Finally experienced false trace, and ended up with white spots.

[saddigilmore]

Are these stearic spots? or just pure cocoa butter?
I got way too comfortable soaping with lard and liquid oils, I stopped checking my lye water temps...
Got sloppy with a 20% cocoa butter recipe, and I finally experienced false trace. Started getting clumpy right as I poured, never got fully smooth, i beat the hell out of it, and it was very thick and lumpy. I'm happy I got it into the mold without getting riddled with air bubbles.

Anyway, this hideous mess was the result.
Are these white spots 'stearic spots' or is it just straight cocoa butter that hardened, and never saponified?

if it's the latter... could this be considered "selective superfatting" or something? lool

Thank you all

 

[ResolvableOwl]

It looks like there are dark rings of gelled soap surrounding the large white blobs. That might mean that the large blobs are indeed soap in the actual sense, not just lumps of cocoa butter (btw, you have melted and mixed CB with the other oils, they won't magically unmix on a cm scale, even in the worst false trace conditions).

To be 1000% sure, you could place one of the bars in an oven for 10 minutes at 50°C, only if anything melts (oil drops become visible), then you have unincorporated oils (“selective superfatting”), which might be a bit gross, but the real problem then would be that your main batter lacks these fats, and might be lye-heavy. An easier check is the zap test.

In any case, you have earned experience, and if you don't like the looks, make confetti from them.

Wrt stearic spots: hard to tell if you have them too, the tiny whitish specks all over the bars might be these (but might as well be chopped up clumps, or air bubbles). Stearic spots can occur even in perfectly smooth soap batters if the hard oils aren't heated enough and/or saponification temperatures are too low.

 

[saddigilmore]

thanks for the reply! I just wish I didn't have to make 1kg of ugly soap to learn the lesson AGAIN that temperatures matter
if those blobs of soap are actually just soap, but very ugly, I guess I have more soap for myself, nobody can see these. at least it won't be wasted.

if anything melts (oil drops become visible), then you have unincorporated oils (“selective superfatting”),

I'm not sure I want to put the soap in the oven... but in the hypothetical case something did melt, those unincorporated oils should theoretically be mostly CB, right?

got me to thinking.... what the result would be of adding not-so-finely grated CB at trace purposefully to a CP soap (maybe even after freezing the shredded CB, to keep it solid for as long as possible?), to purposefully have spots of pure cb... is this feasible? or would the lye eventually reach it over the month cure time, no matter what, and it would be the same result as melting it with the other oils in the traditional way?

 

[Ford]

mmmmm, grated is not "melted'. Other questions. Any fragrance? (false trace or ricing maybe?) You mentioned globbing up at pouring. My false traces have been up front. When first mixing lye with oils. Wire cutter? they can cause tiny spots similar to steric. Just thinking out loud. Just a newbie myself. gggrrrrrr, also, any TD or kaolin clay? the ghosting around the big white clumps looks similar to one of my batches with kaolin.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

I'm not sure I want to put the soap in the oven... but in the hypothetical case something did melt, those unincorporated oils should theoretically be mostly CB, right?

I doubt it. For that it must have had some way/opportunity to separate from the lower-melting oils during the false trace catastrophe. If you melt up an oil blend and let it cool (masterbatch-ish), you'll see that this doesn't happen by itself under usual conditions (even less so when a stick blender is involved).

got me to thinking.... what the result would be of adding finely grated CB at trace purposefully to a CP soap... would it be the same result as melting it with the other oils in the traditional way?

Depends. First, you would have to take quite some care that the temperature doesn't exceed the melting point of the CB – insulation, fridge, etc., and a very soft oil blend in the beginning. Then, would you calculate the amount of lye with or without the CB? Finally, what would you want to achieve by it? If someone washes their hands with a soap that has lumps of grease in it, chances are the skin is dirtier (more oils) afterwards than before, and more hand washing would just expose more CB gratings.

 

[saddigilmore]

When first mixing lye with oils. Wire cutter?

sorry I worded my first post ambiguously. I meant when pouring my lye into my oils as well. I didn't mean to make it sound like it thickened when pouring the batter into the mold. It thickened immediately when the lye hit the oils too.

Fragrance free, but I am using a wire cutter. But those spots were already visible as I was cutting, the wire cutter couldn't have made those spots instantaneiously, I guess.

some way/opportunity to separate from the lower-melting oils during the false trace catastrophe

I just imagined "precipitation" like something falling out of solution, but I guess mixed fats probably don't work that way. I was just thinking out loud

lumps of grease in it

I was imagining a 0% superfat recipe, with the CB gratings added at trace, and cooling/insulation to keep it from melting.
I guess it would be lumps of grease, I just imagine some ppl would like the idea of having "pure cocoa butter" left on their hands after washing. I don't really know how this would feel, I guess now that you describe it like that, maybe it wouldn't be so nice

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Post-cook superfat in HP is a thing (0% SF main batter reduces DOS risk with unsaturated oils, but you still have some free oils that reduce the possibly stripping/irritant action of pure soap), I've made it with cocoa butter and it's decent. Just not lumps of fat, but smoothly incorporated into the soap matrix.

You can sell everything for label appeal if you're just wording hard enough.

 

[saddigilmore]

sounds like the perfect opportunity to try my hand at HP finally....