A TRUE Liquid Laundry Soap Recipe - No Gels!
This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
If you are new to soap making, please visit this page and view my soap making safety essentials video before you start.
I also highly recommend learning to calculate your own soap recipes (and check others’ recipes before you use them). I am a self-taught hobby soap maker - please use my methods and recipes at your own risk.
These videos/articles will get you started with the basics of soap recipe formulation and calculation:
How to Calculate Your Own Soap Recipes (bar soap)
How to Calculate Simple Liquid Soap Recipes using the Zero-Low Superfat Method
Choosing Oils for Soap Making - Oil types and fatty acids, balancing recipes and Soapcalc explained
Calculating Water in Soap Recipes and Clarifying 'Lye Concentration'
Superfat Explained - Understanding 'Superfat' and 'Lye Discounting' in Handmade Soap Making
TRUE Liquid Laundry Soap
A Potassium Hydroxide Laundry Soap Recipe
Finally, a true liquid laundry soap recipe for those of you not-so-fussed on the gel versions! This is a potassium hydroxide liquid soap recipe, not made from bar soap like my previous versons.
Please refer to the YouTube video at the top of this post for the method used to make this recipe.
If you have never made liquid soap before, I highly recommend you watching these videos before you start, to help familiarise yourself with the process and methods I use:
Liquid Soap Making Tutorial – Complete Process and Easy Beginner Recipe
How to Calculate Simple Liquid Soap Recipes using the Zero-Low Superfat Method (with SoapCalc demo)
If you enjoy these free resources, please consider supporting my website and YouTube videos with a donation via https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ellyseveryday
♡ Thank you for your support! ♡
BASIC OVERVIEW OF LIQUID SOAP MAKING PROCESS
Prepare all ingredients using correct safety precautions
Make the soap paste using oils and lye solution - a hot process/stovetop liquid soap method
Check that the soap paste is completely cooked/saponified before diluting
Dilute the soap paste with more water to make a liquid soap
Optional - add essential oils (you can also use fragrance oils, but test any scenting oils first on a small amount of your soap, they can impact the texture greatly! Some FO’s can even cause liquid soap to separate.)
Bottle and store
THIS RECIPE SPECIFICATIONS
Lye type: potassium hydroxide, 90% purity (make sure it’s not too old!)
Total soap oils: 600g (70% coconut oil and 30% rice bran oil)
3 : 1 water to lye ratio (for the soap paste lye solution)
0% superfat
*This recipe was calculated to have zero percent superfat, but as you will see in the video there was some unintended unsaponified fat left over in the soap after saponification was complete. This could be due to: my potassium hydroxide being too old; the fact that I did not use my gram scale (which I normally do, it’s more accurate) to weigh the potassium hydroxide and citric acid; and/or natural variations between the SAP values of my particular oils and the values given in the soap calculator I used (SoapCalc), which are average SAP values. There is less margin for error in liquid soap making. In bar soap recipes you would never know if you had an extra 1% superfat in your bars! Oh well, another learning exercise. Perhaps soon I’ll move onto the lye excess method for making my liquid soap… we’ll see!
Citric acid used at 2% of total soap oils
(lye is adjusted when citric acid is used - see this post for more information)
Essential oils added at approximately 1% of the finished soap weight
Heat and cook the liquid soap paste between 65 - 80°C (150 - 175°F)
RECIPE AMOUNTS (what I used in the video)
For the soap paste:
167g potassium hydroxide (adjusted for citric acid), dissolved into 472g demineralised water
12g citric acid, dissolved in 24g demineralised water (in a separate jar)
420g coconut oil (regular coconut oil - not fractionated - mine was melted due to warm weather)
180g rice bran oil
For dilution and scenting the soap:
1200g demineralised water to dilute the soap paste (about 1 : 1 paste to water ratio - it doesn’t need to be exact)
25g essential oil (I used 5g basil and 10g each of lemon and lemongrass)
SOME MORE RELEVANT LINKS RELATED TO THIS VIDEO & RECIPE:
My favourite laundry bar soap recipe https://youtu.be/GU81ycnFgEU
Laundry liquid/gel recipe made from bar soap https://youtu.be/vsIKA0ly4PE
My blurb about using cooking pots and utensils for soap making (please scroll the page to find it) https://www.ellyseveryday.com/soap-making-faqs
How to calculate liquid soap recipes https://youtu.be/dBPmh4UpoHk
pH testing soap with strips https://youtu.be/3BP7089FqOI
How to safely do the 'zap test' https://youtu.be/SS14Gsl4gKQ
Soap making safety essentials https://youtu.be/EZTsW9UvNmU
These are ad links (as an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases)
Highly recommended book on liquid soap making:
Digital infrared thermometers (very handy tool!):
All the playlists (Elly’s video collections) https://www.youtube.com/@EllysEverydaySoapMaking
Bread making channel https://www.youtube.com/c/EllysEverydayWholegrainSourdough
Email list sign up https://www.ellyseveryday.com/email-list-signup
Amazon storefront: http://www.amazon.com/shop/ellyseverydaysoapmaking (As an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases)
Please ask any questions below if you need to :)
Enjoy your soap making!
Elly 🌸
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