Hot Process Salt Bars

Hiya everyone, wishingyou all a Happy New Year and wishing you lots of soapy adventures in 2016. Living here in NZ we get to see the new year before the majority of you in the Northern Hemesphere.
I have just starting playing around with Hot Process soapmaking. I must admit so far I do prefer cold process but as stocks are low,I thought I'd do some hot process soaps to refill my supplies a wee bit quicker.
I am keen to make salt bars in my crockpot. Has anyone got a good recipe for HP salt bars? and particular hints? It would be lovely to give this a try. Cheers Helen

I use my regular salt bar recipe when making HP, its 80% coconut, 20% olive oil. The big trick is to use full water or even a little more and only use 25%-35% salt. If you use a lot of salt, it will turn into cement and be near impossible to mold.

You will need to cut fast, usually in about 30 minutes or so. FYI, HP need to cure just as long as CP so if you are wanting to do HP in hopes it will be ready sooner, sorry but it won't be.

I also use a regular salt bar recipe with HP. Mine is 90% coconut, 10% castor, 20% SF, and 50% salt. I use a 27% lye concentration and add sodium lactate to the lye water which helps keep the batter more fluid. For me, the trick is to use individual square molds so that I don't have to worry about cutting them at all. It does harden very quickly though, so I have to move FAST when molding. I can only pour 12 bars before the batter sets.

HP Salt Bars

Hi thanks for your comments regarding salt bars made the HP way.
I cant understand why most of the information on HP soap indicate that you can use the soap immediately after making or even just a week curing?? I have tested with Phenolphthalein and it didnt turn pink -so I assumed that this was OK to use. If not to shorten curing time then what is the purpose of HP. You have more control with CP and the swirls are great, I think the soap is more smooth and attractive so I only chose to try HP to speed up when the soap could be used. Is this not correct then?? cheers Helen

It's not correct. It still needs to cure. The benefit is that you can add stuff to hp after all the lye is gone but before it is moulded up. If you don't need to do that, I would cp.

A certain pH is not the same a well cured bar. In fact, forget pH and say that a zapless bar is not the same a well cured bar. Cp bars can stop zapping after a few days but still need to cure, so saponification and cure are clearly not linked, or cp bars would only need a few more days than hp.

There are so many HP'ers that post about how it speeds up cure and that information is ALL OVER the internet now but it's a fallacy. It's so annoying that people keep spreading that around on their sites. HP is a great application for using delicate FO's and EO's and being able to use less FO/EO to get the same scent because the soap is done heating for gel. It's also perfect if you want to scent with a very difficult to manage scent, like one that accelerates like mad. It's also better than CP for being able to control which oil is your superfat.

Cure is about the soap restructuring on a molecular level, which takes weeks. Doesn't matter if you've HP'ed or CP'ed; the soap still takes weeks to fully restructure to give you the best bar. It dries as well but even if you made a soap with 1:1 lye concentration, so minimal water, it's got to cure for 4 weeks. Can you use a bar at 2 or 3 weeks? Yes, but you will not be getting or selling your best bar of soap.

Salt bars really need 2-3 months to be a very good bar

Ditto what the others have said about HP needing a cure just as much as CP.

I mostly make CP, but also make a spattering of HP batches here and there (such as my shave soap). Anyway, I encourage each of my CP batches to go through full gel, and each one that has done so is 100% zap-free upon unmolding- just as zapless as my HP soaps are when done cooking/before molding- but time and testing have shown me that both my HP and CP benefit greatly from a 4 to 6 week cure.....even more so for my HP because of the excess water that needs to evaporate out so that they don't disappear/melt away so quickly.

I don't sell, but if I did, I think I would actually feel more comfortable selling my zapless 2-week old CP batches sooner than my zapless 2-week HP, because my CP batches are much prettier and they last longer/hold up better than the same-aged HP.

I don't know where the rumor originated that if one needs soap to be ready for sale quicker, that they can HP instead of CP, but as so often happens on the internet (and in life in general), when half-truths and outright fallacies are repeated often enough, they take on a life of their own as more and more people that may or may not know any better start believing and spreading it themselves, even though the opposite is what is really true.

Oh, I also wanted to mention that phenolphthalein is not a good testing medium to use on lye-based soap. See here: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showpost.php?p=566347&postcount=5


IrishLass

And I forgot to add what Carolyn mentioned, that salt bars are not really very good at just a couple weeks. They are much much better at a few months. Thanks for adding that, Carolyn.

I just started using a salt bar that is 6-7 months old. I've used 'younger' ones and they are very nice, but now, after 6 months - ooh la la - loads of puffy, whipped-creamy lather! I'm so smitten.

My salt bar was CP. I did 80% CO, 15% SO, and 5% Castor, with 50% weight of oils pink himalayan salt. I unmolded and cut at 8 hours. I didn't have an added EO or FO to accelerate trace, but adding the salt alone turned it into thick pudding. Be warned: dump the salt, do a quick whip stir, and get the soap into a mold as fast as possible haha.

I cured 8 weeks, tested myself for 2 weeks, before I passed the rest of the bars out. So far my 3 guinea pigs who have tested it for me have loved it and the lather it's made (very thick, pillowy, small bubbles). I have requests for more bars, so I need to make another salt bar soon. I have 2 bars left from that batch saved, to test at 6 months and 1 year.

I do not even consider selling or giving away a salt bar under 4 months cure time with 6 months preference. I am with IrishLass I can sell my cp bars much sooner than my few hp bars I make. Hp I do not consider taking out to market under 3 months cure and really prefer 6 month cures for them. Takes them that long to feel and last the same as my cp soaps. That is for soaps that I make properly and do not add in 6 oz to much liquid like I did today on a batch. It will be on the cure rack for a min of 6 months probably closer to 8 with all the extra liquid.

The problem with the "hp = no cure" idea is that it is an attractive idea and it has some elements to back it up (I can use it right away, people using the terms 'cure' and 'saponify' incorrectly) and so people WANT it to be true, making it harder to kill it off

I bet if we were talking about cheese people wouldn't be doing this, I mean technically you can eat all cheese right away but no one would sell it before it had a chance to go through its curing.

or wine, grape juice certainly is a thing people drink but if you try to sell it as wine there might be some questions.

I am in total agreement with the others. Salt bars happen to be my favorite. I don't sell them until they are at minimum 4 months but much prefer 6 months old. They are so much better with time. Take one and test it at different lengths of time for yourself.

I have some ugly, unscented salt bars that are over 2 years old and they are fantastic. This last year, I made more salt bars then any one person needs but I'm letting cure forever.

I still have a couple bars of my very first batch and they are almost 5. Years old. They have amazing lather though the scent has faded to almost nothing. Time to make them again. I had a customer purchase 18 of them on Christmas Eve for gifts. Stock is dangerously low.

I have a feeling Helenz didn't like what she was hearing and left the scene. No response or discussion or anything!

How do you guys keep your salt bars from sweating? Most of mine have ended up gone due to sweating issues......... thinking I'll have to switch to brine bars instead!

The only time I have sweating problems is when it's really humid. Totally different from brine bars.