When you make liquid soap you use a different type of Lye called Potassium Hydroxide (KOH). I make mine in a crock pot and once it is finished it is a hard paste that you then dilute with water to make a liquid. This is the only way I have been making Liquid soap since it makes it very easy and quick. I recently made a big batch using 90% Olive oil, 10% Castor oil and Glycerin in place of water. I use the Summer Bee Meadow lye calculator because that's what I have always used for my liquid soap. Just make sure the Alkali is set to Potassium Hydroxide not Sodium, otherwise your soap won't turn out!
Because I made such a big batch I thought I would do some experiments with scents. You see essential oils (EO) and fragrance oils (FO) can do all sorts of funny things to liquid soap (bar soap too). Some can turn it into thick jello (Lavender EO) and some can thin it out like water (Orange EO). But I haven't really tried that many scents with this new method and I wanted to see if there is any difference from the traditional liquid soap method.
When I diluted this batch I used approximately 1 part paste to just less than 2 parts water. Soaps high in Olive oil usually require more water to dilute. I will be taking 1 ounce of the diluted paste and adding 1% essential or fragrance oil. I will then document the immediate effects and then wait and see what happens after a week then a month.
