MitchellSomerville
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- Joined
- Sep 16, 2014
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Hello,
I've been making soap for a few years, most of that time exclusively HP but a few months ago on a whim switched to CP and have not gone back. This weekend I tried my first Oat-Milk-Honey. I unmolded and cut it this morning and it has some issues I'd love to get the communities thoughts on. Being a milk soap I intended to prevent gel, but I was not completely successful as it went through a partial gel, the tops of the bars are a beautiful white but the sides have the tell tale brown of a gelled milk soap. More concerning, when cutting them the bars are already very hard, and the bottom edge tended to crumble when I took it off the knife. Worried I'd made a lye heavy batch I gave it a lick, but there was no zap. I fished out some old test strips and it tested a 9.5. Any guess at what's causing this crumbling?
This was a 1kg batch recipe as follows
333g coconut oil
333g vegetable shortening (Hy-Top brand, contains partially hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed oil)
334g of lard.
250g of Non-fat milk
146g NaOH
Mold was prepped and put in the freezer, milk was frozen into cubes, solid oils (all of the oils in this case) were melted, lye was measured, milk cubes were put into a pyrex measuring cup which was set into an ice water bath, lye was added a little bit at a time stirring in between, when all the lye was dissolved and the exterior of the pyrex cup cold to the touch lye was added to oils and stick blended. This traced super fast, less than 30 seconds with the stick blender. 3 table spoons of oats were added and one tablespoon of honey, no fragrance oil was used. I grabbed the mold out of the freezer, poured the caustic fat mixture into the mold and put the mold in the fridge. When I checked on it an hour later it was warmer than I'd expected and so transferred it from the fridge to the freezer where it sat until I unmolded and cut this morning to find it a bit crumbly but not lye heavy.
What else can cause soap to crumble during cutting? Was the bar too hard since I used only hard oils, and therefore brittle? Any guess as to why it traced so fast?
Mitch
I've been making soap for a few years, most of that time exclusively HP but a few months ago on a whim switched to CP and have not gone back. This weekend I tried my first Oat-Milk-Honey. I unmolded and cut it this morning and it has some issues I'd love to get the communities thoughts on. Being a milk soap I intended to prevent gel, but I was not completely successful as it went through a partial gel, the tops of the bars are a beautiful white but the sides have the tell tale brown of a gelled milk soap. More concerning, when cutting them the bars are already very hard, and the bottom edge tended to crumble when I took it off the knife. Worried I'd made a lye heavy batch I gave it a lick, but there was no zap. I fished out some old test strips and it tested a 9.5. Any guess at what's causing this crumbling?
This was a 1kg batch recipe as follows
333g coconut oil
333g vegetable shortening (Hy-Top brand, contains partially hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed oil)
334g of lard.
250g of Non-fat milk
146g NaOH
Mold was prepped and put in the freezer, milk was frozen into cubes, solid oils (all of the oils in this case) were melted, lye was measured, milk cubes were put into a pyrex measuring cup which was set into an ice water bath, lye was added a little bit at a time stirring in between, when all the lye was dissolved and the exterior of the pyrex cup cold to the touch lye was added to oils and stick blended. This traced super fast, less than 30 seconds with the stick blender. 3 table spoons of oats were added and one tablespoon of honey, no fragrance oil was used. I grabbed the mold out of the freezer, poured the caustic fat mixture into the mold and put the mold in the fridge. When I checked on it an hour later it was warmer than I'd expected and so transferred it from the fridge to the freezer where it sat until I unmolded and cut this morning to find it a bit crumbly but not lye heavy.
What else can cause soap to crumble during cutting? Was the bar too hard since I used only hard oils, and therefore brittle? Any guess as to why it traced so fast?
Mitch
