DOS! Worse with avocado oil?

[carebear]

And finally, to answer another question ("that's a lot of soap, what are you doing with it?"): I made a lot of soap and took some to a small craft show. My expectations were a bit too high, but I did rather well nevertheless - made 11 times the table fee; most of my stuff smells pretty good and people like the other qualities of my soaps -- lather, hardness, etc. Please don't chastise me for selling after only four months; I've done lots of small batches and had a couple of "educational disasters", but I am diligent and curious and it is going very well overall. I still have a lot of soap, though <sad>. But I wanted to do a show or two early on to see if this could be a viable business. So far, so good...

Not chastising you, but rather a bit of advice - that "so far so good" could kick you in the teeth when customers take the soap home and find that it does develop DOS in their homes (and yes, olive oil IS DOS prone) or they find other issues iwth it or they just don't like it because castile soaps aren't marvelous when they are new (much better after many weeks - with 8 weeks being my absolute minimum). Jumping the gun can cost you customers - if people aren't satisfied they will never come back, even if you get better. So until you know about the long term stability and performance of your soap, I'd not sell.

 

[Lady Scrubbins]

Thanks for the selling advice everyone. I have the same concerns. But I'm also much more comfortable with my older batches. You're supposed to get better with experience, not worse...

I planned to do two, but I've done only one show, it was a marketing research test. Not only was I testing the market, I was testing myself to see if I could do it (I'm a bit of an introvert, but not horribly so). It was a church basement sale, attendance was probably about 300. All the soap that I took to that show was fine, it was at seven to twelve weeks old. I interacted with the crowd just fine also. Then I took a step back to re-stock and do paperwork. Selling plans are certainly on hold now.

Like I said, I still have a lot of the older soap left <sadness>, and it is all still just fine. The older batches used about 15% coconut oil and no avocado, so they cured a bit faster. They are not significantly harder now than they were at the time, so I'm fairly sure they were done.

This problem has only cropped up in batches made after that show. I'm beginning to think it is two problems: the brown spots are milkfat particles or some other oil-based issue. I don't think they are true DOS because they show up within 48 hours. The black specks are contamination, probably one or more of my EOs. I'll be filtering them tonight if I can find a stainless funnel.

I use Myenberg milk and freeze it before mixing with the lye - it never gets above about 85F during the mix. I get my food-grade lye from Essential Depot (I did find one tiny black speck in it one time, hmmm...). I get my coconut, castor and avocado from WSP and OO from Costco. Recently, I have been getting my EO from New Directions, but my older batches all had EO from WSP.

I really don't want to point the finger at ND or ED until I figure out the issue, though. Anyone else had contamination issues with any of these?

 

[carebear]

never had a problem with specks from EOs. The black one could have been that, but again I think it more likely some dust got into something at your end.

the orange speck is milk. truly.

 

[Lady Scrubbins]

OK, so the brown dot is milk. I can live with that.

But the black speck bothered me, so I did an investigation, and here's what I found:

I put oils from two of the three vendors I buy from (two from New Directions, one from Essential Wholesale) through a coffee filter.

All three had detritus in them, but not very much.

The cedar had three little black specks in 7 fl. oz. of oil.
Cinnamon leaf had a couple of little brown threads, in 14 oz of oil.
Dark Patchouli had three small brown flakes in 10 oz of oil.

My theory is that they never showed up in my earlier batches perhaps because I hadn't gotten to the bottom of the containers. Another simple explanation is that the earlier batches simply had un-contaminated oils. A third theory is that I just got lucky and didn't pour off one of the contaminants. Theory four says they have almost always been there, but never showed up on the surface of the soaps and so went undetected. Probably all of these are true to some extent and in various combinations.

I will continue to filter my EOs before I use them, but this was enough to convince me I'm not shedding, or otherwise doing something to contaminate my batches. It's good to know these are natural components. I will probably also discover that some oils are more prone to this, and some are not.

I feel a lot better now, and I really appreciate all the input from everyone.