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Soap ingredients?

bald as

bald as

ARKO! dealer & walking ECG
Which ingredients, fats and oils, or waxes are important to you in a soap?
How or why do you believe they are important to you?
If there is no ingredients list would you actually know the oil/fat/wax prominent in the soap. By prominent, the main ingredient?
Without labels or list of ingredients how would you tell the differences between 10 presented soap samples all in the same size containers.
What is it that convinces you, you can identify vegan and no vegan soaps based on the above?
Chemists and soap makers have a slight advantage in answering the above. :)
 
I do have a chemistry background, but it gives me no advantage whatsoever in answering those questions. Experience tells me that (generally speaking) soaps with shea butter and/or lanolin tend to work well for me, but that doesn't mean other soaps don't. The only thing I might go out on a limb to say is that if it's easy to specifically identify (by touch or sniff) a specific ingredient in a base, chances are there's too much of it.
 
Tallow. Never had a bad shave from a tallow based soap. Vegan soaps from the top artisans can compete with tallow soaps. BUT they do require a complex list of fats and oils to achieve similar results. Typically this adds to the cost.

I try and avoid soaps with artificial ingredients and preservatives.

If you asked me 10 years ago to do a tallow and Vegan blind test I would be able to tell you easily. Today that would be a difficult task.
 
I really dunno what goes into soaps (don’t really read ingredients) I just know what I like and if is tallow or not

Agree with Rhodes tho very hard to tell the difference (for me) between excellent vegan and tallow soaps
 
StratMan said:
Agree with Rhodes tho very hard to tell the difference (for me) between excellent vegan and tallow soaps
Click to expand...
+1

bald as said:
But my question is/was .... How do you know?
Click to expand...
By asking artisans soap makers some questions via email, IF, you have any concern about their ingredients and the quality of their product.
 
From my perspective I have been blown away with how well some vegan soaps perform compared with their meatier competitors.

Having the luxury to sample some high quality soaps thanks to @rhodes96, I would say the ones advertised as premium usually are but considering most share common ingredients I couldn't really say one was extreme over another.

Does fancy bison/duck tallow or goat/donkey milk make a soap superior probably no as I can achieve a decent lather from MWF or Cella but for me having the correct water-to-soap ratio and loading times factor more into how good a soap performs than the ingredients.

Saying that, the slickness and post shave feel is better when using a premium soap compared with lesser quality offerings but if you where to look at your common soaps today you'll notice most share the same ingredients with slight variations to the ratios used being the real main difference.

For example a personal favourite of mine, APR, with V1 IMHO being a great soap base and then V2 stepped things up with added fats but I happily enjoy both equally despite the variations. If anything V2 seemed to runout quicker but YMMV...
 
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