Cheap or steep? We make soap using the most expensive and the cheapest oils & compare the difference

We decided to do a little experiment today! When it comes to soap making oils, there is a world of difference between the most expensive and the cheapest soap making oils.
We decided to attempt to make a loaf of soap using the most expensive, luxury oils and to also make a loaf of soap using the cheapest oils. We wanted to see if using luxury oils and butters created a bar of soap that was noticeably different on the skin, or if the cheapest of bars would also hold its own and stand up to our high requirements.
We discuss our recipe, our oil choices and go through gram per gram costings, and we tell you the overall cost per bar of our cheap & steep bars - there was a HUGE difference in the cost price!
Watch as we first make a predominantly lard based soap and scent it with the cheapest Lavender essential oil we could find. We then move on to creating our steep bar. This includes oils and butters that we would never normally include in a soap - Monoi, Rosehip, Murumuru and Illipe to name a few! We also chose to use the most expensive Lavender essential oil that we could find - High Altitude French Lavender which cost a fortune and I fully expected to be a waste of money given that the therapeutic properties would likely not survive saponification.
We tried to keep the ratio of hard and soft oils similar in both recipes and also tried to keep a similar percentage of conditioning, cleansing oils etc as we wanted our experiment to be a fair one!
During the making process our steep bar of soap decided to misbehave, it traced far too quickly (possibly due to either the Monoi or Rosehip oils) and ended up looking fairly ugly! However, we are judging on performance, not looks!
We will be doing a part two video on these soaps, showing them after cure and doing a blind test on them to see which one we prefer. Once we have filmed and uploaded part two, it will be linked to this video so you can view our results!
Should you wish to recreate either recipe, they are both posted below:
For our Cheap recipe:
Sodium Hydroxide 99g
Water 148g
Lard 325g
Coconut oil 145g
Rapeseed Oil 217g
Castor Oil 36g
Lavender Essential Oil (from the Soapery) 21g
For our Steep recipe:
Sodium Hydroxide 103g
Water 155g
Monoi De Tahiti Infused Oil 145g
Murumuru Butter 72g
Kokum Butter 145g
Illipe Butter 72g
Apricot Kernel Oil 108g
Avocado Oil 72g
Rosehip Oil 72g
Castor Oil 36g
High Altitude French Lavender Essential Oil (from the Mystic Moments) 21g
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[@susanravella6261]

The lard in the US is horribly polluted with hormone-altering chemical preservatives, which apparently are absorbable. Sadly, most soap makers are unaware of this. Using organic lard really increases the price of a bar, but it is worth it! Thanks for this awesome video!❤

[@user-jx8go6hi8i]

Wow, I didn't know that. Thanks for letting us know!

[@Hilary_ClarbySoaps]

Interesting to see how the soaps perform. I use lard and tallow in my soaps and find it makes a wonderful creamy soap, that lasts ages. When I got my recipe assessed I did deliberate between using lard or Shea/cocoa butter for the palm alternatives, but for me the performance of the lard won me over and the price point helps me keep my bars a lower cost. Living in a rural agricultural area it hasn’t impacted sales really and there are plenty of other vegan soap makers in the area…but in all honesty people ask about palm free and very rarely ask about whether the soap is vegan (I think in 4 years I’ve lost about 4 sales), but that’s in a rural agricultural area where the community are very supportive of the farming community here in Pembrokeshire. Looking forward to next video. The price of that lavender 😱😱

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

Yes, the results video will be up next week (Tuesday or Friday) as the cure time is up now and we just have to film a results video! I can't wait to see how the lard soap performs, as I have heard such good things about lard in soap making. I myself am more concerned with being palm free rather than animal product free too. In our area the shows are a bit of a mix, some are agricultural and no one asks about vegan whereas others are held in areas where we do get asked the vegan question much more regularly.

[@rhondalippincott9048]

To take away that “smell”purifying the lard in salt water takes away impurities and the strong smell. Love your videos!!!

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

Ooh, thank you for the advice! I will take that on board for next time!

[@moonshadowessentialssoapsn5287]

Grape Seed Oil and canola Oil are 2 different oils. Grape Seed Oil is a bit expensive and canola oil is very common for cooking in the U.S. personally I only cook with olive oil cause I’m Sicilian American and we use olive oil for everything, lol. This was a great video. I do goat milk Soap’s and Coconut milk soap. I try to do every other soap so it’s even and everyone has a nice selection I also luv making unscented soap.

[@mariefiol4558]

She compared rapeseed. It is similar to canola

[@ritzg98]

Canola oil and rapeseed oil are the same.

[@malkahabuloffplantssitesan156]

thankyou for this video- where can we see part 2? very interesting and relevant to us soapers!

[@boop7313]

Great comparison experiment and I look forward to the lather test!

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

Thank you :-) The lather test will be coming next week! :-)

[@phatwombat4241]

this is a fabulous video, thank you for doing this ❤

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

Thank you, it was a lot of fun to test out and certainly through out some unexpected results!

[@canarieswithkaren1]

Your videos are fab. Thank you. This is an experiment I'd wanted to do. I'm looking forward to seeing the soap test when cured.

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

It was an incredibly fun experiment to conduct! The soaps have finished curing now (the video was filed a fair few weeks back) and we will be filming the results video in the next couple of days and uploading it to YT for either Tuesday or Friday next week :-)

[@shopwildvenus]

Looking at the ingredients on your table - it's just like mine in that I'm having to use so many different suppliers for basic items.

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

I know, they come from all over the place! I love the Soapery as their prices are so good, but there are some less common ingredients that they don't do. Mystic Moments are my go to for unusual oils and for other less common ingredients I tend to go to the Soapmakers store. It's like a very boring treasure hunt!

[@shopwildvenus]

@@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany Hahahah yes, a boring treasure hunt until you find something new.... like hydraulic acid. Still waiting to find that treasure. Gotta love the Soapery for their free shipping too!

[@nancykelly9712]

I have found expensive lavenders don't come out very well in soap so I'm not really surprised but I sure was when I made it, I wasn't too happy about that! I'm looking forward to see performance of each.

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

Oh no! I can imagine how annoying it must have been to make a batch with expensive Lavender for it not to smell very strong. I am glad we learned while we were only making these small, experimental batches!

[@JosieAreSee]

The expensive soap looks like cheddar 😅

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

It really does, doesn't it!

[@Monkeyman3A.]

hello May you help me with what base brand soaps and butters to make natural soap

[@handmadenaturalsoaps-byluc1996]

Once cured .. what was the conclusion?

[@michaelhall7921]

I bought some fluid that was supposed to be methanol for my biodiesel making but this fluid is not methanol. It's brown colour and I must have been mad to buy it but I have an excuse it's the medication I'm on? I put about 40ml in a metal container and set fire to it and it burnt but left what looked like solid brown soap. it lathered a bit when i washed my hands with it. Is it possible to evaluate what it is? I checked the viscosity of it compared to Glycerol and it's not so viscous as my glycerol from methanol / potassium hydroxide esterification. My used cooking oil base is good, much of it appears clear.

[@handmadenaturalsoaps-byluc1996]

How interesting! Must’ve contained some kinda fat ?

[@Penijo]

Bonjour je pensais que le test se ferait sur les même huiles, utiliser les même huile dans les 2 préparations mais une chère et une avec des produits de supermarché moins chère. Car votre résultat ne concerne pas le même produit. Votre vidéo était cependant intéressante. Merci

[@tesorosborincanos597]

The video is great. I think is not fair to use an infused oil in the steep soap unless you use an infused oil in the cheapest one. In regard of the smell, I am pretty sure the gardenia in the coconut oil is the culprit. Why did you use rosehip? Is rosehip oil used as a base oil? If it used as a base oil, I had no idea rosehip oil could be used as a base oil. Love your videos 💕

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

Thank you :-) We used the Monoi infused Coconut as we knew we wanted to use Coconut as a base for both soaps due to the qualities it introduces to the bar, but we wanted to see if the much more expensive infused one gave any other noticeable results. Rosehip can be used as a base oil, but it isn't often used, purely because of the high price and the likelihood that the benefits of Rosehip Oil won't survive saponification anyway. Thank you for your kind words about our videos and the results of this experiment will be published next week (either Tuesday or Friday) :-)

[@tesorosborincanos597]

@@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany Great! Thanks! I will look forward for the final results. 💖

[@-PORK-CHOP-]

It would be best to do a blindfolded test, so you won't be swayed by knowing which one is cheap and which one isn't, have them mixed up on camera so you don't know, I would laugh if the cheap one came out better.

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

You think like me! Can't have anything to possibly sway the results! We have published the results video now (and yes, the blindfold was a definite requirement!) The results video is here if you do want to check it out: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5_KZXyLZ5Kif9k

[@-PORK-CHOP-]

@@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany Cool off I go to watch the results, BTW tuning in from Sunny (and warm) Australia 👍👍🦘🦘😁😁