First attempt at a soap (lard) does this seem right ?

[Arimara]

Thank you for your great feedback and encouragement !

It's true. I think I might have gotten a bit carried away with the size there... Three pounds of soap if something goes wrong (or I don't like it) is a lot of soap. Plus, I get to soap more often if I do smaller batches, right :mrgreen: ? The only thing I was worried about is precision if I scaled down.

I think my second recipe will be the recipe you just posted since I have all the ingredients already on hand, especially the avocado oil, which I do not like in my beard oil and I need to get rid of.

Yep. but you can still over do it. I have plenty of 1lb batches left.

Avocado oil is great for cooking (assuming you can cook with it) and in soap, it adds a slip you just won't get with olive oil. You might like it.

 

[beardguy]

I looked in my grocery store and couldn't find any pure CO and will not use the FCO so I just decided to switch to avocado oil.

I will make the soap tonight and try to take some pics.

 

[Susie]

Coconut oil has recently been a "fad" food, so it should be in most grocery stores.

 

[beardguy]

Made my soap tonight. Unfotunately, I had misplaced my cellphone and couldn't take pitcures, but everything went well. I had everything cleaned and put away in 45 minutes, which is a real surprise since I thought I would be blending and blending due to the high lard amount, but the batter reached trace after about 15 minutes of stick blending. I took a temperature reading and was still at 95 F at that time, so my reasoning was that it can't be false trace since all my oils are liquid at that temp (which is probably too simple of a reasoning, but ho well :mrgreen.

My spouse was a intrigued and not so sure about putting something I made out of tenderflake lard on her body, but I'm sure she'll turn around

 

[toxikon]

She'll definitely change her tune. Congrats on your first batch!!

 

[penelopejane]

Coconut oil has recently been a "fad" food, so it should be in most grocery stores.

Maybe in the health food section.

 

[beardguy]

I like in sticks so our grocery store is more like a medium sized convenience store so we don't have CO, but I commute to the city everyday and will pick some up at Walmart or something.

Is there a reason to try to unmold as soon as possible ? I looked at my soap and it is hard, but can I just let it get harder in the mold to make sure it's ready ?

 

[Susie]

No, there is a point at which it gets too hard to cut easily. Unmold and cut at 18-24 hours for gelled soap, or as soon as you can't easily make a dent in it for ungelled soaps.

 

[beardguy]

Thank you Susie. I can still dent it somewhat and it zapped me a bit, so I guess I'll try it again tomorrow.

 

[beardguy]

I cut my soap tonight and it was hard and had stopped zapping. I was nervous cutting freehand with a crappy stainless steel knife, but I managed to do a competent enough job, I think.

I also did another batch of soap this morning while the kids and wife slept :twisted: using the same recipe but subbing the water for some homemade stout I had leftover from the day before (I also added some coffe grounds to it since I intend to use it as a bodywash and like a scrubby bar).

I was really careful to degass it properly and froze it before adding the lye to it. Everything went well, but since I soaped cool (<100F) to insure against a lye volcano, it took FOREVER to trace (65 minutes to be exact). I stuck the soap outside after it was poured in the mold since I read that soaps with sugar added can overheat. How long can I leave the soap outside in freezing temps ?

The soap looks like chocolate mousse right now, I hope the colour doesn't change too much :mrgreen:

 

[DeeAnna]

Oh, gosh -- I think you're over-reacting a bit about the volcano and overheating concerns. You don't really need to put soap outside in freezing weather to keep it under control. You CAN freeze the soap for however long you like, but you don't have to. Just understand that freezing or refrigerating soap will slow down saponification a lot -- it will take days rather than hours to be zap free.

I make beer soaps and soaps high in sugars fairly often, so I'm comfortable managing this kind of recipe. If I'm making soap that I think might get a bit hotter than I'd like, I leave it out in the open at normal room temperature without any insulation or cover on it. I check on it for the first hour or two for any signs of expansion on the top or cracking. If I see those signs, I will put a fan on the mold for an hour or so. That happens maybe once or twice in the summer during hot weather (we don't have air conditioning). Our house is in the mid-upper 60s F in winter so overheating is unlikely.

 

[beardguy]

Thanks DeeAnna. A lot of the recipes and online info about beer soap made it sound very daunting and advanced, which explains why I was being so careful : I have made quite a few messes in our kitchen (and garage and basement and yard...) in the past homebrewing, so I'm kind of on a tight leash when it comes to hobbies that can spew goo all over

I looked at my brewing notes and the beer I used had a pH of 3.9 at bottling time in 2015 (probably has changed due to the fact that it was not pasteurized and organism still influence the pH after packaging). Am I right in thinking that using an acid product such as beer and juice in soapmaking might result in a lower final pH in the bar ?

 

[kchaystack]

Thanks DeeAnna. A lot of the recipes and online info about beer soap made it sound very daunting and advanced, which explains why I was being so careful : I have made quite a few messes in our kitchen (and garage and basement and yard...) in the past homebrewing, so I'm kind of on a tight leash when it comes to hobbies that can spew goo all over

I looked at my brewing notes and the beer I used had a pH of 3.9 at bottling time in 2015 (probably has changed due to the fact that it was not pasteurized and organism still influence the pH after packaging). Am I right in thinking that using an acid product such as beer and juice in soapmaking might result in a lower final pH in the bar ?

Not DeeAnna, but no it does not.

What will happen is that your lye will react with the acidic liquid before it reacts with the oils. So you in effect increase the super fat of your soap, because some of your lye is used up before the oils can get to it.

 

[beardguy]

Not DeeAnna, but no it does not.

What will happen is that your lye will react with the acidic liquid before it reacts with the oils. So you in effect increase the super fat of your soap, because some of your lye is used up before the oils can get to it.

This makes a lot more sense and could explain why people describe beer soap as being richer in the lather department than the same recipe without the beer : added sugar and elevated superfat level.

 

[kchaystack]

The sugars from beer definitely help create lather. There is such a thing as too high of a superfat, so you might want to go with a low SF calculation so you don't get too much.

Also, some people do not boil off the alcohol from their beer, and alcohol causes soap to accelerate very quickly. I think this is more of the reason people think beer soaps are hard to do.

 

[BrewerGeorge]

Thanks DeeAnna. A lot of the recipes and online info about beer soap made it sound very daunting and advanced, which explains why I was being so careful : I have made quite a few messes in our kitchen (and garage and basement and yard...) in the past homebrewing, so I'm kind of on a tight leash when it comes to hobbies that can spew goo all over

You're not a home brewer unless you've cleaned krausen off the ceiling.