Deanna, I have a question...

[grayceworks]

I certainly hope I'm not the only soaper here that's not too chicken to hand stir

Actually, when I made my CP castile, I hand-stirred, because I was busy making another soap in the crockpot and stirring it a lot with the SB. And so when I dumped the lyewater in with the OO for the castile, I stirred it a couple times with the spatula, and figuring it was going to take a long time to trace anyhow, I let it sit for about 10-15 min while I continued working on the HP stuff and cleaning up after myself. Then I stirred again with the spatula for a few minutes, and let it sit again. Just did that on and off, and by the time my HP was done and ready to mold, my CP was ready also, both in less than an hour, and with only hand-stirring the CP.

I figured it was a result of just the OO taking that long to really start reacting with the lye, so that by the time it got a good reaction going, when I stirred it up again, it was ready to trace.

Ok, my order of OO just got cancelled because they ran out. ugh. I have enough for a small batch, so I'm just going to try it in the morning when I get home.

And find another good deal on OO somewhere.

 

[seven]

I certainly hope I'm not the only soaper here that's not too chicken to hand stir

hand stirring mine as we speak i dont have a wooden spoon for soaping. i swear i try to bargain with my mom to use hers but she wouldn't budge so, am using a spatula.. stirring in 1 direction..

my 1st batch is now 262 grams. in around 12 hrs, it has lost 14 gr of water.

btw, i am really happy that we now have a clearer picture of how this recipe is supposed to be handled. so guys, if you decide to try this, i just wanna say 1 thing: ditch your sb!

DeeAnna, i have a lil question about your 2nd batch that you did differently.. did it experience weeping in the mold? sorry if you already say this, i must've missed it.

my report after doing the 2nd batch... w/o the SB... at all...

only did a portion of the recipe:

300 gr pomace
300 gr water
57 gr lye
57 gr water

started at 6:20PM. by 40 mins, the batter is starting to thicken. if you're hand stirring, you can totally feel as it's getting heavier to stir. by 50 mins, trace starting to appear:

by 70 mins, thick trace:

at this point, still doubting whether i should pour. decided to stir it for another 10 mins and finally poured to my wooden mold.

like AM said, the stages were completely different. no separation, and the end batter also didn't look plasticky. it looked like a normal soap batter on a very thick trace. no soap sliding out of the container like the 1st batch (with SB). am praying hard it will stick together in the mold. i did everything as told by the recipe, except for the wooden spoon that i replaced by spatula.

also noticed the difference in color b/w my 2 batches. i was using pomace, and the oil was obviously dark yellow. with my 1st batch, the end batter was chalk white. 2nd batch, cream color, you can still see the yellow from the pomace.

i insulate the mold, with a towel, and placed a towel underneath just in case there's water dripping.

will report back with the progress.

the hand stirring was not so bad at all...

With all this experiments, I guess by the end of the month we'll have the best method to do this castile recipe . I really need to find a good batch of OO and try this too.

For the next step, maybe we can try different type of OO and see which one is best for this recipe? *make myself a batch of popcorn and see how many soapmaker mania here will try this*

i think the best method is already there in front of our eyes from the beginning. stick with the original recipe

different types of oo? that's interesting. i made mine with pomace, maybe next time i'll try evoo and compare the difference on how it feels on my skin. the original blog post did mention the old generations making it with used oil from frying.

 

[engblom]

I have been pondering about the saturated lye solution. I wonder if there is a risk in normal CP (with SF around 3-5% and water at 33-38% of the weight of the oil) soap to have a saturated lye solution without knowing it? Some are even soaping with 1:1 water:lye solution. When you have a saturated salt solution, and some evaporation happens, you begin to get salt grains at the bottom of the container. Would this happen inside of a normal soap? Like micro crystals of lye?

With this strange recipe, you have a lot more water and the solution is far from saturated in the beginning. Still some have got it saturated during the process and everything begun to separate.

 

[DeeAnna]

Nice soap, Seven!!! Thanks for the pics. That thick pudding-y pourable batter in your last photo was pretty much what my second batch looked like when I poured it into the mold.

"...DeeAnna, i have a lil question about your 2nd batch that you did differently.. did it experience weeping in the mold?..."

Nope, nary a drip. When I unmolded the soap, there was a film of liquid on parts of the sides and bottom of the log, but the dampness dried quickly and didn't return.

This morning, the soap from my second batch is clammy cool from evaporation. The soap is nicely firm -- not "rock hard" but not soft like fudge either. You could cut it easily, but it's not going to dent from being handled. The surface of the soap shows no zap today (it was zappy yesterday). That tells me the CO2 in the air is doing its magic, although there is no obvious ash layer so far.

"...I'm vaguely wondering how this would do with soaps that are mostly hard fats, or if this recipe would be best used with softer oils? ..."

Me too. My second batch was 30% lard, so I imagine this soap might give a hint of an answer to that question.

The other question I have -- does this method, if used with other soft oils, create lathery, non-slimy, non-gooey soaps that (let's ask for the moon here!) don't get DOS or otherwise get nasty and deteriorate with age?

 

[saeed76]

Laurel Bay soap ???SAP???

Dear friends,
i am new soap maker, i have here in my country lebanon a good quality of laurel bay oil, i would like to know how to make the laurel bay soap what is the best SAP value using cold process and what is the best water % used ???
please give me a hand.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Dear friends,
i am new soap maker, i have here in my country lebanon a good quality of laurel bay oil, i would like to know how to make the laurel bay soap what is the best SAP value using cold process and what is the best water % used ???
please give me a hand.

Hi Saeed

I'd suggest starting another thread on such a new topic - I know that there are a people on the forum who make aleppo soap, but I don't know if they check this thread too often.

 

[AnnaMarie]

I have been pondering about the saturated lye solution. I wonder if there is a risk in normal CP (with SF around 3-5% and water at 33-38% of the weight of the oil) soap to have a saturated lye solution without knowing it? Some are even soaping with 1:1 water:lye solution. When you have a saturated salt solution, and some evaporation happens, you begin to get salt grains at the bottom of the container. Would this happen inside of a normal soap? Like micro crystals of lye?

With this strange recipe, you have a lot more water and the solution is far from saturated in the beginning. Still some have got it saturated during the process and everything begun to separate.

That's an interesting point to consider, especially with a ratio of 1:1. I'm thinking the extra lye is just eaten up eventually over time given Kevin Dunn's work in this area.
Cheers!
Anna Marie

hand stirring mine as we speak i dont have a wooden spoon for soaping. i swear i try to bargain with my mom to use hers but she wouldn't budge so, am using a spatula.. stirring in 1 direction..

my 1st batch is now 262 grams. in around 12 hrs, it has lost 14 gr of water.

btw, i am really happy that we now have a clearer picture of how this recipe is supposed to be handled. so guys, if you decide to try this, i just wanna say 1 thing: ditch your sb!

DeeAnna, i have a lil question about your 2nd batch that you did differently.. did it experience weeping in the mold? sorry if you already say this, i must've missed it.

Lol! Good for you Seven!

oh my. i'm willing to bet all the soap i have on my curing racks that this new batch AM just did by hand stirring is gonna behave differently in the mold, no water pool, no nothing. i think the gentle hand stirring is the key to the perfect emulsification this soap needs.

no wonder the recipe mentioned nothing about SB. but at least the writer should've mentioned that the hand stirring is gonna take at least an hour. when i read that post, i honestly thought it's gonna take at least 5 hours or something.

You would win! This one did not leak a bunch of water. It wept only a tiny bit. My towels were dry and the freezer paper wasn't soaked and disintegrating. My loaf came out solid, creamy, and beautiful! Here is a picture of the cut bars:

 

[seven]

^^

yay! that looks perfect, AnnaMarie!

i just looked in to my 2nd batch, it seemed that there's a bit of gelling going on down there, in the middle. the mold felt nothing but a slight warm when i touched the sides, which is odd. all my other soaps were def hotter, but then, all about this soap is weird!

 

[newbie]

I unmolded my rubber ball soap last night because I could feel it getting a little warm (wasn't before so must have started right around the 24 hour mark) and I was not going through another gel disaster. It didn't unmold cleanly and I could actually see the folds of the soap that slithered into the mold in what bits stayed behind. Cut easily and was not soft. Today is very firm/hard, not a smidge of liquid. Cool to the touch but doesn't have a coating of ash either.

 

[seven]

in the spirit of group experiment and because i have no shame, i will show you my ugly soap from my 1st batch

it's finally ready to be cut, although still way softer than i normally would cut my other soaps. and i chose to cut it so it can have better air circulation. looks like something going on there in the middle (kinda like the middle bars from DeeAnna's 1st batch?). i poked at it, but there was not water. my guess is the soap is just in the process of drying up from all that water bath.

seriously, before i cut it, the whole thing looks like a giant tofu that flies from the 10th floor! LOL!

 

[AnnaMarie]

I'm going to use my ugly batch for laundry soap

 

[FlybyStardancer]

"...I'm vaguely wondering how this would do with soaps that are mostly hard fats, or if this recipe would be best used with softer oils? ..."

Me too. My second batch was 30% lard, so I imagine this soap might give a hint of an answer to that question.

The other question I have -- does this method, if used with other soft oils, create lathery, non-slimy, non-gooey soaps that (let's ask for the moon here!) don't get DOS or otherwise get nasty and deteriorate with age?

I'm debating whether my next batch of soap should be this method again with different oils (last time I was at the grocery store, I purchased some lard to play with), or if I should go back to a more "normal" method... Or maybe even try hp! I haven't hp'd a NaOH soap yet, only KOH...

 

[newbie]

That looks like that sandwich soap, Seven. It must have gelled inside but not managed the very outer parts. It will be interesting to see how this cures out. Does is tingle or zap on the outside and is the inside different? I'm guessing the inside will not but the outside might tingle, although I'm not ready to lay any money on the line.

 

[DeeAnna]

Hey there, Seven -- as one charter member to another, welcome to the super-lye-heavy super-ugly soap club! My first batch is awfully homely too, but's drying out well and I think it might be decent soap someday. Even the parts that were originally gooey are now reassuringly solid. I checked again today and all of this soap is not zappy, even in the middle of the bar that I cut apart to test. In 3 days of curing, the bars have lost an average of 12% of their original weight. That's a whole lot of evaporation goin' on!

 

[newbie]

I got permission to do a superfat swap, if anyone following this is interested in a comparison of superfat levels and what it does or doesn't do for soap. It's listed in the swap section.

 

[Lin]

I'm really interested in trying this but have no lye. I'm physically not going to be able to hand stir it though, so I'm thinking I'll try DeeAnna's second method with the 1:1 lye solution to trace and then stick blending in the rest of the water.

I'm curious to make this recipe, a batch with maybe 1% SF, and a batch with say 6% superfat and then compare them all at 6 and 12 months...

 

[btz]

I'm vaguely wondering how this would do with soaps that are mostly hard fats, or if this recipe would be best used with softer oils?

Oh, this sounds interesting. Since I don't have OO atm, I might try this with 100% coconut oil. If the water did not evaporate much during curing, I wonder if the extra water will prevent the soap from being too drying on skin. Will try to do small batch of this tonight or tomorrow if nothing urgent happen.

I wonder about the cure time though, will it be the same like the OO one?

The basic recipe for this is equal amount of water & oil, plus equal amount of water & lye and -45 superfat, right? Like the one DeAnna did here:

"...what soap calc are you all using to be getting these negative percentages and such?..."

You can do it in soapcalc, AnnaMarie. The original recipe, translated to grams is:

1 qt (868 g) olive oil
1 qt + 6 oz (1113 g) water
6 oz wt (170 g) NaOH

I just went to http://www.soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp and entered 868 g olive oil and kept entering in negative numbers in Section 4 where the Super Fat % can be changed. If you want more oil than lye (the usual) then put a positive number in. If you want more lye than oil (this recipe) then put a negative number in. I just kept trying different negative numbers until I got the same lye weight (170 g) as your recipe. Trial and error ended up about -45%.

I didn't bother with trying to make SoapCalc's water match this recipe, but I'd do it the same way.

 

[MzMolly65]

The other question I have -- does this method, if used with other soft oils, create lathery, non-slimy, non-gooey soaps that (let's ask for the moon here!) don't get DOS or otherwise get nasty and deteriorate with age?

I'm gagging to try this recipe as soon as I'm on my feet again. I want to try it with OO and then again with RBO and see how the two oils differ.

 

[Lin]

To me, this recipe with 100% coconut oil sounds like a really bad idea? Generally 100% coconut oil soaps need around 20% superfat because they're so cleansing. So why make one with a -40%? The only use I can think of would be laundry soap, in which case why not just make 0% SF coconut soap for laundry?

If the excess water didn't evaporate, the bar would still be lye heavy as opposed to the suggestion of less drying due to moisture content? Since the excess water is needed to carry the lye to the surface to react with CO2.

Or do you want to make a 100% coconut oil just for experimentation and not for skin use?

 

[DeeAnna]

I suspect this excess-lye technique may work the best for recipes heavy on the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids -- the fats with double bonds in their chemical backbone that are known to be slow to saponify. Lard has a fair amount of oleic acid in it, so I was willing to try it as a minor player along with the HO safflower.

The easy to saponify saturated fats, like palm kernel and coconut oil, might not benefit as much from this technique. But, hey, this is just a guess on my part -- I'm speaking more from a hunch and I realize I could easily be wrong.