High versus low water batches- more water traces faster?

I have been doing some soaps with low and high water in the same batch. I've made 5 or 6 batches now. Every single time, the part with higher water traces much faster than the part with low water. I've been doing it over and over because that is not the standard experience with trying to keep your recipe open for a longer period of time so I've tried everything I can think of that might affect it. Every single time, I've had the same result. The low water stays fluid for far longer than the full water.

I've tried a number of variations, from warming the extra water up so I'm not getting false trace to doing batches in parallel, meaning I make the high and low water batches completely in tandem- same recipe but each oil batch gets its own lye water. Everything is made at the same time and allowed to come to RT so there are no temp difference and water is the only variable. EVERY SINGLE TIME the high water (full water) batch traces significantly faster than the low water (1:1.4 lye to water). It's not the FO because I've been using non-accelerators and it's the same FO and the same amount for both.

Has anyone else had a similar experience or tried this? Would someone do it as well and see if they have the same results?

That is weird, newbie. I don't think it will help you for me to experiment with this, I don't have enough experience to be able to guage everything sufficiently. Curious to see what other folks come up with, though.

I am going to try this with one of my recipes that contains quite a high amount of palm and pistachio butter so it moves quickly without anything added. I usually do not discount it for that reason. Maybe I need to do the opposite. Will let you know the results. I am always into testing

How interesting, newbie! Everything I've read always says to use full water if you want to slow trace. I can't wait to hear what others have to say on the subject. Nice experiment!

That's really interesting and counter-intuitive. I've just recently been playing with my water discount and thus far have noticed that my higher-water batches seem to hold their trace level longer. I normally SB to just emulsified since I like to play with swirls.

I've never really thought about how quickly I get to trace though. I'll try to pay more attention to that.

When you say hold their trace level longer, what do you mean? I am assuming that it doesn't completely set as quickly but that may not be correct. I have been watching how quickly it comes to trace and that has been remarkably different and I've been able to work with the low water batter for longer because of that. I haven't really watched for the time to when it's completely set so will start doing that.

Last night, I made a soap and started with low water. Hand stirred only so I wan't over-blending or anything. Whisked to light trace, poured off some of it and then added water to the rest. That came to medium trace within a minute while the other was completely fluid. It was bizarre. I ended up with mounds of high water batter over which I poured completely fluid low water batter. WTH? In that one, I had a high water unscented and a low water unscented to compare and same happened. I added scent to a portion after dividing so this time it wasn't FO involved at all.

My recipe is a slow mover as well. I will be very interested to hear about your experiment, Carolyn, since you have a fast mover.

I think a video may be called for because it almost seems unbelievable.

newbie said:

When you say hold their trace level longer, what do you mean? I am assuming that it doesn't completely set as quickly but that may not be correct. I have been watching how quickly it comes to trace and that has been remarkably different and I've been able to work with the low water batter for longer because of that. I haven't really watched for the time to when it's completely set so will start doing that.

Last night, I made a soap and started with low water. Hand stirred only so I wan't over-blending or anything. Whisked to light trace, poured off some of it and then added water to the rest. That came to medium trace within a minute while the other was completely fluid. It was bizarre. I ended up with mounds of high water batter over which I poured completely fluid low water batter. WTH? In that one, I had a high water unscented and a low water unscented to compare and same happened. I added scent to a portion after dividing so this time it wasn't FO involved at all.

My recipe is a slow mover as well. I will be very interested to hear about your experiment, Carolyn, since you have a fast mover.

I think a video may be called for because it almost seems unbelievable.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I should have been more clear. When I use full water and stop blending at thin trace, my high lard batter stays at thin trace for quite a long time. When I use a water discount and stop blending at thin trace, it moves to a thicker trace faster.

I just recently started to change to a water discount and have noticed that I have to watch my time more than I did before I started discounting.

I use a different FO each time I soap but typically use the same/very similar recipe. I've seen the quicker, standalone thickening with WSP Black Raspberry Vanilla, BB Champagne, and NG Cracklin Birch. I'm pretty sure the BRV and Champagne are supposed to slow trace so I don't think those FOs would have changed the behavior.

Interesting. I used WSP's BRV for one of these and BB's Champagne in another but had the hastened trace with the higher water in both cases. More experimenting needed!

At this point I always use full water and like BB's Champagne, in part b/c it is reputedly a slow tracer and has been for me. But haven't discounted water, so can't help with that part. It would be kind of great if you figured out that using lower water would delay trace in some cases. Best of both worlds, slower trace and faster hardening. We really are soap geeks.

Newbie, is that how you've been doing this - making a discounted batch, getting it to a trace, taking out a portion and then adding in water?

I've been following this ... sorry, I don't have any grand ideas at this point ... but I do have a couple of questions to un-confuse me ...

I'm perceiving there are two things being talked about here, and I don't think they're necessarily the same. From when the lye is added to the fat, there's the "time to trace" or the time to emulsion ... meaning the time it takes for the batter to get to the thickness you want. Then there's the "open time" ... meaning the time you have to do your swirls, etc. This would be the time from when the batter reaches your desired stage of thickness/emulsion to when it's too thick to work with in a reasonable way. The two tend to be related, but not necessarily.

Are you talking about your low-water batches having both a longer "time to trace" and a longer "open time" versus high-water batches? Or just one or the other?

"...Last night, I made a soap and started with low water. Hand stirred only so I wan't over-blending or anything. Whisked to light trace, poured off some of it and then added water to the rest. That came to medium trace within a minute while the other was completely fluid. ..."

Okay, I've been re-re-reading the posts and this particular part finally sunk in, now that I've had my first cuppa coffee. I have to ask -- Is this method typical for your high-water, low-water experiments?

Reason why I say this -- adding water to a partly saponified soap batter will increase the solubility of the soap molecules, because the added water is reducing the lye concentration in the batter. The batter could easily get thicker after adding water, because the soap particles are suddenly breaking apart into much smaller particles in response. The rate of saponification may also increase, because smaller soap particles are more efficient at emulsifying the fat and lye together than larger particles.

The apples-and-apples way to do experiments like this is to add the proper lye solution to each batch from the start. And I suspect you may well be doing that for some of your trials, but it looks like at least for this one time you used the "add extra water at trace" method to end up with the higher-water batch.

Adding water to a soap batter at trace is basically the reverse of "salting out" a soap.

If you have a soap batter made with a given lye solution concentration, and then you increase the lye concentration (or add common table salt), the result is the soap will salt out. This means the soap precipitates (comes out of solution) and clumps into larger grains of soap. These grains will mostly float loosely on top of the lye solution. The lye solution can flow under and around these larger soap grains and the whole mess becomes fluid and easy to stir. An analogy is dumplings floating loosely on top of a thin chicken broth -- when you stir, you're basically stirring the broth and the dumplings just float around on the moving broth.

By doing the reverse -- adding water to reduce the lye concentration -- the soap grains will break up and mix intimately into the less-concentrated lye. This makes the soap mixture less fluid and harder to stir. This would be as if you broke up the dumplings into small bits so they mixed into the chicken broth -- when you stir this mixture, you have to stir through the now-thicker mixture of broth and dumpling bits.

If you wanted to add something at trace to give you more "open time" to work, add fat instead of water. I sometimes do this for a recipe I think will move fast -- I melt my solid fats, add the lye solution to just the solid fats, and bring to light trace. I then add the liquid fats to the batter and gently stir. Adding fat at trace doesn't do this "salting out" thing to the soap.

I will say I've been using 40% lye concentration on all my soaps for the last 10 or so batches.
I did it on the premise auntie Clara and her crop circle experiment, similar to yours, saw little to no ash on the lower water concentration. I have almost eliminated all ash problems since doing this.

I also noticed something. When I use a higher 38-45% tallow soap, the soap batter thickened a lot quite fast when I used a higher water amount (35% water as a % of oils, who h I no longer use that method for water after learning how the lye concentration box on soap calc is consistent every batch, the water as % of oils isn't because different oils equals different water every single batch) . It almost resembled false trace, because I was soaping at room temps. I had to blend to ensure the thick batter wasn't false, and I hit thick trace making swirls more difficult.
Now with 40% lye concentration, it takes longer to emulsion, stays thin longer, and I have plenty of time for swirling. It appears to have slowed trace for me, as well. Beyond this, I've been able to unmold well before the 24 hour mark and cut clean. It's never too soft the next day...I will probably always use this concentration and not go back to higher water.
It's eliminated all these nuance problems I have had since starting.

If experimenting still, I'd recommend making two batches seperate.
Batch #1 1.2:1 ratio Premeasure the oils and butters. All to RT.
Batch #2 2:1 or maybe even 1.8:1 ratio, same amount of oils and butters, all to RT

Then blend one timing it. Clean SB, and then blend #2 timing it. It'll give a good account I think of whether or not it truly slows trace doing it this way. I need to make another batch today, I'd do it but I'm not doing this water discount thing like you are, so maybe a fun batch next week I'll try it.

I've tried a number of ways including:

SB'ing with the low water lye, separating and adding the remaining water to one portion. The thickening of the batter would make sense per DeeAnna's explanation.

Using two separate oil batches with the excess water added to the one batch of oils before lye water is added. I SB the oils prior to adding the more concentrated lye solution to each batch. Even with the water added right at the beginning, the high water batch was faster to get to trace AND faster to set.

Using two separate oil batches, I've added the low water lye to one and high water lye to the other- that is to say all the water added to each batch was in the lye water. Still the high water batch was faster to trace and to set.

I also did a twist on the first one, wondering if the water was cooler and was causing some false trace, so I heated the water a bit so it was warm before adding it to a portion split off. It sounds like the warm versus cool would not be the cause necessarily, from DeeAnna's explanation.

I also tried soaping at warmer temps versus cooler temps. Same thing.

The ones where I added all the water right at the start and compared it to the low water batch are therefore the most perplexing ones. My recipe is high in lard/tallow/palm (I've used all three).

Right now, I have another experiment waiting to go. I made high and low water lye solutions and prepared two batches of oils (melted, FO added, and stirred together) last night. Everything is waiting and at RT so there is no temp gradient. They will be made in parallel. It's still high in hard fats but the oils right now are still fluid although I can see some fogginess in there from the hard oils trying to solidify. I'll SB the pants off the oils before I add an lye water and see what happens.

I'll post a pic of how it looks. I'm not getting the kind of severe color variation Auntie Clara did in her low/high water experiment with blue ultramarine and I'm not getting such a decided halo effect like she did with spirulina but it is cool to see what happens with the colors. I'm using micas so that may be part of the difference.

http://auntieclaras.com/2014/08/intentional-crop-circles-water-discount-as-a-design-tool/

Well, that did not go at all as I thought it would and now I'm nervous about my entire soap.

I wonder if the issue is that I soaped at RT with a lot of hard oils, although they were fluid and pourable. I SB'ed each for about 10 seconds (counting 1 one thousand, 2 one thousand) in 2 sets of 5 second bursts and they were already acting like they were at trace. What? A tallow recipe? The low water did get much thicker than the high water- first time that has happened for me in this set of experiments. Poured then off to get colored and each was quite thick but the low water thicker. I noticed there was no heat at all when I held the paper cups I use for this, which seemed unusual because there is always some after lye water is added.

AS I was mixing in my colors (in oil) I realized I needed more colorant so I got more in. Part of one of my colors was from ultramarine and it wouldn't mix into the soap so I had to mix some with water to get it to dissolve, and then I added that. According to DeeAnna's theory, that should have made my batter even thicker, but it didn't at all which makes me wonder if either was truly at trace. Stirred and stirred the low water one to see if it was false trace but the cups remained cool to the touch and it never got more fluid. The high water one thickened up pretty quickly as well but was not as thick as the low water. The one I added extra water too was not thicker than the other ones from the same water content.

Got everything into the mold and set it up to gel but I am worried that I didn't really have trace. WIll see if it all holds together and will post a pic once it's cut.

Have to set up another experiment now too.

Here are the soaps from today's batch. I used three colors- a pink, a slight mauve and gray. I did use some dark gray mica in oil as well. Each color had a high and low water portion which makes for all the different shading, as each high water color butts up against a portion of low water color that doesn't gel and stays cooler (at least that what Auntie Clara says.) SCented with Fresh Cut Roses and Champagne.

So pretty, and it really gives such a depth that you'd need multiple colors and time to achieve otherwise. Its such a pretty soap!

Wow. Newbie -- the delicate color variations are gorgeous. I don't think I am being very helpful to you with my soapy science-y stuff, but I can certainly give you my heartfelt applause for these lovely soaps.

Wow! Those are really beautiful!