by Jill McCloud
Lye? Hold up, you make soap and skin care items, why are you talking about a caustic chemical used for cleaning clogged drains?
Well, here's the deal. The only way that you can make TRUE soap is by using lye, also know as sodium hydroxide (NaOH) or potassium hydroxide (KOH). Soap is the product you get when you combine triglycerides (fats and oils) with alkali (lye). When you mix a lye solution, in our case goat milk and lye, with fats and oils an exothermic chemical reaction occurs. This reaction is called saponification. Saponificationconverts fats and oils (the acid) into soap by combining them with lye (the base). This reaction causes friction and self-generated heat (and it gets hot trust me) to break down the molecules where the fats/oils (glycerol and fatty acids) combine with the sodium hydroxide (lye) to form soap and glycerin. This process completely burns out the lye and no lye is left in the soap. All that is left, is a luxurious, completely safe bar of sudsy goodness.
Lye gets a bad rap because it is a very caustic chemical and can be extremely dangerous if not handled properly. However, when handled properly and used correctly, lye is a pretty amazing chemical. It is commonly used in the manufacturing of foods, cosmetics and skin care products. Due to it's caustic nature, lye is used in several cleaning products to break down the really tough grime. Heck, we use a lye solution at the dairy when milking is done. At the end of every shift we use the lye solution and dilute it to clean and sanitize the milking inflations, tubes and pipes. When it's time to clean the bulk tank we use the lye solution too. It is amazing for clearing out any residual milk fat that can remain and coat the inside of the inflations and pipes. And let me tell you, that stuff is no joke, it does burn the skin. One teeny droplet on the skin will definitely wake you up and having you paying attention to what you are doing for the remainder of the shift.
Lye is not something to fear and shy away from. Without lye, we would not have soap or a lot of other common products that we all enjoy in our day to day lives.
Fun Fact:Did you know that even though lye is not organic,it is one of the few non-organic ingredients that the USDA allows within their organic standards.
How do you know how much lye to use when you are making yoursoap?
Most soap makers, including ourselves use calculators specifically designed for soap formulation. The amount of lye used depends greatly on the fats and oils we choose to use for a particular recipe. Each fat and oil has a different saponification value that must be taken in to consideration when determining the amount of lye to use. Some oils will break down quicker with less lye and others will need more. The formulation does not stop there. Soap makers can also decide on how moisturizing, mild, cleansing and lathery (I think that's a word) their soap is by either lowering the amount of lye they use or adding additional oil to their formulation so that some of the fat and oil molecules remain intact and not saponified to give the desired benefits.
Now, wait a minute. You said that you can't make soap without lye. How come I see soap advertised as "lye free".
Ah, yes the good old "lye free" soap advertisem*nt...makes me roll my eyes every time I stumble across it. There's a good chance that one of a few things is being done and it drives me crazy because it leads to a lot of misinformation and confusion for consumers.
Before I go much further, I just want to make it clear, that you can not make soap without lye. The FDA even states: "To be regulated as “soap,” the product must be composed mainly of the “alkali salts of fatty acids,” that is, the material you get when you combine fats or oils with an alkali, such as lye."Plain and simple, if it didn't go through the saponification process then it's not soap.
One thing that is very common and I see it a lot at craft fairs, farmers markets and bazaars is "soap makers" advertising their "lye free" soaps. Well, guess what? These so called "soap makers" use a premade soap base commonly known as "melt and pour". These bases were manufactured elsewhere, you can find them at any craft and hobby store. The bases are then used by the "soap makers" where they cut it up, melt it, then customize it with added oils, additives, fragrances and color then pour it into molds. A lot of these bases are actually good quality and I personally know of a couple of soap makers who make their own bases.However, the soaps made from that premade melt and pour base that they are so proudly touting as "lye free" were indeed made with lye. In order for the melt and pour base to be made into soap it had to go through saponification, again the only way for that to happen is with lye. So, technically speaking, no the person who made the cute little individual bars from melt and pour soap base did not use lye,BUT the manufacturer of the melt and pour soap base did.
Another thing I see a lot to mislead consumers into thinking that their soap is "no lye" but really is a lie is the labeling of ingredients and sometimes the lack of ingredients listed. Here, in the US, there are little to no regulations to the labeling of soap. A soap maker can choose to not list any ingredients they used in making their soaps, they can choose to list everything that was used in making their soaps (we call this "in the pot") or they can list the ingredients that are left over after saponification occurs ("out of the pot").
I have actually come across soap makers that do not list any ingredients for their soaps. This makes me scratch my head not only as a soap maker but also as a consumer. There are so many people that have sensitivities and even severe allergic reactions to things. We have customers that have severe reactions to lavender, avocado oil and coconut oil. The last thing we want to do is put anyone in harms way by not listing the ingredients so that they can avoid the allergen. I run away when I don't see ingredients clearly listed.
I have seen several soaps that are sold in the big retail stores with ingredients listed for "out of the pot". This is a very clever way to disguise the use of lye and to make you think that the soap was made without it. Perfect example of this is good old Ivory Soap. Yep, they use lye and even tallow. They disguise the use of lye by listing the saponified ingredients ("out of the pot"). Once the oils and fats get saponified they no longer remain in their original form. For example, tallow becomes sodium tallowate and coconut oil becomes potassium cocoate.
Here is the ingredient list for Ivory Soap:
Sodium Tallowate and/or Sodium Palmate, Water, Sodium Palm Kernelate and/or Sodium Cocoate, Sodium Chloride, Glycerin, Coconut Acid*, Palm Kernel Acid*, Fragrance, Tallow Acid*, Palm Acid*, Citric Acid*, Sodium Citrate*, Tetrasodium EDTA
Look at all of those saponified oils!
Another way to disguise the use of lye is by listing ingredients as "Saponified oils of:" I kid you not, the following is a list of ingredients from a bar of soap I found at the local grocery store:
Saponified 100% food grade olive, coconut, palm & castor oils, in a goat's milk base, with herbs and essential oils.
Again, this particular brand promotes "all natural" bath and beauty products and they are a pretty well known brand. However, even they shy away from listing lye on their label because listing "sodium hydroxide" or "lye" takes away from what they are promoting. I don't like listing ingredients this way because we "superfat" our soaps, meaning we add extra oils for added benefits to soap such as lather, emollient and mildness. By doing that, I know that not ALL of the oils will be saponified and some will remain in their original state.I don't know why soap makers shy away from listing lye or sodium hydroxide.
So, there you have it. Yes, we LYE!! We are proud of our artisan goat milk soaps and we proudly list all of the luxurious ingredients we use to make every bar...especially the star of the show, good ol' lye...we list it under it's official name Sodium Hydroxide.
