10% Honey - Help finding a thread

[Jorah]

SMF is the only soap forum I'm participating in, so I'm almost certain that it is here that I saw a thread where the maker described how they'd become curious about the 'never more than 1% of total oil weight in honey' rule, and started experimenting. After many batches, and learning a lot about making soap with high sugar content, they'd stopped when they'd successfully made a batch with honey at 10% TOW. The photos showed gorgeous caramel brown square bars.

Now I've spent close to an hour reading threads here and can't find any trace of it. Does this ring a bell for anyone? I've wanted to do a high-honey soap since I first heard of them a few months ago. If that thread no longer exists (or was a figment of my imagination) I'll likely start experimenting myself, no kidding.

 

[Zing]

I don't recall that thread. I'm an experienced soaper and just recently tried a honey recipe. Not to scare you off, but I had a small explosion with my lye solution (I was unscathed thanks to my long gloves). It seems like you are a researcher anyway but homework is necessary for this ingredient for sure. I learned a lot from @IrishLass so do a search for her posts about honey soap.

Have you used plain table sugar yet? You dissolve it in your water before adding lye. No one told me this but it will turn a faint yellow which has no bearing on the final color of the soap. It makes for great lather -- Daddy loves his bubbles.
I'm glad you've joined us and appreciate your postings. Good luck with the honey.

 

[Jorah]

I don't recall that thread. I'm an experienced soaper and just recently tried a honey recipe. Not to scare you off, but I had a small explosion with my lye solution (I was unscathed thanks to my long gloves). It seems like you are a researcher anyway but homework is necessary for this ingredient for sure. I learned a lot from @IrishLass so do a search for her posts about honey soap.

Have you used plain table sugar yet? You dissolve it in your water before adding lye. No one told me this but it will turn a faint yellow which has no bearing on the final color of the soap. It makes for great lather -- Daddy loves his bubbles.
I'm glad you've joined us and appreciate your postings. Good luck with the honey.

I haven't tried plain sugar yet, but I did put some honey in soap once, before I knew anything about the accelerant properties, and came out with perfectly usable bars with the a pretty good case of DOS. I'll likely be using it up for two years. It's odd stuff; it barely lathers if you rub it directly on you, but if I rub it on a bath scrubby, it foams like mad. I'm talking handfuls of lather flying around the shower...

Component	Grams
Almond Oil	475 g
Olive Oil	325 g
Coconut Oil	300 g
Cocoa Butter	160 g
Beeswax	40 g
Honey	1 Tsp.
Water	390 g
Lye	183.5 g

 

[Blufuz]

Maybe if you do try high honey, go for individual cavity molds rather than a log mold? I imagine honey will lead to overheating and cracking and maybe even the famous “volcano” but I haven’t seen anything like that for myself.

 

[Jorah]

Maybe if you do try high honey, go for individual cavity molds rather than a log mold? I imagine honey will lead to overheating and cracking and maybe even the famous “volcano” but I haven’t seen anything like that for myself.

Yeah, I've got a bunch of individual cavities from my very brief fling with M&P.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Is it this thread: 12% Honey CP Soap. I had to satisfy my curiosity and was able to find it using Google, which seems to be smarter than the SMF search engine.

 

[Jorah]

Is this it thread: 12% Honey CP Soap. I had to satisfy my curiosity and was able to find it using Google, which seems to be smarter than the SMF search engine.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Thank you! And thanks for the tip about the external search engine working better!

 

[Savage Daughter]

I would suggest adding your honey directly to your oils, before adding your lye / water solution. This is how I have always done it & have never had a volcano of any type, or any orange spots, or any overheating or cracking. Ever. It works perfectly. I don't dissolve my honey in water either, ever. Just straight into my oils, stick blend it really well into the oils, then add my lye solution. It greatly simplifies things & has never resulted in any complications for me.

 

[Jorah]

I would suggest adding your honey directly to your oils, before adding your lye / water solution. This is how I have always done it & have never had a volcano of any type, or any orange spots, or any overheating or cracking. Ever. It works perfectly. I don't dissolve my honey in water either, ever. Just straight into my oils, stick blend it really well into the oils, then add my lye solution. It greatly simplifies things & has never resulted in any complications for me.

QQ, that's exactly what I did. I did add the lye water very slowly, checking temperature between dollops. It never got above 97f. I did have beeswax and a honey FO in there, too; complex but fun batch. I'll try to make the next batch in the series next weekend. The just-poured bars look great! This is a 6% honey by oil weight.

 

[Jorah]

The soap is out of the molds:
I'm pleased with the Bramble Berry loaf mold with the honeycomb pattern.

 

[GGMA0317]

The soap is out of the molds:
I'm pleased with the Bramble Berry loaf mold with the honeycomb pattern.

I tried honey and sugar and never noticed any benefits. So I never used either again. Nice mold for guest or travel soap-I bought a couple from Amazon and made guests bars to give away.

 

[saintalchemist]

I don't recall that thread. I'm an experienced soaper and just recently tried a honey recipe. Not to scare you off, but I had a small explosion with my lye solution (I was unscathed thanks to my long gloves). It seems like you are a researcher anyway but homework is necessary for this ingredient for sure. I learned a lot from @IrishLass so do a search for her posts about honey soap.

Have you used plain table sugar yet? You dissolve it in your water before adding lye. No one told me this but it will turn a faint yellow which has no bearing on the final color of the soap. It makes for great lather -- Daddy loves his bubbles.
I'm glad you've joined us and appreciate your postings. Good luck with the honey.

Which is better for moisturizing sugar vs. honey vs. other sweetener or choice?

 

[NewlyCreative]

I think Brambleberry has a 8% honey recipe tutorial on their site. I’ve been experimenting with honey and beeswax too. I followed IrishLass’s recipe

 

[artemis]

Which is better for moisturizing sugar vs. honey vs. other sweetener or choice?

None of the above. The purpose of these is to help with lather.

 

[Zing]

Which is better for moisturizing sugar vs. honey vs. other sweetener or choice?

It's all about the bubbles, Baby!

 

[Jorah]

When I started testing honey recipes I meant to get to 12%, and may do that later this year, but at 10% (my last batch) I'm not even seeing any extra suds from this, although the 10% batches haven't completely finished curing yet. I'll follow up once I can test them better.