beer + lye = stinks!!! Help~~

[sheilaohga]

I may have been impatient..
I boiled then freezed my beer but did not wait until it was fully frozen but rather slushy.
I put in the lye, not very slowly, and the lye melted rather quickly.
However, the color is orangey and a bit foamy.
I read about turning orange so maybe that is ok.
But the smell. it is darn right HORRIBLE!!
If I use this horrible smelling lye solution, will my soap be smelling like that?
I am doing Cold Process.
I will be putting in FO but what if this horrid smell is still there???
And my biggest most important question, can I still use this scorched solution?
Will my soap go bad after cure? What will happen??
I will be giving it away to 80 people and cannot give them bad soap.
I am sitting here should I throw this away and make new or not..:think::evil::-?:cry:

 

[aihrat]

Lye has the reverse-Midas touch when it comes to otherwise pleasant-smelling additives Many of the off odours and ammonia fumes "cure out".

You can make another batch of beer if you're super worried, but this batch of lye water should be fine. The smell will disappear after a few weeks of cure. Your soap shouldn't go bad, and it's likely to lighten in colour during cure.

 

[IrishLass]

Ditto what aihrat said ^^^. One of the worst smells is lye dissolved in triple-strength coffee. It makes my whole house smell strongly of a mangy dog with the most severe case of halitosis. Blech! We're talking bad doggie breath X 1,000. :sick: Thankfully it totally goes away during cure. Whew!


IrishLass

 

[Obsidian]

This is why I never mix lye and beer when I'm making beer soap. Instead I reduce my beer down to a couple ounces of thick syrup and add that at trace. Completely​ keeps the nasty smell at bay.

 

[navigator9]

Milks will also do this. I had forgotten how skanky a milk/lye solution smells, having not made a batch in a while. When I made my soap with buttermilk the other day, I was swiftly reminded. Thank goodness these odors cure out.

 

[BrewerGeorge]

Yep, it's "supposed" to smell like that, and it goes away.

 

[sheilaohga]

It was late at night when I questioned (around 1am) and didn't think I would get much answers and I couldn't waste my 10lbs batch so I went ahead and finished it.
And now I am glad I did it after reading your kind & reassuring replies.
So this stinky smell is normal hehehe :mrgreen:
Just hope the cure angel comes and make it smell nice as my FO asap!!
Next time I will try to be more patient and use with fully frozen beer and slow mixing... my bad~~
Thank you all!!!

 

[beardguy]

Freezing or no freezing, it smells like death if you mix the beer and lye together :mrgreen:

 

[sheilaohga]

One more question, how do I know if the beer to turned no-alcohol or not?
I let it sit, boil.. I still see the frizz there.
After freezing I don't know..
Do I just assume there is no alcohol left or what?
Is there a way to really know if it's all good to use?
Thanks!

 

[BrewerGeorge]

One more question, how do I know if the beer to turned no-alcohol or not?
I let it sit, boil.. I still see the frizz there.
After freezing I don't know..
Do I just assume there is no alcohol left or what?
Is there a way to really know if it's all good to use?
Thanks!

I don't understand your question 100% because the alcohol doesn't have anything to do with the fizz.

But if you boiled it for a decent amount of time, you should be good. The goal is not to fully remove alcohol, but to decrease it. Full removal is impossible and you have to boil/simmer for 2-1/2 hours to get down to 5% of original. But a 15 minute boil will get you down to 40%, and considering your beer probably started at 5% or less the whole thing should end up around 2% or lower.

Ethanol boils in the low 170's (Farenheit, at sea level). Boiling a wine, for instance, the temp will rise until about 173F and start to boil as the alcohol evaporates. For a beer, driving away the CO2 carbonation will complicate things because CO2 will begin bubbling out as soon as you start heating things - and making foam, too.

 

[kchaystack]

One more question, how do I know if the beer to turned no-alcohol or not?
I let it sit, boil.. I still see the frizz there.
After freezing I don't know..
Do I just assume there is no alcohol left or what?
Is there a way to really know if it's all good to use?
Thanks!

If it actually got to a rolling boil, and you let it do so for several minutes, you can assume it is 99% gone. Alcohol boils at a lower temp than water, so by the time the water is boiling the alcohol has been vaporizing for a while. There might be some left - but it is such a small amount you can ignore it.

 

[sheilaohga]

Ignore my question.. maybe I didn't fully understand what I had to say 8)8)8)
But! You did and I fully understand what is going on now.
So the way I did it, my frozen beer should be good enough according to you (BG and KS).
Thank you so much!!

 

[BrewerGeorge]

If it actually got to a rolling boil, and you let it do so for several minutes, you can assume it is 99% gone. Alcohol boils at a lower temp than water, so by the time the water is boiling the alcohol has been vaporizing for a while. There might be some left - but it is such a small amount you can ignore it.

That's not actually true. The USDA has published tables detailing how much alcohol is left behind from different methods of removal, for cooking purposes. You'd be surprised how high some of them are.

Here's an example. The numbers in yellow are percent remaining.

 

[kchaystack]

That's not actually true. The USDA has published tables detailing how much alcohol is left behind from different methods of removal, for cooking purposes. You'd be surprised how high some of them are.

Here's an example. The numbers in yellow are percent remaining.

Fine I deleted my message

 

[aihrat]

That's not actually true. The USDA has published tables detailing how much alcohol is left behind from different methods of removal, for cooking purposes. You'd be surprised how high some of them are.

Here's an example. The numbers in yellow are percent remaining.

I've also heard this! However, I find that boiling the beverage down for a bit (I do 10 minutes) makes it such that the resulting liquid doesn't accelerate trace like an unboiled beverage. The reduction in alcohol from boiling, though not total, is still meaningful in soapmaking.