100% Olive Castile

[peace-love-and-suds]

I tried my first batch of this last night and it turned out terrible. I figured a 33% lye percentage would have been good enough but apparently it was not. After five hours of mixing (and reheating using double boiler method back to 100 degree) it would not go beyond a very light trace. I finally put it in the mold and have checked it 12 hours later and it is still liquid.

Can someone recommend a better water discount/lye percentage to increase the trace? Nothing else was added to the formula. How about temps? I put mine up to 100-110.

 

[peace-love-and-suds]

Was thinking about bumping lye percentage up to 45%

 

[hoegarden]

I do not know how much lye do you mean, but usually when I do soaping, my lye:water ratio is 1:2.6... If i use 100gm of NaOH, I will use 260gm of water to dissolve. It took me around 1-2 hour to get to a light trace. 100% olive oil usually will not get into a super trace stage as Olive is a soft oil.

 

[peace-love-and-suds]

so you're using about a 38% lye percentage. That is 5% higher than mine...but 1-2 hours seems a lot longer than some of the reports I've been getting from people. One person even used a 1:1 ratio with good results. Can anyone confirm this?

 

[hoegarden]

so you're using about a 38% lye percentage. That is 5% higher than mine...but 1-2 hours seems a lot longer than some of the reports I've been getting from people. One person even used a 1:1 ratio with good results. Can anyone confirm this?

I do not use a stick blender. So definitely going to be more time consuming..

as for temperature, I soap @ the lye being 45degree Celsius and and the oil @ 50degree Celsius.

 

[souljasam]

Are you hand mixing? if so then from what ive read 100% olive oil will take a fair amount of time to trace even when using a higher lye concentration. If you are stick blending then i have no idea whats up because i dont think it should take more than like 20 mins with a stick blender with a lower lye concentration.

 

[peace-love-and-suds]

no, I use an electric mixer. I usually don't go up beyond the first couple of rpms but with this one I eventually cranked it up super high and stirred the life out of it and it still would not trace.

 

[CaraCara]

I've made a couple of batches of castille soap and getting to trace doesn't usually take any more than 15 minutes. This is with a stick blender, though. Never used a mixer so I can't comment on that. You have the patience of a saint and the determination of a worker ant. :-D I would have given up after an hour and thrown it in the crock pot. Come to think of it, you should still be able to. Try heating it up and blending at the same time. Maybe that will speed things up a bit.

Question about the lye percentage for anyone: Why would you raise it? Wouldn't that make the soap more lye heavy?

 

[souljasam]

well upping lye concentration is the same thing as a water discount. the amount of ly stays the same but you lower the water amount to make a stronger lye solution so it acts faster. maybe it takes you a long time because your using an electric mixer instead of a stick blender? i dont really know cuz ive never used a reg mixer cuz with the batch sizes i make the mixer would just whip a ton of air in my soap.

 

[Nevada]

Poured my Castile into mold after 4.5 hours stirring with very light trace.
Rock hard after 4 days. Lye:water was 1:1.5

Peace-love is referring to 38% of the weight of total oils is water weight. Refer to Soap Calc.

 

[engblom]

I have been making a couple of time liquid soap with olive oil. For me it took many hours to get a trace. I was also doubting I had enough lye, but I had added according to the calculators.

I was almost going to give up, but as I had the soap heated up in a water bath, I made the water to boil. The extra temperature and intensive mixing, with small pauses made it finally to get a trace. It was 2-3 hours for me, but I used KOH, and not NaOH. By the time it became a good soap.