# Liquid soap not gelling/seizing



## DarlaJean (Nov 16, 2014)

Hey there,
I'm a newbie to the forum but I'm a 25 year veteran CP soapmaker. Today I  attempting to make my first liquid soap. Something seems very wrong. I misread the part in the directions where you are supposed to stir every 25 min for 3 hours. Instead I checked twice in the first hour for separation with a quick stir and then basically left it for 2 more peaking every half hour but no stiring. In the fist 5 minutes the soap seemed to "seize" up and didn't really change much after the 3 hours - no gelling or transparency. It passed a zap test but a diluted test was completely milky. I continued to cook it in the double broiler for an additional 1.75 hours with a good 3 min mix every half hour but nothing changed. It's currently in my crock pot. Can it be saved. I even considered dumping it into a mold to see it it hardens enough or cures for a rebatch? Potassium soaps are a new animal for me - I am lost!
Recipe used:
Catherine Failor Paste method "Hawaiin Islands Shampoo"
35oz coconut, 11oz olive, 2oz cocoa butter, 13oz Potassium Hydroxide, 39oz soft filtered water (what I use for all my soaps).

I have a high quality accurate gram scale and I triple checked my measurements. Temps were 160 oils, 140 lye, and it traced to a nice thick pudding consistency after about 15 min with a stick blend. I did check for milkyness and it's very milky with a 2oz water to 1 oz soap test.

Should I leave it in the crock and stir every 25 min or is it possible too much water has been lost? Can I "save" it at all?


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## Susie (Nov 16, 2014)

Turn the crock pot off.  If it is not zapping, it is done.  You can start dilution.  You also don't need to neutralize if it is not zapping.  Not every soap goes through every stage.  Or they sometimes go so fast you blink and miss it.  Either way, congratulations on the liquid soap, and welcome to the forum!

We have much easier ways to make liquid soap than Catherine Failor's methods.  We have good lye calculators now that account for our KOH impurities and don't have to make it lye heavy then neutralize.  By the way, that recipe was cloudy for me also when I tried it.  It does sequester out a lot, though.  

If you will look through the threads on this forum, you will see several that have to do with Soaping 101's liquid glycerin soap.  That thread is a gold mine of information.  Lots of us put in our recipes and methods for making liquid soap.

This is the one:

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=46114


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## DarlaJean (Nov 16, 2014)

Thank You Susie! I had already turned off and started dilution because I kept thinking that in hot process some of mine never get translucent or gel but they still turn out fabulous. Coincidentally those batches that don't get that see through look are the ones which have a high amount of butters, waxes, or coconut. I'm still waiting for all the bits to dissolve after dilution and I'm so glad you responded because I was getting a little freaked out that I might have really bombed this one lol. I've been CP and HP making soap so long I thought, "Eh, I got this" hahahha. 
I'm going to check out that thread. I looked and looked earlier and couldn't find the right info. After looking online for my exact issue I noticed several WAY easier methods than this time consuming back breaker recipe I used - geeesh. 

Thanks again!


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## Susie (Nov 16, 2014)

Yep, I know.  I even make CP liquid soap.  Seriously easier!


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## DarlaJean (Nov 16, 2014)

Susie said:


> Yep, I know.  I even make CP liquid soap.  Seriously easier!




Ya, I saw a post about that I have to go back to. I prefer cp to hp in general for sodium hydroxide bars. I love hp bars for purposes of fancy molds (gave up on fancy molds with cp long ago) but the oils always smell too broke down, like they got too hot  even if they are fresh and new. So if there is a way to soap liquid soap with cooler temps I'm all over it. Anytime a recipe has me nearly boiling something with oil in it I have to stop and ask myself how good can it be for the skin if it's taken to near smoke point. :/ um hello carcinogens, meet my super porous epidermis


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## shaan (Nov 17, 2014)

Susie said:


> Yep, I know.  I even make CP liquid soap.  Seriously easier!



What is CP liquid soap?


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## Susie (Nov 17, 2014)

Cold process liquid soap.  It is not using external heat sources, and is often safe to use much faster. No standing there cooking the stuff for hours.  

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=49852


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## FGOriold (Nov 17, 2014)

First if you used a recipe straight form the Failor book, it will have a lye excess that will need to be neutralized after dilution so I am not sure how you would get a clean "zap" test unless your measurements were not accurate.  Second, what type of water are you using to test for clarity?  Tap water will most likely not yield true results due to the minerals, metals and such in the water.  Best to use distilled water for dilution


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## Susie (Nov 17, 2014)

Yeah, I noticed that also.  I ran that through a few lye calculators, and truthfully, it looks like about twice the KOH that should have been used for 0% superfat.  But zap free is zap free.  It is the only way I know of that gives a clear safe/not safe answer.  So, either the scale is wrong, the zap test method is wrong, there is a typo in her post, or something.  But DarlaJean sounds well and truly experienced(25 years!) and level headed, so I am hoping she knows enough to try it herself before giving any away.  And I am interested in the results she gets from that.


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## FGOriold (Nov 17, 2014)

To me - liquid soap is a different beast than cold process soap and things you can do with cold process soap (like water used, superfat amounts, oils used) are not always transferable to a liquid soap and still get the results you want. From my experience, liquid soap has had the biggest learning curve of all soaping methods and the largest room for error due to the aqueous nature and clarity issues.


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## Susie (Nov 17, 2014)

That is very true.  Experience in one does not directly translate into expertise in the other.  However, she just struck me as really level headed and certainly gave us all the details we needed to know on the front end.  Which speaks volumes.  

It will be interesting to see what happens to that recipe, though.  I am so guilty of curiosity!


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## DarlaJean (Nov 17, 2014)

Thanks all, after sitting out all night it cleared up quite a bit. It's WAY less milky, more of an amber translucence. My scale is accurate but this is the first time in YEARS (like 15) that I have followed a recipe that wasn't my own. I wanted to follow a recipe because I had never made liquid soap before so I thought that was a good place to start but I should have converted to grams as weighing in ounces, to me, leaves too much room for error. My scale measures to the nearest gram but only to the nearest 1/10th of an oz so if the measurements were off I bet that's were it happened. I'm quite certain the problem started with not reading the directions properly and leaving it to cook in a double broiler without stirring for 2 hours and perhaps that was further complicated by the slight inaccuracies of measurements. Nope, this one aint winning any prizes at the fair but I used some this morning and it feels pretty nice. Great lather, of course I added castor and a little glycerin as I was aiming for a shampoo and the 0% superfat thing makes my skin cry "no, no, don't put that on me!" lol I'll wait a couple weeks and try it as a shampoo, give some to my human guinea pigs, and use the rest for dish soap if it doesn't live up to a shampoo standard. I am wishing I had some phenolphthalein just to be sure. I trust all of my cp and hp bar soaps ph (my skin is a very good judge) and zap test abilities but this is new ground. It would be nice to be certain beyond a tongue test. I have to place an order for NaOH through the chem company so I guess I can pick up some phen.
Oh, and I used regular filtered tap water. I know many soapers in my area and we all use our city tap water for soaping. It very soft. I just used brita filtered for the whole batch and testing thinking it would have further impurities removed. I dislike buying water, lol, I'll give up making anything that requires distilled. That's just a crazy amount of extra weight and money. We have a reverse osmosis filter at the sink. When it's up and running again I'll give that a try.


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## Susie (Nov 17, 2014)

Yeah, you are not the first person to take that route when trying liquid soap for the first time(I did, also.)  And you will certainly not be the last.  We all start somewhere doing something new.  I would hold off on using that for shampoo as I don't think it is going to make a good shampoo.  Wait and see a couple of weeks at least.  If you have a reliable pH meter, now is when I would be using it.  I can't help you on the pheno.  I never use the stuff.  But, I do know it is for use on paste, not diluted soap. 

On the CP liquid soap tutorial, I give a brief run through of the lye calculator I use for liquid soap.  Most of learning that one is learning that you DON'T have to use all those ingredients or put numbers in all those spaces.  Run your recipe through that and see what you get when you get time.  It is good practice.


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## FGOriold (Nov 17, 2014)

I would urge you to buy a bit of distilled water and test a small amount of your paste diluted in your tap water and the same amount diluted with distilled water to see if there is a difference in clarity.  Home filtered tap water is not the same as distilled water and if you are ever going to shoot for consistency in liquid soap, tap water is not going to do it for you.


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## DarlaJean (Nov 17, 2014)

FGOriold said:


> I would urge you to buy a bit of distilled water and test a small amount of your paste diluted in your tap water and the same amount diluted with distilled water to see if there is a difference in clarity.  Home filtered tap water is not the same as distilled water and if you are ever going to shoot for consistency in liquid soap, tap water is not going to do it for you.



Yep, distilled is different from tap, I'm aware of that. The recipe did say, "distilled or soft water". Soft is what I had so soft is what I used. I've already diluted the paste so it wouldn't matter now and it's cleared up considerable since last night and is even much lighter than 5 hours ago. Its not clear but it's very translucent. Clarity is not unimportant to me. Besides following all the rules takes the fun out it for me.  I'm a rule breaker and it's paid off.


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## FGOriold (Nov 17, 2014)

Yep - to each his own, just trying to offer insight into why you may be seeing what you are seeing in regards to clarity issues.


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