Coconut Oil in Soaps

Coconut Oil has been greatly talked about in recent years, promoting many benefits - digestive health, anti microbial properties and scar healing just to name a few.  If you want to get technical, it is comprised of 49% Lauric, 19% Myristic, 9% Palmitic, 8% Oleic and 2% Linoleic Acids (found at www.lovingsoap.com).  Here at ASC Soapworks, with the majority of our shelves being filled with Vegan friendly soaps, we use coconut oil in nearly all of our recipes.  In addition to possessing a high cleansing power, it helps to produce the thick, stable lather that everyone loves about our soaps.  

Along my soap making journey, I have read numerous times that you are not to use more than 30% coconut oil without risking the chance of creating a bar that dries out the skin.  Susan Cavitch has a 100% liquid coconut oil soap recipe in her book The Soapmaker's Companion, that she calls Seafarer's Soap.  She provides a caution that this soap, although the most effective liquid soap, may be a sensitizer for some people.  We make a similar pure liquid coconut oil soap, which I use regularly for our laundry, and I feel it is a wonderful product.  But I do, along with others, relate the squeaky clean feel that it leaves with a sense of drying out the skin.  This is why I choose to use it for laundry and other cleaning products that I make.  I believe that using a mixture of oils in making hand soap would serve the skin better.

Researching this topic now, I see that there are many people out there that love pure coconut oil soaps, and more contemporary soap makers couple it with a 20% superfat to temper the drying effect.  We actually use just over 30% in our bar soap recipes, coupled with other oils and a fair amount of superfatting.  I am intrigued by this, and will be experimenting with making this pure oil bar of soap.  It will be a wonderful addition to the Pure Olive Oil and Pure Avocado Oil soaps that are available today.  So, come back and look for our Pure Coconut Oil Soaps in the future!

In addition to coconut oil soaps, if you haven't sampled our Apricot Sugar Scrub, made with Coconut Oil, Apricot Seeds and Brown Sugar, you are truly missing out on a wonderful treat for your skin!

To purchase any of our bar soaps, of which coconut oil comprises a full third, you can check out our full line of Signature Series and/or Artisan Series soap bars.  If you are interested in giving our Liquid Coconut Oil Soaps a try, you can purchase them here.  The Apricot Scrub can be found here. 

Yay! for Coconut Oil Soaps!!!