Advice needed on adjusting recipes for faster trace

[Mobjack Bay]

I have two recipes that I have used quite a bit for making complex soap design. They are both really, really slow when I soap at around 85 to 90F. I’m looking for ideas about how to make them a little faster to trace (“moderately slow”) before I start experimenting.

The first recipe is from one of Kapia Mera’s YouTube videos (or close to the original):

OO 42%
CO 25%
PO 15%
Sunflower Oil (mid oleic) 10%
Avocado oil 8%

I use a lye concentration of 33%, which I’m thinking about increasing to 37%. I add 1 tsp SL ppo for this recipe. It stays slow even when I add ginger and clove EOs. By slow, I mean that it barely changes trace level sitting on the counter for 15-30 minutes (with EOs) to an hour (w/o EOs). It will cool off and thicken a bit, but it gets thin again if I stir it or warm it up a little.

I have considered raising the PO at the expense of some of the OO. Does that sound like a good strategy? I’m trying to move away from Castor oil, so I haven’t considered that as an option, and also don’t have any evidence that it speeds trace in any of my recipes. I may have read that higher lye concentrations speed trace, but that hasn’t been my experience to date with my recipes. The CO seems plenty high enough as it is. ETA: I may have accelerated the speed of trace in this recipe recently using an FO, but I want to be able to speed it up a bit regardless of the FO.

The second recipe is my current lard-based soap. I have various versions where I switch out some or all of the OO for Avocado, RBO, HO Safflower, etc:

Lard 60%
OO 20%
CO 15%
Castor oil 5%

I use a 37% lye concentration, sometimes use aloe, milks, etc. The recipe is slow enough to sit around for more than an hour. It will thicken up due to the lard starting to solidify, but it thins right out again when I warm it up. For this one, I could up the CO to 20%, but not my preferred option and I wouldn’t want to go any higher than that for sure. Would it make sense to add a butter, like Shea to the mix? I’m a little worried about that option because I like the temp range I’m soaping in and I think butters needs higher temps. Is that right or does it matter less when a butter is in a recipe like mine? When I was working on my landscape soap I tried speeding trace by heating the batter to 105F. That approach didn’t do much, but it was a very small volume of batter (2 ozs).

I haven’t been using sugar except very occasionally and I bombed my first attempt to use honey. Sugars are one of the things I plan to work on next, so if you think they will help to speed the recipes above, please let me know. Any and all ideas will be appreciated!

 

[IrishLass]

Before messing with the formula, I personally would try going up to either a 40% or 45% lye solution first. The highest I've ever gone is 48% once with a 100% OO soap, and I got a good fast trace with it- about 5 minutes to trace if I remember rightly.


IrishLass

 

[shunt2011]

I would increase the palm in the first and lower the OO. I'm one who doesn't care for a lot of OO in soap. Soaping warmer will also help with quicker trace.

I would adjust your lye concentration first though.

I've found high lard soaps take time to trace regardless. I used some shea in my lard soap and it didn't affect it at all for me.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

@IrishLass and @shunt2011 thanks for the quick responses! I like my recipes, so I won’t go messing with that first one until I try the higher lye concentration. For the second one, it sounds like I will need to consider a “lard light” version if I want a recipe that is faster but still has some lard qualities.

 

[dixiedragon]

Try soaping 100 or 110F.

 

[dibbles]

I agree with the advice you've gotten so far. You could try subbing some of the coconut oil for palm kernel oil which I don't use often but seems to speed things up for me. Palm at a higher % (taken from slow tracing olive) will probably help some. Soaping warmer will help some. I found pomace olive oil to trace faster than regular olive oil - I don't think everyone finds that to be true though.

Also agree to try adjusting your lye concentration first. That might be the easiest fix.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

@dixiedragon and @dibbles Thanks! I’m putting temperature increase on the list of things to try after I increase the lye concentration and before I consider modifying the recipes. A plan is falling into place!

 

[dixiedragon]

I may have missed this, but are you using a stick blender? If not...STICKBLENDER.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I may have missed this, but are you using a stick blender? If not...STICKBLENDER.

Yes, I am .

 

[earlene]

All good advice, of course. Another thought is this: Subbing Pomace OO for regular OO speeds trace for me. I can get to such a fast trace with only a wisk and 50% Pomace OO when I make Castile soap, that's what I use. I also do a higher [lye] with my Castile. [40% lye] and 50% pomace + 50% regular OO and I never need to use the SB. I've done swirls with it, but intricate swirls at that [lye concentration] doesn't work so well, so if you ever do try the pomace replacement, keep that in mind.

 

[Dawni]

I have a very similar recipe with your second one, but with less coconut and castor. I use it for when I want extra fluidity. Somehow it translates to that, in HP. When I use butters, they trace sooner and also are never as fluid as my high lard recipe.

If ya feel like it, a recipe with less lard than that, but is still nice, and somewhere in the middle of quick n slow trace, uses 35% lard, 30% RBO (you can sub with OO, I usually sub half with pomace), 20% CO and 15% Shea.

But I'm with the others, try fiddling with the water first. If you have a recipe that works, stick with it.

 

[Lin19687]

change CO to PKO and change to PO. THAT will move it along fast
lol

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I have a very similar recipe with your second one, but with less coconut and castor. I use it for when I want extra fluidity. Somehow it translates to that, in HP. When I use butters, they trace sooner and also are never as fluid as my high lard recipe.

If ya feel like it, a recipe with less lard than that, but is still nice, and somewhere in the middle of quick n slow trace, uses 35% lard, 30% RBO (you can sub with OO, I usually sub half with pomace), 20% CO and 15% Shea.

But I'm with the others, try fiddling with the water first. If you have a recipe that works, stick with it.

I will give that recipe a try!

 

[Mobjack Bay]

change CO to PKO and change to PO. THAT will move it along fast
lol

Thanks Lin. I really am only looking to speed it up to moderately slow

 

[Primrose]

Soap warmer
Stickblend the crap out of it
Use an accelerating FO
Swap some of your lard in the second recipe for goat tallow

I also find a combination of cocoa and shea butter speeds things along for me

 

[Mobjack Bay]

@Primrose thanks for the ideas. I can soap warmer, but stick blending is a challenge when I’m using portions of batter that are only 2 or 3 oz. I’ve seen videos where people use the SB with small amounts of soap and it ends up getting frothy, which I don’t want. I bought a Badger, but it doesn’t do enough to speed up the batter in any reasonable amount of time. Claudia Carpenter mentioned using a 3D printer (she’s an engineer and would think of these things!) to create a small attachment for her SB, but I don’t think she was satisfied with how it worked. I do need to play around with accelerating FOs more.

 

[HowieRoll]

I'd be most interested to hear how the batter behaves if you try a higher lye concentration. A couple years ago I did a high/low water soap and discovered the low water soap (45% lye concentration) took forever to trace, while the high water soap (30% lye concentration) traced much, much faster. It was as perplexing to me then as it is now, and all I could think of is that the higher lye concentration batch is "oilier." lol In my head that makes it slipperier and slicker, contrary to the conventional wisdom that more liquid (water) would make it more fluid. But my experience is limited to ingredients I typically use, so it's not to say this would work for all recipes.

Anyway, since then I generally use a 38-40% lye concentration. Sometimes it annoys me how slow the batter can be to trace, and many of my swirls have been muddled because I lost patience and poured when it was way too thin. I do not use palm oil, but recently started switching out my usual 20-30% tallow with 20-30% soy wax. Because of the soy wax, I've been soaping between 120-130F and if I'm up around 130F it seems to trace a little faster than it used to with far less SB (but still gives plenty of working time).

This is all rambling to say please do keep us posted!

 

[Rahmi]

I noticed that when I use rice bran oil my batter gets to trace really quickly, with a whisk. But I also combined that with steep water discount. (1.1:1 water lye ratio)

One time when I didn't use RBO, same water discount, I had to use my old stickblender because I thought it took too long to mix with a whisk. I mostly don't use SB..

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I'd be most interested to hear how the batter behaves if you try a higher lye concentration. A couple years ago I did a high/low water soap and discovered the low water soap (45% lye concentration) took forever to trace, while the high water soap (30% lye concentration) traced much, much faster. It was as perplexing to me then as it is now, and all I could think of is that the higher lye concentration batch is "oilier." lol In my head that makes it slipperier and slicker, contrary to the conventional wisdom that more liquid (water) would make it more fluid. But my experience is limited to ingredients I typically use, so it's not to say this would work for all recipes.

Anyway, since then I generally use a 38-40% lye concentration. Sometimes it annoys me how slow the batter can be to trace, and many of my swirls have been muddled because I lost patience and poured when it was way too thin. I do not use palm oil, but recently started switching out my usual 20-30% tallow with 20-30% soy wax. Because of the soy wax, I've been soaping between 120-130F and if I'm up around 130F it seems to trace a little faster than it used to with far less SB (but still gives plenty of working time).

This is all rambling to say please do keep us posted!

Thank you for rambling!!! You triggered some of my brain synapses, which made me think to look at my unusually detailed notes for a soap I made back in May. For that one (Stormy Seas 2) I mixed high and low water concentration batters in varying proportions to achieve a layered/gradient soap and with the hope of achieving a decreasing intensity of glycerin rivers moving up in the soap. I followed the basic recipe from Auntie Clara’s website (40% OO/40% PO/20% CO). Much to my surprise, the “low water” (41.7% lye concentration) batter was much slower to trace compared with the “high water” batter made using a 28.6% lye concentration. The one uncontrolled variable was the colorants. The low water/high lye concentration batter had 1 tsp oil dispersed KC added ppo. The high water/low lye concentration batter had indigo powder, 1/4 tsp TD, and a pinch of AC dispersed in oil. Here’s some of what I wrote at the time:

“I blended the high water soap first thinking it would take longer to reach trace, but actually, the low water portion took longer...It took a lot longer to come to light trace... High Water portion then came to a pretty thick trace while it was sitting around, while the LW portion remained much more fluid... The top layer (Note: this was 100% low water/high lye concentration batter) was still a bit too fluid to get super crisp surface design when I finished, while the indigo batter was thick trace at the end.”

It looks like the top layer could have been at medium trace based on photo. Although I didn’t record the time I spent once the low water batter reached light trace, I couldn’t have weighed out, mixed and layered the batter in less than 30 minutes. I started with both batters at 110 F. Given the amounts of PO and CO in the recipe, my slightly more experienced self is still surprised that the low water/high lye concentration batter was so slow to set up. But “slow” is relative and 30 minutes sounds pretty good compared with the time it takes for the recipes I posted above to set up to medium trace on their own.

After re-reading all of the suggestions above, I’m thinking about doing a lye concentration/temperature combination experiment. For a given recipe, a minimal set of combinations would be:

Low water, low temp
Low water, high temp
High water, low temp
High water, high temp

If someone in the SMF community has already done this kind of experiment, I would love to know how it turned out.

 

[Obsidian]

I'd just replace half if the lard in the second recipe with palm.

I did a experiment to test lard vs palm and found a 50/50 mix of lard/palm at 50% in my recipe was good. Upped the trace some but not excessively and made a really nice soap.