First Soap

Chispa · Jun 18, 2017

I made the soap today, it went quite a bit more easily than I expected. I had a false start yesterday, so the oils were already weighed and mixed. I just had to zap them in the microwave for 30 seconds so they ran clear.

I added 1% citric acid to my recipe to help with soap scum and to aid with lathering in our hard water.

The fats and lye emulsified pretty much instantly under the stick blender. I had trace in about two minutes. I was a bit apprehensive about the speed, and stopped mixing to read some articles on false trace, but my bowl was at 44C, so I didn't figure it was my fats going solid on me.

I poured it into my mould, which I had knocked together in the garage yesterday. I lined it with a grocery bag, which was dead easy, but left marks on the soap. Then I put it in the oven at 50C for three hours. Then I pulled it out and cut it up. It looks and smells nice, I have it in the cupboard drying.

One of the soap bars looks discolored in the photo, but it is just a trick of the light. They are all snow white, and just a little bit waxy feeling.

For brewing, there are websites that allow you to store your recipe, brew log, and provide brewing calculators. Is there something something similar for soap? It would be nice to have a way of saving this information.

earlene · Jun 18, 2017

Chispa, they look great. And your mold looks perfect for a starter loaf mold. Do you have access to freezer paper? It's slightly better than baking paper, but a bit more expensive around here anyway. If not, plastic bags work, but as you say, they make marks on the soap.

Soapee is a lye calculator that has the capability to save recipes. For me, I can only get it to save about 5 (if I remember correctly), then it won't save anymore or overwrites the previous saved recipes. So I don't save them to the website anymore. I save them on my computer instead. To save to computer, choose print, and from the drop down box choose the method by which you want to save it. You can use Windows Document Writer, or PDF or One Note (if it's installed on your computer). There may be others, but those are the ones I have in my dropdown box when I want to save a soap formula from Soapee.

Susie · Jun 18, 2017

I have all my soap recipes in Soapee, but I had to go sign up on the Facebook site to be able to do so after some clown messed with the site. Soapee is the only calculator I use now just for that reason.

Sorry for the delay, we are trying to find housing in the city we are moving to, and I have not been around as much. Hopefully we found it, because we are due to start jobs there on July 3rd.

I hate that you moved to the land of expensive lard!

Chispa · Jun 18, 2017

Soapee looks great. Allows me to save the recipes, share and journal results. Thanks Earlene and Susie.

Good luck with the move Susie, we moved house just before Christmas. Its a stressful and busy time.

dibbles · Jun 18, 2017

Beautiful white soap - that you made yourself!! Thanks for posting pictures.

I usually print my recipe out. I don't want to take my phone into my soaping area and since I soap in my basement I don't have good access to the computer. I can make notes on the paper copy, and then put the printed recipe into a folder. This would be a better system if I was more organized...but it works. I have been making soap for about 2.5 years now, and have had to split the recipes into two folders - one for challenges and one for everything else.