Beginners guide to cold process soap making, Episode 3: Different soap making oils & their qualities

Welcome to our "Soap making for Beginners" guide! Over the next 7 days, we will be uploading a mini series of videos focusing on soap making for absolute beginners. We will cover things such as equipment, lye safety, soap making oils, terminology and how to make your very first soap.

We have put together this guide as we have had a lot of questions from people asking how to get into soap making and how they can learn to make soap. We are not the first people to put together a guide like this, but we know that when you are new to soap making it helps to have as many different resources to learn from as possible!

We have tried to cover everything that we can think of in our guide and if you watch each of our daily episodes they will hopefully give you a basic understanding of how to begin making soap safely. We will be covering a different soap making topic each days for the next seven days.

In today's episode we will be talking you through a few of the more common oils that are used in soap making. These include Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Castor Oil, Sweet Almond Oil, Palm Oil, Lard, Cocoa Butter and Shea Butter. We will be running through the different qualities that each different oil brings to the soap mix and we will also be giving you suggestions for what each oil can be substituted for if you do not wish to use a certain oil for any reason.

We will also be introducing you to the beginners recipe that we have created for the soap that we will be making on Day 5. If you wish to follow our recipe and join in with the soap making then today's video will introduce you to the recipe we will be using.

If you have any comments or questions along the way, please do let us know so we can do our best to help you learn how to make soap!

If you enjoy our videos and soap making tutorials please do give us a like and subscribe :-)

In addition to this special, one off mini series, we also upload new soap making videos every Friday and new behind the scenes/business tips videos every Tuesday.

You can also follow us and find our soaps here:

If you do head over to our website, we offer our Youtube friends 20% off purchases if you enter code "youtube20" at checkout :-)

[nancyonyeka]

This video was so useful! I make soap and feel like I’m always learning

[KJJHN]

Nice slow trace. ❤ id reconmend using 16oz over 30.

[juniorusa]

Thank you for taking the time to make these videos. As a new soapmaker I really appreciate it. 🙂

[ChampagneProperty]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience, I found this VERY helpful and I love the way you explain everything in such a simple way xx

[deborahfrancis]

Great info as usual.I a really enjoying these videos. Thank you.

[mycrazykids]

Thank you from New Zealand these videos are wonderful. My granddaughter is 12 and is just starting to get into cold process soap.

[sangitarehela]

Thank you for sharing this video. It’s really helpful

[penelope]

Hi Ann 👋 I'm using Mendrulandia for my soap calculate ... My recipe has 8 % superfat, but I didn't know that the Shea butter doesn't saponified, so ...thank you so much for your information 🤍 I love to watch you 😊

[marydoherty]

great video, thank you for sharing. I have a question that maybe someone can answer? how do you change the levels of iodine if reading a percentage of 78%? thank you. xxx

[marinaOfTheSeas]

Thank you for including the substitutes for these oils/butters! It's hard to know all of this info (especially as a beginner) and its nice to see it all in one video :)

[evagordon]

Hi, sorry I am late to comment :) I love your videos btw! I have a question about olive oil. As we have to keep MSDS in PIF in the UK, does it mean I can't buy olive oil from a local supermarket or Amazon as they don't supply MSDS? I would greatly appreciate your advice :) thank you x

[shubhashreejuly]

Really appreciate for taking time to post the vidoes and making series of soap making .very helpful for beginners .
One doubt what's the difference between refined and unrefined butters except cost.. how the difference matters in soap making ..

[relaxedandlovingit]

Lovely vid
Should these soaps be solely used for hand washing?
Is there a reason why it cannot be used for the body or intimate areas?

[wowdanalise]

What about items like silk which can be clipped into soap?
Edit: really appreciating this video series

[relaxedandlovingit]

Hi, so I went onto a few UK websites to buy the ingredients needed to make soap with you.
Around 5:30 you mention to get the 76°F coconut oil 🥥
However, none of the websites I visited mentioned burning point.
In that instance, do I just buy any coconut oil which doesn't state fractionated or is there a specific store I should be buying the oil from?

[abigailanderson]

Can I sub the water for goat milk for your recipe?

[LaurelsCurls]

Wonderful and informative. Can you tell me your experience and thoughts on Canola Oil? I see that it is so inexpensive compared to Olive Oil and I've seen that it can be used as a great substitute for Olive Oil. What do you think?

[lms]

can you use Regular Almond Oil instead of Sweet Almond Oil?

[katarzynaderkacz]

I appreciate all your effort to make this informative videos 💚🙏💜
I have a technical question about coconut oil. Is 💡SOLID💡Coconut Oil ok for soaps? Is it the same as refined?

[sandralopez]

I recommend you research fortified shampoo for fast hair growth.