Unintentional 'marbling' in beer soap, fail?

CamillaHB · Jun 23, 2012

Dear All
I have previously made a 25% CO, 75% lard soap which took a fair amount of time to trace.
This time I wanted to do the same, but I used a Guiness-type beer instead of water (oil temp. 40 degrees Celcius, lye/beer temp. 50 degrees Celcius - combined probably around 42 degrees which was the temperature I soaped at last time).
The beer certainly added to the speed at which it traced! It was smooth to begin with but soon went a bit lumpy. I wanted to stir more, but thought I'd better get it in the mold right away.
I put it in 4 muffin molds and the rest in a cardboard box. No insulation.

Soon the soap in the cardboard bos began to show small brown droplets on the surface. I tested, and now I know what zap feels like. Those seemed to reabsorb again, but when I took the soap out of the mold, it still had brown liquid coming out of it. This, however, seemed to have been reabsorbed the next day (except the amount the cardboard had absorbed - but I suppose that that lost lye will just give a bit more SF).

The soap doesn't zap, but it is a bit crumbly at the edges, and it has a partial gel with a very strange marble pattern in the center.

What happened? Last time I made beer soap I put it in the oven where it overheated - but this made it sweat oil, not lye. Besides, I only got a partial gel, so it can hardly have been overheated. Did I soap at too high a temperature? And what is the weird marbling pattern?

Do I have to rebatch, or is it OK? As I said, it doesn't zap now.

P.S. The paper cup seems to act as some sort of lithmus-paper. It went back to being red the day after the photo was taken.

sabon · Jun 23, 2012

I have never done a beer soap, so wouldn't know much about this. But as far as I am concerned, of the many batches of soap I made ( small batches), in two batches I forgot to add one oil and both traced quickly and oozed out the liquid lye. I corrected it each time by adding the left out oil and cooking in a crock pot.
The only other soap that appeared to be oozing was my salt bar due to excessive humidity and rains.
Please check if you have left out any oils.

juliet · Jun 23, 2012

I had this happen to me with a couple of batches. Not the marbling affect but the lye oozing. I hadn't left out any oils and as far as I could see I'd done everything right. The weirdest one was a batch of beeswax soap. I expected it to set really hard really quickly so I checked on it a lot and saw lots of liquid oozing out, looked exactly like your photo, and yes, it zapped, and some! I left it for a day and all the liquid reabsorbed. When I thought about it carefully the best reason I could think of was that I'd soaped too cold. My recipe had a fair amount of olive oil in and I hadn't heated that up. The soap seemed to stay very soft for a long time and the little bit that I'd put into a separate container was still soft and gooey a week later. The good news is that it did eventually all reabsorb and the soap does not zap now.

judymoody · Jun 23, 2012

I think that you might have experienced false trace or possibly overheating which led to some separation, hence the oozing liquid and the crumbliness.

Your recipe consisted entirely of saturated fats. If you soaped at around 40 degrees C, that might not have been quite hot enough. False trace can happen under those circumstances. To me, with false trace the batter looks very thick, but more grainy than smooth. When this happens, I find that if I turn off the motor of my stick blender and use it to hand stir for a bit, the batter reverts to a smooth consistency and thins out. Then I SB as usual and get to a true trace.

Beer can cause soap to overheat, so that is the second possibility, and would produce the same result, some separation. However, looking at your cut soap, it appears like you may have achieved a partial gel which suggests that it didn't overheat.

As for the streaking (this supports the theory that you might have soaped too cool and have gotten false trace), it looks like stearic streaks to me. I don't soap with lard but I do use palm and both are high in stearic acid (lard is even a bit higher). Stearic can precipitate out of your soaping oils if they are not hot enough. When I use palm and cocoa butter, I generally soap a bit hotter, say 45-50 degrees.

Stearic streaks by themselves are primarily an aesthetic problem. If it doesn't zap, you can probably use it. If it were me, I'd probably try to rebatch it in the oven or crockpot. If you haven't done this before, do a search for "rebatch" and lots of posts will come up.

Finally, I recommend freezer paper over wax paper for lining. As you have discovered, the wax paper can absorb a lot of liquid/oil. Freezer paper is plastic coated on one side and makes a nice liner.

Hope your eyes aren't glazing over by this point.

Good luck with your next batch! Beer can be tricky to use.