# Failed Again *Sigh*



## Ttennis (Feb 23, 2020)

I made another batch of soap (tried). It didn't come out good at all. I used goat milk, that was frozen, and lye slowly added, also in an ice bath. I think the milk still got too hot. It looked good in the mold, but the next day it was cracked on top. When I tried to cut it, it was a crumbly mess. I obviously missed something somewhere. What makes it crumble apart? And what do I do with it now? I'm getting so discouraged. I'm not good at percentage of this and percentage of that. I try to follow a spelled out recipe, like 20 oz of olive oil, 20 oz. of palm oil, etc..


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## Dawni (Feb 23, 2020)

Hard to say without a complete recipe but maybe you just waited too long to cut?


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## Ttennis (Feb 23, 2020)

Dawni said:


> Hard to say without a complete recipe but maybe you just waited too long to cut?


It was about 24 hours


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## BattleGnome (Feb 23, 2020)

Most of my soaps are cut after 12 hours but if I don’t gel my soaps they can take up to a week. 

if you can, babysit your soap. Check every 2 hours. You’re looking for a firm cheese-texture (think cheddar). If you’re crumbling at 24 hours I’d bet the 8 or 12 hour mark will give you better cuts. 

the cracking on top is most likely overheating due to the sugars in your milk but I can’t be sure without a method or recipe. You don’t have to work in % if you don’t want to, just give us the notes you write for yourself. If anyone needs clarification they’ll ask. 

We often use % as a theoretical. Everyone has different sized molds so it gives us the opportunity to talk about a recipe without everyone buying the same exact equipment. If that’s not how your mind works you can mental math convert it to a 100g recipe and think 20g olive oil, 20g lard, or whatever (but it’s perfectly fine if you don’t think that way, there are billions of people in the world and everyone of those people have their own way of processing)


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## KiwiMoose (Feb 23, 2020)

If you haven't made much soap yet - perhaps give the goat milk a miss for a while and just perfect a fairly plain recipe until you've gotten the hang of it?


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## shunt2011 (Feb 23, 2020)

Are you running your recipe through a lye calculator?  Post your exact recipe as well as the liquid and lye amount and any additives. Then we can help you more.


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## Mobjack Bay (Feb 23, 2020)

In addition to the suggestions above, are you measuring the ingredients by weight, not volume?  I also find that working/thinking in grams makes using percentages a lot easier.  

For example, this recipe for 1000 g of fats:
450 grams of olive oil in 1000 grams of fats total = 450 g/1000 g = 45% olive oil
300 grams of palm in 1000 grams of fats total = 300 g/1000 g = 30% palm oil
200 grams of coconut oil in 1000 grams of fats total = 200 g/1000 g = 20% coconut oil
50 grams of castor oil in 1000 grams of fats total = 50 g/1000 g = 5% castor oil


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## Carly B (Feb 23, 2020)

I would agree with @KiwiMoose --if you are new to soaping, get a few good batches under your belt before you try tricky things like milk soaps.

That being said, I use powdered goatsmilk mixed directly into my oils before I add the lye water, and I have never had a problem.  I use goatsmilk powder in almost all my soaps.


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## cmzaha (Feb 23, 2020)

I am a little late here but was also going to mention to nix the Goat's milk soap, and just make a plain soap. I know many think gm soap is the greatest soap there is but honestly, I have never found it brings anything great to the party, but label appeal and a bar of soap just as nice can be made with simple water and basic oils. For folks that have goats and want to use up the milk, it makes sense.

Soap can crumble like that is cut too soon, too late, or if it is lye heavy. Did you use a soap calculator for your recipe?


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## penelopejane (Feb 23, 2020)

You might also try making much smaller test soaps until you perfect your technique. 500g of oils is a good starting point which will give you four bars.

what was your recipe?


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## penelopejane (Feb 23, 2020)

What was your recipe?
Was it another HP? Did you add enough water this time?

it you run a recipe through SoapCalc you can change it from percentages to ounces or grams really easily and you can check your lye and water amounts are correct. 

Recipes from the internet can be wrong.


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## Kathy boyce (Feb 23, 2020)

This happened to me a couple of times with goats milk.  It turns out I let the temperature of the lye and oil get to cool (85 degrees).  Now I soap at 90 and never have this problem.  Then I put in the freezer over night so it doesn't gel,  remove from mold and cut 24 hours later.


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## TheGecko (Feb 23, 2020)

Ttennis said:


> I made another batch of soap (tried). It didn't come out good at all. I used goat milk, that was frozen, and lye slowly added, also in an ice bath. I think the milk still got too hot. It looked good in the mold, but the next day it was cracked on top. When I tried to cut it, it was a crumbly mess. I obviously missed something somewhere. What makes it crumble apart? And what do I do with it now? I'm getting so discouraged. I'm not good at percentage of this and percentage of that. I try to follow a spelled out recipe, like 20 oz of olive oil, 20 oz. of palm oil, etc..



The cracking often comes from the soap getting too hot.  Crumbling looks like you used a lot of TD in your soap.  If your milk got too hot, it would discolor to shades of brown.

My GMS recipe:
40% Olive Oil
20% Coconut Oil
20% Palm Oil
15% Shea Butter
5% Castor Oil
1 tea Kaolin PPO
1 tea Sodium Lactate PPO

Don't let you lye solution get above 75 degrees, let it sit and cool back down before you add a little more lye...takes a little longer to mix it, but you get a creamy looking solution.

While the lye solution is cooling, I melt my CO and PO in the microwave; start with a minute, then 30 increments after that stirring each time.  I don't want my oils to get too hot.  Once they are melted, I then add my Shea Butter that has been chopped up and melt it with the heat form the CO/PO.  I then add the Castor and Olive Oils, Clay and FO (I don't color my GMS).  I like my soft oils to be around 80 - 90 degrees.  And my lye/GM solution with SL to be around 75 degrees when I mix them.

I start my stirring my batter with a whisk and then use a stick blender.  Because I make small batches (2lbs), it only takes a minute or so to get to a medium trace.  I choose medium trace because I soap at a lower temp and it's easy to confuse a false trace.

Because it's February in the Pacific Northwest, I lightly cover my mold and put it in the garage (when the weather warms up to 65+, my GMS will go into the frig).  Because it's cold, I usually leave my GMS in the garage for a couple of days and then I bring it into the house and let it warm up to room temp before unmolding.  I then cover with a kitchen towel and cut it the next day.

Get yourself a couple of 1lb molds and start with 16% total oils...you'll get four nice size bars.


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## Ttennis (Feb 24, 2020)

I've made several batches of different soaps. The 2 hot process soaps I made didn't quite work. I've had some goat milk soaps work and some not. For this last batch I tripled the recipe to fit in a 4 lb. soap mold. 

All ingredients were measured on scale
23.7 oz. frozen goat milk
10.2 oz. lye
24 oz. CO
24 oz. Palm Oil shortening
24 oz Olive Oil
2 oz. Fragrance oil

I think the goat milk did get too hot, but obviously I missed something else too.
I've always waited 24 hrs. to cut my soap (that's what I was told)


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## Mobjack Bay (Feb 24, 2020)

I ran your recipe through SoapCalc and didn’t see any problems (see attached). With that much palm and coconut oil and the addition of milk (which has some sugar in it) it should be relatively quick to warm up and saponify, but it would also depend on your working temperature and how much you mixed it.  I know that you don’t want it to heat up much because of the goat milk, but a little heat generation will tell you that saponification is starting.  Sometimes when I work at a relatively low temperature (80s to 90s) with a soap batter that is at thin emulsion rather than light or medium trace, my soap only heats up a tiny bit and then it needs extra time in the mold to harden up.  If I try to take it out of the mold too soon it is soft and crumbly, especially at the bottom.  Based on your photos, the soap looks soft and crumbly, so one possibility is that you just need to leave the soap in the mold for another day or two. I’ve also had issues where the emulsion was too weak to make good soap.  Although it didn’t separate in the mold, the soap took longer to harden and looked more grainy than a soap made with batter that was mixed to a heavier emulsion or trace.  Another thing you could try is bringing the batter to a higher emulsion or light trace (if that’s not what you’re doing now).  I make goat milk soaps in individual cavity molds that I put in the frig to keep cool, but for those I mix the batter to a solid light trace before I pour them. The last thing I can think of is that you are experiencing false trace.  That could happen if the soap is too cool for the palm oil to stay liquid. The solution for that is to work at a higher temperature or stick blend a bit more.  It might be easier to work things out using water instead of goat milk because you won’t need to worry about keeping the goat milk cold. You could also experiment with small batches.  If you don’t have a small box, you can use a milk carton or any small box you have around the house as a mold.


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## shunt2011 (Feb 24, 2020)

You're recipe looks fine, however, don't make such large batches.  When they fail that's a lot of waste and expense. And that's way more oils than a 4 lb mold.  I make 58 oz batches and I sell.


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## RDak (Feb 25, 2020)

KiwiMoose said:


> If you haven't made much soap yet - perhaps give the goat milk a miss for a while and just perfect a fairly plain recipe until you've gotten the hang of it?


This......stay away from the milk for now and just use water IMHO.

For you starting out a simple recipe would be 20 percent coconut oil, 40 percent palm oil and 40 percent olive oil.

Or 20 ounces of coconut, 40 ounces of olive oil and 40 ounces of palm oil.  (Whatever amount of coconut you use you would double the amount of each palm oil and olive oil.)

ETA:  If you are dead set on using goat's milk start out with 1/3 goat's milk and 2/3 water.  (For example, if you need a total of 9 ounces of liquid you would use 3 ounces of goat's milk and 6 ounces of water.)


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## RDak (Feb 25, 2020)

Ttennis said:


> I've made several batches of different soaps. The 2 hot process soaps I made didn't quite work. I've had some goat milk soaps work and some not. For this last batch I tripled the recipe to fit in a 4 lb. soap mold.
> 
> All ingredients were measured on scale
> 23.7 oz. frozen goat milk
> ...


On that one I would try 14 ounces of coconut, 29 ounces of palm and 29 ounces of olive oil.  Won't be quite as brittle a soap when HP it.

And maybe lower the goat's milk to 1/3 of the liquid and see how all that turns out.  (Maybe just 3 to 4 ounces of goat's milk and the rest water.)


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## KiwiMoose (Feb 25, 2020)

Maybe try the split method?  ie - add the goat milk to your oils, and make a stringer lye/water solution?


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## Ttennis (Feb 26, 2020)

Thank you all for your suggestions. It really helps me  
Is there anything I can do with this crumbled mess? Can it be rebatched in the crockpot?


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## Ttennis (Feb 26, 2020)

shunt2011 said:


> You're recipe looks fine, however, don't make such large batches.  When they fail that's a lot of waste and expense. And that's way more oils than a 4 lb mold.  I make 58 oz batches and I sell.


That's my goal is to eventually sell, but I have a long ways to go


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## Ttennis (Feb 26, 2020)

Mobjack Bay said:


> I ran your recipe through SoapCalc and didn’t see any problems (see attached). With that much palm and coconut oil and the addition of milk (which has some sugar in it) it should be relatively quick to warm up and saponify, but it would also depend on your working temperature and how much you mixed it.  I know that you don’t want it to heat up much because of the goat milk, but a little heat generation will tell you that saponification is starting.  Sometimes when I work at a relatively low temperature (80s to 90s) with a soap batter that is at thin emulsion rather than light or medium trace, my soap only heats up a tiny bit and then it needs extra time in the mold to harden up.  If I try to take it out of the mold too soon it is soft and crumbly, especially at the bottom.  Based on your photos, the soap looks soft and crumbly, so one possibility is that you just need to leave the soap in the mold for another day or two. I’ve also had issues where the emulsion was too weak to make good soap.  Although it didn’t separate in the mold, the soap took longer to harden and looked more grainy than a soap made with batter that was mixed to a heavier emulsion or trace.  Another thing you could try is bringing the batter to a higher emulsion or light trace (if that’s not what you’re doing now).  I make goat milk soaps in individual cavity molds that I put in the frig to keep cool, but for those I mix the batter to a solid light trace before I pour them. The last thing I can think of is that you are experiencing false trace.  That could happen if the soap is too cool for the palm oil to stay liquid. The solution for that is to work at a higher temperature or stick blend a bit more.  It might be easier to work things out using water instead of goat milk because you won’t need to worry about keeping the goat milk cold. You could also experiment with small batches.  If you don’t have a small box, you can use a milk carton or any small box you have around the house as a mold.


It was really weird. The top had small cracks through it and was super hard, even to get the cutter through it. When it got midway through then it just crumbled. It seemed too dry to me. There was no softness to it :/


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## Nivisoaps (Feb 26, 2020)

Kathy boyce said:


> This happened to me a couple of times with goats milk.  It turns out I let the temperature of the lye and oil get to cool (85 degrees).  Now I soap at 90 and never have this problem.  Then I put in the freezer over night so it doesn't gel,  remove from mold and cut 24 hours later.


 Hi, can we do this ? I mean we r supposed to cover the soap mould and let it sit for 24 hrs to finish the gel stage right? Why should we skip the gel phase?


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## penelopejane (Feb 26, 2020)

Nivisoaps said:


> Hi, can we do this ? I mean we r supposed to cover the soap mould and let it sit for 24 hrs to finish the gel stage right? Why should we skip the gel phase?


I prefer to gel my soaps because it is easiest way to avoid partial gel, colours are deeper, unmolds quicker, cures faster and feels nicer to me.

if you do the 50/50 split method you can use goats milk easily without overheating worries at all. Treat it like any other soap and force gel.


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## Mobjack Bay (Feb 26, 2020)

Ttennis said:


> It was really weird. The top had small cracks through it and was super hard, even to get the cutter through it. When it got midway through then it just crumbled. It seemed too dry to me. There was no softness to it :/


If it had cracks and the top was super hard it does not sound like slow soap was the problem at all .  I had a batch of soap last fall that got hard on top and started to crack really quickly.  I had to put it under a fan to cool it off.  As I recall, it was so hard on top at the 8-10 hour mark that I took it out of the mold and cut it.  In that case, I suspected the FO contributed to overheating because I used a recipe that normally behave fine.  The somewhat grainy texture of your soap is a bit puzzling.  Are you using Titanium dioxide?  I’ve made a few batches that looked a bit grainy at first from TD, but they were fine after they cured.


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## penelopejane (Feb 27, 2020)

Ttennis said:


> I made another batch of soap (tried). It didn't come out good at all. I used goat milk, that was frozen, and lye slowly added, also in an ice bath. I think the milk still got too hot. It looked good in the mold, but the next day it was cracked on top. When I tried to cut it, it was a crumbly mess. I obviously missed something somewhere. What makes it crumble apart? And what do I do with it now? I'm getting so discouraged. I'm not good at percentage of this and percentage of that. I try to follow a spelled out recipe, like 20 oz of olive oil, 20 oz. of palm oil, etc..


I think this might have overheated a little (the cracks on the top indicate that) but I also think this has something to do with emulsion.  Maybe it wasn't mixed enough to get to a good trace or else it dropped out of trace when you soaped so cool. 

I'd try the split method and mix to medium trace.


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## Arimara (Mar 4, 2020)

Ttennis said:


> Thank you all for your suggestions. It really helps me
> Is there anything I can do with this crumbled mess? Can it be rebatched in the crockpot?


If it doesn't zap, just grate it and make confetti soap. Rebatching can be dont as well.


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## Ttennis (Mar 6, 2020)

Arimara said:


> If it doesn't zap, just grate it and make confetti soap. Rebatching can be dont as well.


How would I rewatch it?


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## Arimara (Mar 6, 2020)

Ttennis said:


> How would I rewatch it?


You would grate the soap, put it in a slow cooker to double boiler and add a small amount of water. I forgot how much you should use though. I feel like you can better preserve the pretty colors you used in a confetti soap. Rebatched soap can look way more rustic.


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## Creek Soap (Apr 27, 2020)

Ttennis said:


> I made another batch of soap (tried). It didn't come out good at all. I used goat milk, that was frozen, and lye slowly added, also in an ice bath. I think the milk still got too hot. It looked good in the mold, but the next day it was cracked on top. When I tried to cut it, it was a crumbly mess. I obviously missed something somewhere. What makes it crumble apart? And what do I do with it now? I'm getting so discouraged. I'm not good at percentage of this and percentage of that. I try to follow a spelled out recipe, like 20 oz of olive oil, 20 oz. of palm oil, etc..View attachment 44066
> View attachment 44067


I have been making GMS for about 4 years now.  Recently and I don't know why...(company is monkeying with my lye???), but my traditional GMS is also VERY HARD AND CRUMBLY.  I have been cutting it earlier and earlier, but today I finished making a batch around 10am and by 4pm it was hard, so I decided to take a chance and remove it from the mold to keep the heat level down (yes, it was still hot).  It cut perfectly!  Go figure...I'm still trying to figure this out.  The very first batch I make years ago was not done until 24 hours later.  Just in the past year, I have had this problem of this same particular soap recipe getting hot, cracking in about 1-2 hours, and being too hard to cut.


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