Batch gone wrong

[MarnieSoapien]

Today I tried making a brine bar. I used my normal recipe but upped the SF to 10%, used a FO that I haven't used in a while but according to my notes, behaves well and Peppermint EO. I added 20% salt to my lye water and stirred, most of the salt was dissolved when I added my lye water to my oils. I wasn't worried about it being completely dissolved and thought it would be a mix between a brine bar and a soleseife. My molds were at the ready when I started mixing. After a couple of seconds, I had mashed potatoes and had to get squish it into the molds using my hands. What I have now is crumbly mess.

I'm not sure what my next step should be. Should I wait and see if it turns out OK? Can I rebatch a brine/soleseife bar?

Any guesses on what went wrong here?

 

[Primrose]

Sorry I have absolutely no clue but I just wanted to ask what the difference is between a brine bar and a soleseife bar? I thought they were the same thing

 

[shunt2011]

As did I. I have no idea what caused it to move so fast.

 

[Carly B]

I thought for a brine bar you needed to dissolve the salt before you mixed it in the lye. Would that have any effect?

 

[atiz]

I love soleseife, but it does accelerate quite a bit. So you need a really slow-moving recipe, and very minimal stick-blending.
(I use the "split water" method for mixing the salt, and it works well, no undissolved salt remains. You may have had a bit too much salt if you had 20% for the whole water.)

 

[MarnieSoapien]

The way I understood the difference is, a brine bar has the salts dissolved in water, and soleseife has the salt suspended in the batter.

@atiz one of the videos I was watching used 30% salt. I thought I was erring on the side of caution by only using 20%

Maybe I could chop up my uglies and use them as embeds?

 

[cmzaha]

Brine bars and Soleseife are the same. Both are made with salt brine.

 

[atiz]

The way I understood the difference is, a brine bar has the salts dissolved in water, and soleseife has the salt suspended in the batter.

@atiz one of the videos I was watching used 30% salt. I thought I was erring on the side of caution by only using 20%

Maybe I could chop up my uglies and use them as embeds?

I think 'soleseife' is the German term for brine-bar (and not salt-bar, when the salt is suspended in the batter).

The problem is that water cannot dissolve 30% of salt. I forget the exact number now, but I think the saturated solution (depending on temperature) is around 27%. But if you also dissolve lye in the same water, then it will be less, since some of the water molecules are "taken up" by the lye already. So ideally, you would want to leave aside the water that will be dissolving the lye, and then saturate the remainder of the water with salt. That's why the split water method is pretty fool-proof; you have your 50% lye solution, then however much salt you can dissolve in the remainder of water (around 27% of that leftover water) you dissolve.

Not that anything iswrong with a "mixed" bar with some undissolved salt in it.

 

[MarnieSoapien]

I think 'soleseife' is the German term for brine-bar (and not salt-bar, when the salt is suspended in the batter).

The problem is that water cannot dissolve 30% of salt. I forget the exact number now, but I think the saturated solution (depending on temperature) is around 27%. But if you also dissolve lye in the same water, then it will be less, since some of the water molecules are "taken up" by the lye already. So ideally, you would want to leave aside the water that will be dissolving the lye, and then saturate the remainder of the water with salt. That's why the split water method is pretty fool-proof; you have your 50% lye solution, then however much salt you can dissolve in the remainder of water (around 27% of that leftover water) you dissolve.

Not that anything iswrong with a "mixed" bar with some undissolved salt in it.

It's all becoming so clear now! Thanks for the explanations.

 

[DeeAnna]

A saturated brine of table salt (NaCl, sodium chloride) dissolved in water will contain 26-27 grams NaCl per 100 grams of brine. In other words, a 26-27% NaCl solution. If you add sodium hydroxide (NaOH) to this brine, the mixture will become cloudy.

If you let the cloudy mixture sit for awhile, the "white stuff" will settle to the bottom of the container. The white material is table salt that has precipitated (become solid again) as a super-fine powder.

A lot of people make what they call "brine bars" (soleseife) like this. They don't mind that some of the salt precipitates after NaOH is added, but I suspect a purist would argue these are "salt bars" or "spa bars" since the table salt is not fully dissolved.

Regardless of what you call it, I'd say this is a nice way to make a salt/spa/brine bar with superfine crystals that won't be scratchy on the skin. Just be careful to dissolve NaCl in water first and then add NaOH if you want to create these superfine crystals.

Other some people don't like the idea of anything coming out of solution. They use just enough table salt so the salt will remain fully dissolved with the sodium hydroxide. If you want to use a 30-35% NaOH concentration (lye concentration), you will only be able to dissolve 3-5% NaCl by weight in that lye solution. This is probably the purist's idea of a brine/soleseife bar.

 

[linne1gi]

A saturated brine of table salt (NaCl, sodium chloride) dissolved in water will contain 26-27 grams NaCl per 100 grams of brine. In other words, a 26-27% NaCl solution. If you add sodium hydroxide (NaOH) to this brine, the mixture will become cloudy.

If you let the cloudy mixture sit for awhile, the "white stuff" will settle to the bottom of the container. The white material is table salt that has precipitated (become solid again) as a super-fine powder.

A lot of people make what they call "brine bars" (soleseife) like this. They don't mind that some of the salt precipitates after NaOH is added, but I suspect a purist would argue these are "salt bars" or "spa bars" since the table salt is not fully dissolved.

Regardless of what you call it, I'd say this is a nice way to make a salt/spa/brine bar with superfine crystals that won't be scratchy on the skin. Just be careful to dissolve NaCl in water first and then add NaOH if you want to create these superfine crystals.

Other some people don't like the idea of anything coming out of solution. They use just enough table salt so the salt will remain fully dissolved with the sodium hydroxide. If you want to use a 30-35% NaOH concentration (lye concentration), you will only be able to dissolve 3-5% NaCl by weight in that lye solution. This is probably the purist's idea of a brine/soleseife bar.

Thanks for the explaination, I am a purist, and make sure that my brine solution is completely dissolved.