My Experimental Honey & Beeswax Soap

This is my experimental honey & beeswax soap that I made the other night, just as August 11 was turning into August 12. I made a small, 1.2 lb sample-batch just in case any chaos ensued, as I didn't want a bigger batch to be ruined, if you know what I mean. Although I'm quite used to soaping with honey, beeswax, on the other hand, is new territory for me.

I used beeswax as 3% of my formula along with the oils/fats (the pellet form from Peak's- the kind that still smells like the hive- heavenly!). And I used 5% honey ppo, which was just a little over 1 tbsp. for my batch size.

For my formula, I just used my favorite Bastile recipe with 50% OO, using a 33% lye concentration and superfatted @ 6%.

And I scented it with .3oz ppo of Wild Mountain Honey from Peaks (2% usage rate).

Oh, and I laid bubble-wrap on the surface of my batter.

After cutting and beveling today, I melted down some of WSP's Honey M&P in a double boiler and used one of those 'pinch-size' measuring spoons to fill the holes up (spraying the surface of the soap with alcohol first). Some of the M&P dripped down the side, and silly me almost wiped it off, but thankfully smart me decided to leave it because it looked really cool:




Well, as you can see, all went surprisingly very well, and all without any drama whatsoever (I could hardly believe it)! I must confess that I went into it with a fair bit of trepidation because of all the beeswax 'horror-story' threads that I spent a few days reading beforehand, but all the horror stories (and the success stories, too) helped me to perfect my plan of attack.

After beveling the soap today, I washed my hands while I still had soap residue on them, and it bubbled up real nice. I had been concerned that the amount of beeswax that I added would kill my lather, but with the honey in there, as well as my 28% of bubbly oils, it had no problem lathering just from that little bit if residue. And my hands felt so nice an hydrated after that I didn't even need to put lotion on! Cool bees! Er, I mean cool beans! lol

Needless to say, this went so well that I'm going to make another batch of it tonight (because a mere 4 bars just isn't enough, now that I know it's good!).

If anyone wants to know my plan of attack, I'll be happy to share, but right now, I have to go eat something! I'm famished!


IrishLass

Those turned out awesome! Love them. They almost look edible.

I can't see the photo for some reason.

EDIT: I can see it now - looks great!

:-( I can't see the picture

Edit: I can now.

spenny92 said:

I can't see the photo for some reason.

Click to expand...

Hmmm... that is very curious. The reason why I say that is because yesterday, when I clicked onto your thread entitled, 'My soaps so far', I couldn't see any of your pictures either. lol Well... none except for the very last one in your post for some strange reason. I just figured that maybe you had removed all the others or something.

.... I just clicked on your thread again and I still could only see the last pic. Hmmm- I wonder what the deal is.....

Anyone computer-savvy out there know? (feel free to chime in)


IrishLass

Edited to add: Yay! Y'all must've been posting while I was still writing. lol

That looks amazing! Nice soap.

Lovely results, Irish Lass -- very well done!

If you can't see the picture, try refreshing/reloading the page. I couldn't see it at first either. Refreshed and BINGO!

Couldn't see the pic, refreshed, still no pic, refreshed again......finally! It was worth it, what lovely soap. It really looks like honey is dripping down the sides. Love it!!!

Ha, the picture has disappeared on me again lol. I love the "honey" topping, looks really nice with the honey comb pattern.

They look amazing, really gorgeous and I love the honey effect. It looks so scrumptious, it makes me want to lick the honey right off the bars!!!

I tried beeswax before and it made lovely hard bars of soap, with great lather too! i've got one bar left. Now I can't wait to try it again! Great idea about the honey though, I remember I soaped a bit hotter than usual with the beeswax. Can't wait to try this now!!

Oooh that looks delicious! A soaping instructor told me that she prefers using beeswax over SL to harden her bars. I've only used SL once but I'm curious as to how they compare.

Bee-utiful soaps. Very clever idea. Love the drips.

Love what you did with the m+p. So pretty!

Thank you everyone! I just had the pic disappear on me, too, but it came right back when I hit refresh.

Rowan said:

Great idea about the honey though, I remember I soaped a bit hotter than usual with the beeswax. Can't wait to try this now!!

Click to expand...

I got the idea to fill the holes from new member slipknot76 in a another thread (only slipknot's original desire/thought/idea was to maybe use real honey in the holes). WSP's honey M&P is perfect for this. Not only is it the right color, but WSP's site says it has real honey in it. Win/win!

My plan of attack when making this batch:

1) Working from my room-temp mastertbatch 50% lye solution, I weighed out the required amount of 50% solution for my batch into a measuring cup and set aside.

2) In a separate measuring cup, I weighed out the required extra water (room temp) to bring my total lye/water solution to a 33% concentration, then I added the honey to this extra water amount and stirred to dissolve.

3) Added my room temp honey water directly to my waiting room temp 50% lye solution. This is the way I always mix my honey, btw, because when I do, I never get weeping honey or honey dots in my soap. When both are combined together like this at room temp in the exact manner that I just spelled out, the mixture will turn very dark and get hot (mine reached a peak of 161F/71C), but I never experience any violent reactions like volcanoes or hissing or anything like that. However- if you were to pour dry lye directly into a pitcher of honey water - watch out. It'll hiss and spit and volcano some (been there done that once, have never done it again, lol) Oh, another bonus of doing it this way is that I never experience overheating in my soap as it goes through gel. It's like the lye solution takes the ornery fire right out of the honey. Set honey/lye solution aside (covered).

4) Meanwhile, in my stainless soaping pot, I weighed together my beeswax, all my hard fats, and also my coconut oil, and then set the pot on my burner (set on med-low) to melt everything. My liquid oils were kept aside in a bowl to add later. It took 13 minutes for everything to melt completely and the temp was 200F/93C.

5) Added my room temp liquid oils to the pot (still on the heat). Things clouded up just a titch, but soon cleared up. Temp was 154F/68F. Decided to keep it on the heat until it reached 171F/77C and then let it slowly cool down.

6) When it reached 171F/77C, I removed the pot from heat and added my FO at this time (it has an FP of 200F/93C). I figured I'd add it now so it couldn't take the temp down too far as to cloud things and screw things up later. Set my pot in the sink for things to cool down because lots of the 'successful' posts I read said to let it cool down to somewhere between 110F/42C - 120F/49C. I decided to shoot for 115F/46C.

7) This took 44 minutes, but it was beginning to cloud a little at that temp, so I brought the pot over to the stove to heat until the cloudiness was gone. Four minutes later, all cloudiness was gone and the temp read 122F/50C. My honey/lye solution was 114F/45C at this time.

8 ) Decided to go for it right then and there. Slowly hand-stirred in my honey/lye solution. No drama whatsoever. Took temp of my batter: 117F/47C.

9) Continued hand-stirring (no stick-blending at all) and in 10 minutes I had a lovely, drama-free, medium-thick trace.

10) Poured into my wood mold and took temp- 108F/42C. Then I placed bubble wrap on the surface, covered my mold with it's accompanying wood cover, insulated with 3 cloth diapers (clean, of course), and placed in my warm 90F/32C garage to sit overnight. I checked it a few times before going to bed, but there was no drama, so I just let it alone and finally went to bed 3 hours after pour.

11) Next morning, checked. Sometime during the night it had completely gelled, but there were no cracks or any other weird things to write home about. All looked great.

And you know the rest of the story.


IrishLass

Wow! Beautiful! I love the MP dripping.

Thank you so much for your detailed explanation!

Gorgeous work, IL! The dripping "honey" is a stroke of genius which makes it more amazing. Love it!!!

I wish I could smell it! It looks great!

A very good looking soap. Well done.

But I think that 6% SF might be a little too much as you have also added honey and it might take the SF to a bigger % (maybe 10%). I'm telling you that because you also use lower SF when you make 100%CO soap while using coconut milk instead of water, and you take the SF from 20% to 12%.

As it concerns about the weird behavior of the image (which I also had the same problem in my first page load), it might be for the reason that you haven't got a domain name for your site where your image is, but only an IP with a port number.

Nikos