Deanna, I have a question...

[FlybyStardancer]

Mine looks like a block of matte plastic, colored white and pink. I didn't test it to see how soft it was. Still no sign of soda ash.

Other than my first batch, all of my soaps have been taking forever to harden up. I have a loaf that is over two weeks old that I haven't sliced yet. I'm wondering if there's something wrong with my procedures, my scale, or my lye at this point. :/

DeeAnna, do you think mine would have gone through the same emulsification process as everyone else's if my lye was off? My lye isn't clumpy the way it's supposed to get when liquid gets in, but some of it has been clinging to the neck of the bottle.

 

[grayceworks]

I wonder what this would do HP instead of CP? *curious*

I know my HP regular castile recipe was not as slimy as my CP castile so far. My CP castile is rock-hard, covered on all sides in ash, and granted, only 6wks old, but very slimy. It also took several days to unmold, and even a couple days more to cut.

My HP has no ash, was set up and ready to cut by the time it had cooled, and was more bubbly and less slimy, at 1 week than my CP batch at 6wks, and now that the HP batch is at 6wks, it's a pleasure to use.

Which makes me wonder about this recipe -- what would it do in the crockpot? Pretty sure with that high of water, it would be close to as pourable as CP after the cook. Not sure how else a recipe like this would differ in HP though.

Noted that CPOP doesn't work, but with CPOP, you're not blending it back together as it tries to separate during the cooking, while in HP, whenever it tries to separate, you just blend the heck out if it 'til it behaves again. And I'm a frequent-stirrer, so that might have different results than a leave-it-alone-to-cook type might have.

Thoughts? I am low on OO though, so waiting on a shipment. (Just had to fix my spelling, I put shopment -- which is actually pretty accurate though lol)

Mine looks like a block of matte plastic, colored white and pink. I didn't test it to see how soft it was. Still no sign of soda ash.

Maybe yours won't ash too much. Maybe it won't ash till it's cut. Maybe it's just being slow. You should see if it's firm enough to unmold even if it might not be firm enough to cut.

If it hasn't separated, I'd say just let it take its time firming up, because if it's not separating, then it's doing SOMETHING soapy.

 

[AnnaMarie]

It's a mad, mad world

 

[FlybyStardancer]

gracey--Maybe I'm also being impatient. Patience is not my strong suite, despite what my aunt thinks! lol

I turned the vent over the stove on low, to hopefully help get some air movement in the kitchen. Today's not a good day for curing soaps, though. We're finally getting some actual rain. (The last storm that promised rain dumped it all on the North and East Bays, and left us in a rain shadow.)

I'm also wondering how much the additives I used are affecting my soap. Milk has natural emulsifiers in it, and honey is a humectant. Could they be helping hold the water in place? Who knows? I'll check for firmness tonight, at the 48-hour mark.

 

[newbie]

I think gelling is a VERY BAD idea for this soap. I have had mine warming slightly over a heating pad. It was put together all day and now I can feel it's softer and going into gel and there is lye water all over the place. I stuck it in the fridge. I think heat breaks up the emulsion.

 

[MzMolly65]

Best Thread Ever!!!

 

[Lin]

Flyby, I use a blue dye that morphs into purple. On a recent batch of soap, it was pink for over 48 hours and I was worried it wasn't going to morph into purple, but it finally did between 3 and 4 days.

 

[FlybyStardancer]

Thank you, Lin. Right now the soap's coloring is perfect for pink-loving girly girls... of which I am not. XD

 

[newbie]

I kind of hate this soap.

My soap from yesterday appears ruined by gel. Lost a significant amount of water and is much smaller. The sections that gelled have parted ways from the sections that did not. Zappy. There were strange thin flaps of soap that came away from the sides, like it was peeling.

I tried it again tonight, determined to conquer this recipe. This time I warmed up the oils and water and left the lye hot. Mixed in a glass container that retained heat. This time it took under two hours and that includes the half hour I left it to go get my son.

I used two different stick blenders so I could rest one while the other was running so it got SB'ed more than stirred. I wonder if too much SB keeps it from emulsifying or helps it, since I SB a lot and other people seem to SB 30 sec and stir for 5 min.

This time it got much thicker before it separated than my other two times. It separated and was very difficult to SB back together because it was so very thick, much thicker than the other two times. The first two times, it was easy to stir, easy to pour, easy to work with. This time, it was like a ball of dough and rolled around in the bowl like a ball bearing. It was a lot of work to get color incorporated into it, unlike the other two times. There was no pouring at all; it was more like a leach slipping into the mold. This is just like AM described- like the whole thing was gliding on a layer of oil, which I hadn't experienced the other two times. Why the difference?

There will be no gel, unless I have a moment of stupid, which has been known to happen. I may just stow this on top the fridge for 3 days so I can't poke and prod and get too impatient.

My one good half batch is cut and at day two. Bars went from 5 ounces to 4.4 ounces. Still tingly.

 

[grayceworks]

I kind of hate this soap.

My soap from yesterday appears ruined by gel. Lost a significant amount of water and is much smaller. The sections that gelled have parted ways from the sections that did not. Zappy. There were strange thin flaps of soap that came away from the sides, like it was peeling.

Did it looks like this castille?




***NOT MY PICS -- found this image posted by Lilli over at thedishforum a year or so ago in a troubleshooting thread there.

She mentioned it was Cold Gel, which I am thinking means it was cold on the outside but still gelled in the middle? It wasn't explained further, so I'm not sure if that's what she meant or not. It was a perfect even layer all the way around all sides of the soap that peeled away in the series of pics. Showed a cut pic of a cross-section showing a gel-like custard-y layer in the middle and the ungelled edges of the soap, they really did look like lemon-tarts.

 

[DeeAnna]

If anyone has asked me a question in this thread and I haven't answered it, please let me know. The posts are flying fast 'n furious, and I might be missing bits here and there.

I tried a second batch tonight with a couple of twists.

I don't normally soap with olive, and the olive I use for cooking is too expensive to soap with. DH kindly bought me a liter of olive for my first batch, but I hadn't restocked more. My first twist is that I didn't use olive -- I used a blend of 70% high oleic safflower and 30% lard that is surprisingly close to olive, at least as far as the fatty acid composition. The other twist is that I saponified the fats with a 50:50 lye solution to heavy trace, then stirred the extra water into the soap batter at that point.

My recipe:
300 g lard
700 g high oleic safflower
197 g NaOH
1197 g water, split into 197 g for the starting lye solution and 1000 g for blending into the soap at trace,

Lye excess -40% approximately.
NaOH solution concentration 14.2% based on ALL the water in the recipe.

I made a 50:50 NaOH:water solution with 197 g of each. I gently heated the lard until it was barely melted and mixed it into the safflower. Added the hot lye solution. Initial batter temperature was 132 deg F (56 C). Stick blended and hand mixed to heavy trace. What I mean by heavy trace is the point where the batter is still fluid and pourable, but the spatula leaves obvious, long-lasting ridges and valleys -- like a medium-thick gravy.

This took about 90-95 minutes. I took a couple of breaks in there. I'm not actually too sure you need to stir all the time, so a break or three is not going to change matters much. The batter up to this point acted very much like a regular soap batter, just super slow moving. I use lard and HO safflower all the time, and I was expecting a faster trace than the olive, but this blend took roughly the same time or even a bit more.

At this point, I took a deep breath and started to mix the additional 1000 g of water into the batter. It was surprisingly easy. I didn't use the stick blender at all after the first addition or two. There was a sharp 20 degree rise in temperature in response to the first addition of water -- after at 95 minutes, there was still plenty of lye left to react with the water and heat things up! I added the water in 5 or 6 stages, mixing the batter well each time. I kept checking for a water layer underneath the soap, but that didn't happen -- the batter absorbed the whole amount of water. And this was just with hand mixing using a spatula, no stick blender. As I added more and more water, the batter turned from a normal soap batter into that plastic-y fluffy shiny gelatinous stuff we've been talking about.

When all the water was into the soap, I poured the batter into the same mold I used for my first batch. I did not cover, I did not insulate, and I most definitely did not CPOP. Just set the mold in a steel pan (to catch any liquid should the emulsion fail) and covered the top of the mold with a wire rack for safety's sake. The temperature at pour was about 90 deg F (32 C).

Two hours start to finish. I'm pooped -- time for bed! We'll see what the morning brings.

My first olive oil batch made on the 25th is definitely not lye heavy. I split one bar tonight and zap checked the middle. Zero zap. Nothing. Lather is thin and not very bubbly. It looks more like thin hand lotion, rather than soap lather.

edit: Added text from Post #171, so all the info for this trial is in one spot:

Soap #2 update. This is the one with the blend of 30:70 lard:high oleic safflower that approximates the fatty acid profile of olive.

I didn't insulate the wood mold; just left it on the kitchen counter overnight. I did put a wire mesh cooling rack on top to keep curious cats from getting into trouble. This morning, no obvious separation, no weeping, no draining. The top is still quite zappy. The center of the log is 81 deg F (27 C) in a 65 F (18 C) house, so there is still saponification going on. I'm going to leave the mold alone today and do some more checking this evening.

I saved a couple of samples -- #1 of the batter at thick trace before adding the extra water and #2 of the batter as it went into the mold. Sample #1 is still a thick but pourable pudding -- about like it was last night. Sample #2 has set up, but is still rather soft and tender. Not sure what this is telling me, but I'll see what happens to the samples as the day goes on.

 

[FlybyStardancer]

Sounds like an exciting adventure, DeeAnna! It'll be interesting to see if/how it works with different oils!

I did ask a non-vital question back at post #145. It's not critical, but I'm trying to figure out how my soap experiments are acting like they are.

 

[engblom]

Lather is thin and not very bubbly. It looks more like thin hand lotion, rather than soap lather.

Could this be because of the soda formed? The same happens to the soaps I am salting out and I suspect in my case it is because of the extra salt content.

 

[AnnaMarie]

Since we are testing lather I brought out one of my month old bars to try out. No zaps, burns, stings- it felt quite mild. When it first got wet it was initially slimy with a thin jelly layer, but that went away quickly and voila- the lovely lather I remember. I will look forward to seeing the pics of your modified recipe DeeAnna. Boy, I feel like a troublemaker! I had no idea one little post would turn into all of this, but it sure is fun I'm going to make the same recipe tomorrow, but pour thicker so as to get my creamy and pretty bars
Cheers!
Anna Marie

I'm wondering if the initial slime was glycerin? No goo though at all. Bar is still nice and hard.

 

[btz]

Seeing all the pic makes me want to try too. But it's so hard to find reliable olive oil supplier here. I heard that pomace is the best for soaping, is it true? The one I can find in my local supermarket are Pietro Coricelli (Italy) and Dougo (Spain), but since I heard about the OO scandal, I never buy OO again and switched to RBO and CO for cooking. I'm seriously considering it now though.

BTW, has anyone try making it without SB all the way through? Seeing the time it takes to mix, more than an hour in most cases, shouldn't manual stirring with spoon or whisk be enough for the recipe?

 

[FlybyStardancer]

Did my 48 hour check. Weight is down about 10g now... It didn't seem as soft as yesterday, and the top definitely LOOKS drier. Wasn't willing to test unmolding, though. And the accent color may have taken on a slightly barely orange tinge, but it was hard to tell because all of the lights that were on have yellow tones to them. (I have an aquarium with a daylight bulb near it, but that's on a timer.) Still no obvious ash.

btz-- Pomace OO is definitely cheaper, though whether or not it's 'better' depends on who you ask and their reasons why! It also has a different SAP value than the other olive oils. I didn't use my SB constantly, but it came in real handy when this recipe separated and needed to be brought back into emulsion at the end of the mixing period. I also don't think it would have gone into an emulsion at the beginning of the mix without help from the SB.

 

[grayceworks]

Only 48hr mark? If you're having trouble with your regular soaps firming up also, might just need to wait a bit longer for unmolding. My CP castile with a normal amount of water took quite a while to unmold. And I'm very impatient, so it was horrible waiting. lol

I don't know for sure how milk or honey would affect this recipe. I know others have used them in their castiles before, but I only use them in a bastile oatmeal soap I make by HP method, so I'm not much help there.

Airflow will help. Just keep checking on it, on the soap itself, not necessarily the drips on the sides of the mold...

 

[FlybyStardancer]

I'm sure it has to do partly with low hardness values (not using palm, and haven't used any animal oils so far, so it's only been CO and butters to add hardness), and partly to do with lack of gel. It's driving me crazy... I had one loaf that I left in the mold for a week, and let sit out of the mold for over another week before finally cutting it today... Still got insane DDM.

I was mostly worried about mine because others were having theirs harden up within 24 hours, and that's where mine seemed to differ. But again, there are many variables between mine and the others who followed the original recipe more closely. Can't pin it down to just one thing.

 

[grayceworks]

Hmm. Now I'm really curious about your soap recipes and stuff. I mostly HP, and most of my CP soaps gel. Like I mentioned, the one CP castile I didn't gel took a while to firm up and longer before cutting.... but not quite that long...

[thread=42707]You have a thread open about this already though,[/thread] right? I'm gonna bump it back up to the top for ya so we can all do more brainstorming.

 

[seven]

wow wow wow, DeeAnna, that is very interesting what you've done! esp the different method about mixing the extra water after trace has happened. i am going to try this method tonight.

okay, my current state of soap is full of soda ash on all sides. stupid me didn't think to weight the water loss since i unmold it. but let's begin now, which is day 2 since unmolding... the soap split in 2 when it fell to the sink (oops! it looks horrendous, LOL!), i took a smaller piece and it weighs 276 gr. will record again later. it's getting more harder, but slow process.

should've seen the look on my mom's face when she saw the soap on its current state at the end she just nodded.. i don't think she understands about heavy lye excess and gooey castile and so on, LOL!