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Wow! $11.10 with veteran's discount. Stopping on my way home. Thanks, All!

Water ratio is one of the several variables that influence things like how fast a mix traces and how it gels (or if it does). Things like temperature and oil recipe are the other variables. Someone else will be a better choice to help with the water question. I personally chose 33% lye...

I somehow missed this question earlier, sorry... 50/50 lye solution warms up naturally when you add the rest of the water before mixing everything. - like shunt said. Not nearly as much as mixing powdered lye, but just the right amount. At the risk of opening another tangent, having the...

It's a misunderstanding of the difference between "safe" and "cured." HP soap is (should be) fully saponified into soap before you pour it into molds. Assuming a good recipe there will be no excess lye and it will pass zap test immediately. It's "safe" to cut and use as soon as it hardens...

BTW, hot process is NOT a shorter curing stage - no matter what you may have read elsewhere.

Don't try using aluminum foil as a cover. Maybe a plate, or a lid from another of your stock pots?

Just saying.... If the objective is to not have to wait for lye to cool down, it seems like the most efficient solution to the objective is to pre-batch your lye.

Do NOT put them in the fridge. It will make the peels brown but will not ripen the insides. I'd go with paper bag with apple or tomato inside. You need more ethylene.

It's the cocoa nibs. ;)

I've never found the cocoa butter to survive the curing as anything more than the subtlest of hints - too faint to identify, but something slightly more than the nothing of a truly unscented bar. I think that ANY dedicated fragrance will overtake it absolutely completely, so feel free to use...

Experience will matter for both methods, of course, but I still feel that CP is slightly easier/faster. It's easy to make a false equivalence between the two methods by not choosing similar finished products. The vast majority of HP soap is going to be a single color with no decoration...

Hot process isn't a faster cure time. Safe to use (that is fully saponified) is not the same thing as fully cured and at its best. Even CP will be saponified and safe within a day or two. Curing to best effect is quite a lot more than simply drying. Dessicants are actually counter...

Not a bad rep, per se. More that it's too good at cleaning to be great for washing the body. Great for something like laundry or dishes (with gloves) but it cleans so well that it will strip the skin of all its natural oils. Using the 20% superfat is an attempt to overcome this by providing...

Sidebar to your main point, but that is a HUGE amount of honey and I don't think you'll ever be successful making light colored soap as CP with it. Maybe hot process would work better? As for cheap oils, you can definitely make good soap limiting yourself to inexpensive oils - as long as...

Facebook video only, sorry. Looks like somebody has been leaving BBC America on during the day...

I mean, I could google the answer from wiki for you for what the acronym actually stands for, but the useful answer is that it's a chelator and anti-oxidant. It helps with soap scum and rancidity.

I think you're going to have trouble getting much lather in a soap with 20% added superfat.

To clean!

I love the apple sage, too. Very unisex.

If it were me, I'd do 50% palm, 30% olive, 20% coconut, but that's a personal preference for keeping olive below 1/3 of a balanced bar and limiting coconut to a fifth. There's nothing wrong with it as written. I'd skip the layers your first time. Pick one and do that. Layers require a much...