Failed Again *Sigh*

[Ttennis]

I made another batch of soap (tried). It didn't come out good at all. I used goat milk, that was frozen, and lye slowly added, also in an ice bath. I think the milk still got too hot. It looked good in the mold, but the next day it was cracked on top. When I tried to cut it, it was a crumbly mess. I obviously missed something somewhere. What makes it crumble apart? And what do I do with it now? I'm getting so discouraged. I'm not good at percentage of this and percentage of that. I try to follow a spelled out recipe, like 20 oz of olive oil, 20 oz. of palm oil, etc..

 

[Dawni]

Hard to say without a complete recipe but maybe you just waited too long to cut?

 

[Ttennis]

Hard to say without a complete recipe but maybe you just waited too long to cut?

It was about 24 hours

 

[BattleGnome]

Most of my soaps are cut after 12 hours but if I don’t gel my soaps they can take up to a week.

if you can, babysit your soap. Check every 2 hours. You’re looking for a firm cheese-texture (think cheddar). If you’re crumbling at 24 hours I’d bet the 8 or 12 hour mark will give you better cuts.

the cracking on top is most likely overheating due to the sugars in your milk but I can’t be sure without a method or recipe. You don’t have to work in % if you don’t want to, just give us the notes you write for yourself. If anyone needs clarification they’ll ask.

We often use % as a theoretical. Everyone has different sized molds so it gives us the opportunity to talk about a recipe without everyone buying the same exact equipment. If that’s not how your mind works you can mental math convert it to a 100g recipe and think 20g olive oil, 20g lard, or whatever (but it’s perfectly fine if you don’t think that way, there are billions of people in the world and everyone of those people have their own way of processing)

 

[KiwiMoose]

If you haven't made much soap yet - perhaps give the goat milk a miss for a while and just perfect a fairly plain recipe until you've gotten the hang of it?

 

[shunt2011]

Are you running your recipe through a lye calculator? Post your exact recipe as well as the liquid and lye amount and any additives. Then we can help you more.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

In addition to the suggestions above, are you measuring the ingredients by weight, not volume? I also find that working/thinking in grams makes using percentages a lot easier.

For example, this recipe for 1000 g of fats:
450 grams of olive oil in 1000 grams of fats total = 450 g/1000 g = 45% olive oil
300 grams of palm in 1000 grams of fats total = 300 g/1000 g = 30% palm oil
200 grams of coconut oil in 1000 grams of fats total = 200 g/1000 g = 20% coconut oil
50 grams of castor oil in 1000 grams of fats total = 50 g/1000 g = 5% castor oil

 

[Carly B]

I would agree with @KiwiMoose --if you are new to soaping, get a few good batches under your belt before you try tricky things like milk soaps.

That being said, I use powdered goatsmilk mixed directly into my oils before I add the lye water, and I have never had a problem. I use goatsmilk powder in almost all my soaps.

 

[cmzaha]

I am a little late here but was also going to mention to nix the Goat's milk soap, and just make a plain soap. I know many think gm soap is the greatest soap there is but honestly, I have never found it brings anything great to the party, but label appeal and a bar of soap just as nice can be made with simple water and basic oils. For folks that have goats and want to use up the milk, it makes sense.

Soap can crumble like that is cut too soon, too late, or if it is lye heavy. Did you use a soap calculator for your recipe?

 

[penelopejane]

You might also try making much smaller test soaps until you perfect your technique. 500g of oils is a good starting point which will give you four bars.

what was your recipe?

 

[penelopejane]

What was your recipe?
Was it another HP? Did you add enough water this time?

it you run a recipe through SoapCalc you can change it from percentages to ounces or grams really easily and you can check your lye and water amounts are correct.

Recipes from the internet can be wrong.

 

[Kathy boyce]

This happened to me a couple of times with goats milk. It turns out I let the temperature of the lye and oil get to cool (85 degrees). Now I soap at 90 and never have this problem. Then I put in the freezer over night so it doesn't gel, remove from mold and cut 24 hours later.

 

[TheGecko]

I made another batch of soap (tried). It didn't come out good at all. I used goat milk, that was frozen, and lye slowly added, also in an ice bath. I think the milk still got too hot. It looked good in the mold, but the next day it was cracked on top. When I tried to cut it, it was a crumbly mess. I obviously missed something somewhere. What makes it crumble apart? And what do I do with it now? I'm getting so discouraged. I'm not good at percentage of this and percentage of that. I try to follow a spelled out recipe, like 20 oz of olive oil, 20 oz. of palm oil, etc..

The cracking often comes from the soap getting too hot. Crumbling looks like you used a lot of TD in your soap. If your milk got too hot, it would discolor to shades of brown.

My GMS recipe:
40% Olive Oil
20% Coconut Oil
20% Palm Oil
15% Shea Butter
5% Castor Oil
1 tea Kaolin PPO
1 tea Sodium Lactate PPO

Don't let you lye solution get above 75 degrees, let it sit and cool back down before you add a little more lye...takes a little longer to mix it, but you get a creamy looking solution.

While the lye solution is cooling, I melt my CO and PO in the microwave; start with a minute, then 30 increments after that stirring each time. I don't want my oils to get too hot. Once they are melted, I then add my Shea Butter that has been chopped up and melt it with the heat form the CO/PO. I then add the Castor and Olive Oils, Clay and FO (I don't color my GMS). I like my soft oils to be around 80 - 90 degrees. And my lye/GM solution with SL to be around 75 degrees when I mix them.

I start my stirring my batter with a whisk and then use a stick blender. Because I make small batches (2lbs), it only takes a minute or so to get to a medium trace. I choose medium trace because I soap at a lower temp and it's easy to confuse a false trace.

Because it's February in the Pacific Northwest, I lightly cover my mold and put it in the garage (when the weather warms up to 65+, my GMS will go into the frig). Because it's cold, I usually leave my GMS in the garage for a couple of days and then I bring it into the house and let it warm up to room temp before unmolding. I then cover with a kitchen towel and cut it the next day.

Get yourself a couple of 1lb molds and start with 16% total oils...you'll get four nice size bars.

 

[Ttennis]

I've made several batches of different soaps. The 2 hot process soaps I made didn't quite work. I've had some goat milk soaps work and some not. For this last batch I tripled the recipe to fit in a 4 lb. soap mold.

All ingredients were measured on scale
23.7 oz. frozen goat milk
10.2 oz. lye
24 oz. CO
24 oz. Palm Oil shortening
24 oz Olive Oil
2 oz. Fragrance oil

I think the goat milk did get too hot, but obviously I missed something else too.
I've always waited 24 hrs. to cut my soap (that's what I was told)

 

[Mobjack Bay]

I ran your recipe through SoapCalc and didn’t see any problems (see attached). With that much palm and coconut oil and the addition of milk (which has some sugar in it) it should be relatively quick to warm up and saponify, but it would also depend on your working temperature and how much you mixed it. I know that you don’t want it to heat up much because of the goat milk, but a little heat generation will tell you that saponification is starting. Sometimes when I work at a relatively low temperature (80s to 90s) with a soap batter that is at thin emulsion rather than light or medium trace, my soap only heats up a tiny bit and then it needs extra time in the mold to harden up. If I try to take it out of the mold too soon it is soft and crumbly, especially at the bottom. Based on your photos, the soap looks soft and crumbly, so one possibility is that you just need to leave the soap in the mold for another day or two. I’ve also had issues where the emulsion was too weak to make good soap. Although it didn’t separate in the mold, the soap took longer to harden and looked more grainy than a soap made with batter that was mixed to a heavier emulsion or trace. Another thing you could try is bringing the batter to a higher emulsion or light trace (if that’s not what you’re doing now). I make goat milk soaps in individual cavity molds that I put in the frig to keep cool, but for those I mix the batter to a solid light trace before I pour them. The last thing I can think of is that you are experiencing false trace. That could happen if the soap is too cool for the palm oil to stay liquid. The solution for that is to work at a higher temperature or stick blend a bit more. It might be easier to work things out using water instead of goat milk because you won’t need to worry about keeping the goat milk cold. You could also experiment with small batches. If you don’t have a small box, you can use a milk carton or any small box you have around the house as a mold.

 

[shunt2011]

You're recipe looks fine, however, don't make such large batches. When they fail that's a lot of waste and expense. And that's way more oils than a 4 lb mold. I make 58 oz batches and I sell.

 

[RDak]

If you haven't made much soap yet - perhaps give the goat milk a miss for a while and just perfect a fairly plain recipe until you've gotten the hang of it?

This......stay away from the milk for now and just use water IMHO.

For you starting out a simple recipe would be 20 percent coconut oil, 40 percent palm oil and 40 percent olive oil.

Or 20 ounces of coconut, 40 ounces of olive oil and 40 ounces of palm oil. (Whatever amount of coconut you use you would double the amount of each palm oil and olive oil.)

ETA: If you are dead set on using goat's milk start out with 1/3 goat's milk and 2/3 water. (For example, if you need a total of 9 ounces of liquid you would use 3 ounces of goat's milk and 6 ounces of water.)

 

[RDak]

I've made several batches of different soaps. The 2 hot process soaps I made didn't quite work. I've had some goat milk soaps work and some not. For this last batch I tripled the recipe to fit in a 4 lb. soap mold.

All ingredients were measured on scale
23.7 oz. frozen goat milk
10.2 oz. lye
24 oz. CO
24 oz. Palm Oil shortening
24 oz Olive Oil
2 oz. Fragrance oil

I think the goat milk did get too hot, but obviously I missed something else too.
I've always waited 24 hrs. to cut my soap (that's what I was told)

On that one I would try 14 ounces of coconut, 29 ounces of palm and 29 ounces of olive oil. Won't be quite as brittle a soap when HP it.

And maybe lower the goat's milk to 1/3 of the liquid and see how all that turns out. (Maybe just 3 to 4 ounces of goat's milk and the rest water.)

 

[KiwiMoose]

Maybe try the split method? ie - add the goat milk to your oils, and make a stringer lye/water solution?

 

[Ttennis]

Thank you all for your suggestions. It really helps me
Is there anything I can do with this crumbled mess? Can it be rebatched in the crockpot?