Deanna, I have a question...

[AnnaMarie]

Thank you for those words DeeAnna. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said. I, too, have enjoyed this experiment. Now, just for fun, I would encourage those interested to try the recipe as is in the same method. I think you'll find it enjoyable.
I just went to check my soap- no gel phase or anything. In fact, looking at it both in the wood mold and in the small silicone molds I think this one is going to take a while to set. I will report the progress. I'm excited to see the results!
Cheers!
Anna Marie
Ps- tonight is really a hot cocoa and peppermint schnapps night!

 

[Lin]

I can venture a good guess about the color not morphing from pink to purple. That most likely has to do with the unusually dilute NaOH solution in the finished batter. Although there is a large total amount of lye left in the batter, that lye is not very concentrated.

Here's an analogy: You're in a big football stadium with 1000s of fans. In the bleachers, people are crowded together. Out on the field, the players have lots of room. But there's still 50,000 people in the stadium. Your chances of bumping up against another person is pretty high in the bleacher area and pretty small out on the field. Translate that to a pink color molecule looking for an NaOH molecule so she can morph from pink into purple. The molecule's chances of finding an NaOH partner are much better with concentrated lye.

Btw, the pink and purple was actually my soap which wasn't this recipe. In a recent batch I used a blue dye that morphs into purple as one of my colors. At 48 hours in though that section of the soap was still pink, and not purple. I was beginning to think I'd be stuck with pink. It wasn't until after the 3 day mark when it morphed into purple. So I was saying to not give up yet on the red to orange morph when it had only been a day.

But I'd be interested to know why it might have taken so long for my color to morph, in a normal recipe without an excess of water or lye. The surface wasn't zappy at all while it was still pink.

 

[newbie]

Grayce, no, mine did not look like that kind of cool sandwich soap. Mine gelled on the bottom but not the top because I cooled it and it broke or is cracked at the gel line. The bottom is not tingly and top still zaps. This one lost a lot of lye water so it's about 3/4 of an inch shorter than it should be. See pic.

The one I made last night is holding its own, no water or weeping and the top zaps. I covered it with wax paper but decided to take that off tonight and cover with last years calendar, in keeping with the old ways. Wax paper might be too impermeable, perhaps. I can pull the walls away but it's clearly still soft and sticky so I'll wait until tomorrow to try again.

Anne Marie, it sounds like your soap never broke. Do you just judge when it's done based on the sheen and consistency? The breaking was one thing that I found helpful because prior to that, the soap would be very thick and tracing by all standards, but did not have the high-gloss. I loved how workable the first two times were. Last night's ball of rubber had some potential for designs but was a more difficult soap to work with.

Figures I managed to do this soap the hardest way possible, by stick blending so much.

 

[Tienne]

I can see your point about the hand stirring, AnnaMarie. If I hadn't done it myself, I would never have believed a whole liter of water would meekly blend into the soap batter with just hand stirring. But it did. I'm still surprised by that, but it worked.

edit: I'm all for learning and using traditional methods too, but I also want to know the "whys" behind the tradition. I want to know, not only for my own learning and enjoyment, but also because I want to better understand the people who learned how to do things in ways that eventually became codified as tradition.

I also want to know the whys and my original comment about the hand-stirring being important came about by thinking about the thixotropic nature of the soap batter. When you all got to that emulsion stage that was proven to be fragile, then to me, stick blending just logically didn't seem to me to be the best way to go.

In the same frame of mind, to me, reading the recipe, told me that the precise measurements of the oils, water and lye were not the important ffactor, being that the measurements were by volume and therefore most likely highly variable. So what was "left" was the WAY the soap was mixed. So it's not that I am superstitious or just a pushover for tradition or uninterested in the hows and whys, but I just chose to approach the problem by using the available information to deduce what seemed to me to be a plausible idea,worthy of investigation and it was worthy, seeing that hand-stirring does indeed seem to be working.

 

[MzMolly65]

That was my thinking right from the beginning. "If it ain't broke don't try and fix it" and that there must have been a reason for the recipe and instructions to be as they were.

Keeping in mind that *sometimes* the way they did it became what is known as superstitious behaviour. As in, it worked when I did it that way so I've always done it that way .. but sometimes no true connection to the method and the results.

I recall a story of a woman who always cut an inch off the top of her pot roast before putting it in the oven. When asked why, her response was, "My mother always did it that way". She then asked her mother why they did it that way and her mother replied, "Your Granny has always done it like that." So they went back to the Grandmother and asked her the reason for trimming the inch off the roast and Grandmother's reply was, "Because my pot is too small."

Doing things the old way can be the best way .. asking why is still smart. Which is why I love this group and this thread. Everyone exploring the why of it and then with a shrug saying, "just do as your told" LOL. Too funny!

 

[Tienne]

Keeping in mind that *sometimes* the way they did it became what is known as superstitious behaviour. As in, it worked when I did it that way so I've always done it that way .. but sometimes no true connection to the method and the results.

I recall a story of a woman who always cut an inch off the top of her pot roast before putting it in the oven. When asked why, her response was, "My mother always did it that way". She then asked her mother why they did it that way and her mother replied, "Your Granny has always done it like that." So they went back to the Grandmother and asked her the reason for trimming the inch off the roast and Grandmother's reply was, "Because my pot is too small."

Doing things the old way can be the best way .. asking why is still smart. Which is why I love this group and this thread. Everyone exploring the why of it and then with a shrug saying, "just do as your told" LOL. Too funny!

I completely agree! Except the way I see it is, that my suggestion to handstir was dismissed off hand, because we have always stickblended (= cut the top inch off of the roast) and that has always worked and so therefore we'll poo poo what is new and weird-sounding and continue to cut the top inch off (stickblend) because that has always been "the tradition".

You see what I mean?

 

[btz]

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*

 

[DeeAnna]

Here is the soap from my second recipe.

"...Except the way I see it is, that my suggestion to handstir was dismissed off hand, because we have always stickblended..."

Goodness! This thread is only 5 days old, over 200 comments have been made in that short time, and only a few of the contributors to this thread are actually making this soap in addition to living the rest of our lives. You made a good suggestion, as have others, and experience is showing your suggestion has merit. I think that is a good thing!

 

[newbie]

DeeAnna, this is one that wept, is it not? I can't keep track of who has had which result in which batch.

This is from my first batch. The light green one is the one I caught in time and which went back together without problems. The pink one is the one that was completely separated and then had the big pocket of lye water underneath it. The batches were equal in size so the size difference is just from the water loss. You can see how much more spongy it is at what was the top of the mold. The bars are all top down, meaning the top of the mold is the bottom edge of the bars. They all still tingle if I leave my tongue on the bars but there is no zap.

I should add that the top of the pink bars is still soft and smears easily, as you can see.

 

[Lin]

newbie: her first recipe was the one that wept, where it drained into her oven and later the sink I believe. She said the photo was her second recipe, where she stuck in a pan just in case but it did not. The second recipe was the one where she combined the oil and lye mixture to a heavy trace, and then added the additional water.

 

[FlybyStardancer]

Is it easy to tell when it's reached the proper trace when hand-stirring? That would be my concern. The break-and-re-emulsify is a hand tell-tale that you've reached true trace with this recipe.

And I'm about to go weigh my slab, and then see about unmolding and cutting. I *think* I should be able to.

DeeAnna, is the NaOH concentration, and thus the pH, really lower in this recipe, even with the lye excess? I think that's the part I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around!

 

[AnnaMarie]

Grayce, no, mine did not look like that kind of cool sandwich soap. Mine gelled on the bottom but not the top because I cooled it and it broke or is cracked at the gel line. The bottom is not tingly and top still zaps. This one lost a lot of lye water so it's about 3/4 of an inch shorter than it should be. See pic.

The one I made last night is holding its own, no water or weeping and the top zaps. I covered it with wax paper but decided to take that off tonight and cover with last years calendar, in keeping with the old ways. Wax paper might be too impermeable, perhaps. I can pull the walls away but it's clearly still soft and sticky so I'll wait until tomorrow to try again.

Anne Marie, it sounds like your soap never broke. Do you just judge when it's done based on the sheen and consistency? The breaking was one thing that I found helpful because prior to that, the soap would be very thick and tracing by all standards, but did not have the high-gloss. I loved how workable the first two times were. Last night's ball of rubber had some potential for designs but was a more difficult soap to work with.

Figures I managed to do this soap the hardest way possible, by stick blending so much.

When it's a solid block it's done :-D And yes, breaking has never been an issue with this one- it only gets harder. I can't wait till my phenol-whatchamacallit gets here and then I will test the Ph.
Cheers!
Anna Marie

 

[AnnaMarie]

Is it easy to tell when it's reached the proper trace when hand-stirring? That would be my concern. The break-and-re-emulsify is a hand tell-tale that you've reached true trace with this recipe.

And I'm about to go weigh my slab, and then see about unmolding and cutting. I *think* I should be able to.

DeeAnna, is the NaOH concentration, and thus the pH, really lower in this recipe, even with the lye excess? I think that's the part I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around!

Yes, it was easy to tell. I used the old drizzle test, and when I first started seeing faint lines I was like "what?" "It's only been a half hour. That can't be." But several minutes later it was only too obvious I had hit trace when thickened lines of soap lay across the top. I think this is a "walk in faith" recipe because we've become so used to our rules and safety precautions- all of which are good, but sometimes aren't the best way
Cheers!
Anna Marie

 

[AnnaMarie]

Okay, thank goodness for Google -- here's the blog entry I was thinking about: http://www.soapqueen.com/business/goatsmilk-soap-judging-2/

And here's the quote I was trying to remember:

"...It is amazing how badly we rated some of the bars for lather and residue. Those same bars scored poorly on the water absorption test as well, absorbing much more than the suggested 5-15% rate. The fact that, scientifically from a water-absorption rate, these bars were poor coincided impressively with our subjective ratings on lather, residue and feeling when using...."

Btw, my other handmade soaps came through with a very respectable 6% water absorption rate. I really don't think the castile absorbs one molecule of water!

Did it looks like this castille?
View attachment 6339

View attachment 6340

***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.

That looks yummy! I need a fork and cup of tea.

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

 

[FlybyStardancer]

Okay, I think I waited too long to cut! Edges crumbled, which is the sign that you've waited too long, right? lol Overcompensating for how long my other soaps have taken to get to cutting consistency, no doubt.

It's still only lost 24g of water since I made it! That's just shy of 4% of the total water weight. I'm saving the crumbles to mix into something else. lol Maybe use it to make LS trace sooner, maybe toss into a rebatch attempt, maybe use for a confetti soap...

I stuck my bars out in the back room, where I don't go every day, so I won't be tempted to be constantly checking on them! But the walls it shares with the kitchen and living room are mostly glass, so I can easily check on them by sight.

Yes, it was easy to tell. I used the old drizzle test, and when I first started seeing faint lines I was like "what?" "It's only been a half hour. That can't be." But several minutes later it was only too obvious I had hit trace when thickened lines of soap lay across the top. I think this is a "walk in faith" recipe because we've become so used to our rules and safety precautions- all of which are good, but sometimes aren't the best way

Neat! So then hand-stirring would make it easier to do colorwork with this recipe... lol

 

[DeeAnna]

Newbie: Lin is right -- the last picture I posted is of my second batch made with HO safflower and lard. It's the one that didn't weep or break. I'd say it's more like your green batch. My first batch that did weep is more like your pink batch, complete with "swayback" tops and small bubbles. That batch is very homely, but I think it will be nice soap someday.

In Recipe 2, I did use a stick blender and averaged maybe 30 seconds of SB'ing for every 5 minutes of hand stirring. In hindsight, it wouldn't have made much difference if I'd put the dang SB away. As the hour and a half went on, my SB got warmer and warmer, so I started stirring even more and SB'ing less. This soap is classic pale ivory -- as pretty as a simple, plain soap can be. The bars are still definitely zappy, but not nearly as super "hot" as I was guessing they'd be, knowing how much excess lye there is in this recipe. I'm happy with how they turned out, and I'm eager to see how they cure out.

AnnaMarie: Do your cured soaps float in water? I'm guessing they do, but can you confirm? I suspect my Recipe 2 bars might be light enough to float once they're cured.

 

[AnnaMarie]

Nope, DeeAnna, neither floats. I just tested and both sank.

 

[DeeAnna]

Drat!

 

[AnnaMarie]

Interesting note on soap in mold progress:
Soap in insulated wood mold is now sweating and hardening up nicely. Doesn't look like it ever gelled.
Soap in individual silicone molds, non insulated, are still soft and mushy.

- my thinking is that the sweating process helps this soap along both in getting rid of excess lye water and in setting the soap up.

Soap Myth Busters​

Lye is your friend
Man (or woman) vs stick blender
Insulation and the end result
Stirring the same direction: hocus pocus or science?
Super fat or super thin?

 

[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?