soap, I will use 37% to experiment and then gradually reduce the amount of water with each batch to see if I have a preference. But I won’t go too low because if you go lower than 50% water in your recipe then the lye/sodium hydroxide cannot dissolve properly, and you would have a lye heavy soap.
There are some pros and cons for discounting water:
Pros:
In addition to reducing the curing time, water discounting can prevent glycerin rivers in your soap. And it can also prevent soda ash from forming on top of the soap. Soda ash is a white powdery film that is on the surface of the soap. I do have soda ash on my soap bars at 38%. Because it is harmless, I just wash it off.
Cons:
Soap will thicken much quicker, which would not be good if you wanted to do designs in your soap, such as swirls. The soap can also overheat and affect gel phase.
Do you water discount your cold process soap recipes?
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