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There will be no lactic acid in your soap. It will all be converted to sodium lactate no matter the stage at which you add it. In the cold process, most of the alkali is uncombined at the time the batter goes into the mold. But even if that was not the case, lactic acid would happily just react...

Under what circumstances? I've never seen any sign of that.

Don't bother replacing your family photos and mantle top decorations with soap. In a cold winter, ALL the air is very dry in a heated house or room, so putting soap on the mantle would represent diminishing returns. It might even be counterproductive because optimal curing conditions would be a...

Curious, what are the legal limitations? It's unfortunate seeing as you have an interesting distiller in your state. http://www.culinarysolvent.com/ I haven't done the math, but I imagine it might not be feasible at 75% to use enough alcohol and not end up with too much water. Increasing...

Just as an aside, the neutralization steps in Failor aren't really needed, though they might contribute some mildness. One of the few things in soaping that she didn't know is that KOH is generally only in the neighborhood of 90 percent pure. If you use her recipes you will be doing exactly...

I would avoid adding extra glycerin as your soap might tend to sweat. The amount of alcohol is somewhat flexible. Depending on how you scale the recipe and what your procedures are, you might find it difficult to dissolve all the soap with the amount of alcohol stated in a recipe. If you have...

Haha, so true. We have various police forces. If you post a recipe and hear sirens in the distance, run!

When salts are dissolved in water, they dissociate into positive and negative ions to a greater or lesser extent (ranging from almost not at all to pretty much completely). The ones that dissociate to a greater extent are called strong electrolytes (so named because they enable the solution...

Yeah I'd go with the simple moisture hypothesis. You need the right balance of soap and water for maximum lather, so that could explain your observations of both dry and soggy bars.

Thanks, I didn't know he wrote about this!

Very cool. Plus, Daenerys is the ****e.

Thanks, I meant to mention that 18/8 and 18/10 is the same general type of steel as the 300 series. People use less optimal steels that those and get away with it. I don't know how to compare the different variations, but as long as you're in this category of "austenitic" chrome/nickel steels, I...

In consumer items you won't find anything with more resistance to hydroxide than 300-series steel. It's not impervious, but should be okay under normal conditions. Whether it's attacked is a function of lye concentration and temperature. If I was mixing up 50% solutions, I'd shy away from steel.

Here's the finished product without dye. When I offhandedly called it "crystal light" for the thread title, I was referring to clarity and color. Not that I've gotten very far yet, but I'm curious about how different formulations affect the color of the soap, and I wonder how close to water...

It's based on the possibility that myristate is less harsh than laurate, since there seems to be a significant correlation between harshness and shorter chain length. I occasionally make M&P soap from scratch, and some of those formulations specify myristic for what I suspect is that reason. I...

No, you weren't right. Soap doesn't melt into a liquid phase. It melts into a liquid crystal phase that's known in the industry as "neat" soap. In HP, the soap is always melted. When you were trying to melt it in your experiment, it was already melted the whole time. The transition to neat...

I didn't take it badly. I can't recommend a substitution that I haven't tested. I heard about the PEG-150 Distearate from Alaiyna B.'s blog. It performs so well and easily that I haven't tried anything else, but you can experiment. Other additives she talks about are HPMC (Hydroxypropyl...

While soap is still warm, combine the fragrance with an equal amount of Polysorbate-80 and mix very well. Add the fragrance solution to the soap and mix very well. Most likely it will not be clear right away, but I haven't yet used an FO that didn't end up crystal clear. It might take a short...

Okay here is the procedural part. To make the soap paste, gently heat the saponifiables until almost melted, then remove from the heat or turn the heat off. You don't need a high temperature -- just enough to get everything clear and melted. Combine the KOH with the water (it's 50/50 to make...

Not at all. It's a liquid soap not so different from what other people make. There are just a few twists to it. No other surfactants apart from Polysorbate-80, which is used by many as an emulsifier to help incorporate fragrance.