Bad Recipe? I Need Advice On This One :-)

[JudyH]

OK, I made a batch of soap early this morning. Everything went together very well, the batch traced (not too fast), everything went well when I added the colorant and the fragrance oil.... I was able to do a double pour (2 colors at one time) and also a swirl color.... no problems with any of that.

I had developed the recipe based on the oils I had and the results from the Lye Calculator at WSP.... the weights are in ounces:

% lbs. oz. grams
1 Canola Oil, high oleic 15 0.375 6 170.097
2 Coconut Oil, 76 deg 30 0.75 12 340.194
3 Crisco, new w/palm 15 0.375 6 170.097
4 Olive Oil 40 1 16 453.592
Totals 100 2.5 40 1133.98

Quality Range Recipe
Hardness 29 - 54 35
Cleansing 12 - 22 20
Conditioning 44 - 69 60
Bubbly 14 - 46 20
Creamy 16 - 48 15
Iodine 41 - 70 68
INS 136 - 165 145

Total oil weight 40
Water as percent of oil weight 33 %
Super Fat/Discount 5 %
Lye Concentration 30.116 %
Water : Lye Ratio 2.32:1

Well, about 6 hours after I poured the loaf, I went to take a peek and see how it was doing. I didn't want it to heat up alot so I didn't insulate it - I just put a paper towel over the top of the mold to keep out any dust, etc.
The loaf was hard as a brick! I thought that was really odd. I untaped the freezer paper liner and lifted the loaf out of the mold and sure enough, it was firm all the way around.

So I took the freezer paper off and the loaf looked really nice. It made me wonder what the inside looked like. So, I used my knife to mark off the 1" marks and that's when I found out that the loaf was like CHALK! Yep, it was like a big brick of chalk. It feels dry as can be and super crumbly.

I know that I added all of my oils from the recipe because I marked them off as I weighed them. So it's not that. It there something that I am not seeing wrong with this recipe? Everything seems to be in range except for the "creamy".

Any ideas?

 

[PrairieCraft]

Sounds like my very first batch! It was lye heavy. I had a cheap scale.

 

[Lindy]

My first reaction is the lye as well. could you have made a mistake on how much you needed?

 

[JudyH]

So the recipe looks ok to you?

Now I'm wondering if I overmeasured the lye....

If I did, would this be the kind of results that I would get?

Thanks for your help!!

 

[JudyH]

You are absolutely right.... I figured out what I did wrong! I re-made the batch and when I was measuring I realized that I measured 8 oz too few of Olive Oil! So, this morning the bad batch went into the crock pot with 10 oz of olive oil added to it and some water LOL Now it's drying nicely in 2 log molds... This is my first re-batch. I hope it turns out alright. Boy, that re-batch stuff is gummy and when it starts to cool, it gets hard to deal with. To me, it almost looks like colored spun sugar.

Oh, and the batch I messed up, well I remade it yesterday and took it out of the mold late this morning. Then I cut it a couple of hours after that. It turned out wonderful. I'm happy about that because I worked with the lye calculator at WSP for quite a while trying to come up with the best qualities I possibly could with the oils that I wanted to use. So, I'll know in about 4 weeks if the recipe is a good one or not LOL

 

[BakingNana]

Good save!!