gooey beer soap

[Jessrof]

Made my first batch of beer soap two days ago and I am feeling ok about it. I used a slab mold and just unmolded it today. It seemed very creamy, almost too creamy. It seemed almost gooey on the outside, like lotion. As this is my first time using my slab mold and making beer soap, I am unsure if the gooey-ness is from the beer, my recipe, or the mold (first time with ungelled soap).. My recipe was 25% coconut oil, 20% crisco (with palm), 50% olive oil, 5% castor oil, 403g beer, 149g lye. Any help would be great.

 

[jcandleattic]

It's probably the combination of all 3 - high olive oil, ungelled and in the slab...
Ungelled soaps can take me up to 2-4 days before they are solid enough to unmold. Add on top of that the high % of OO and I would bet that's what is going on.

 

[Kansas Farm Girl]

Since I was about to make my first beer soap too, I am really interested in the answer you get. I will gel mine and I am thinking about using a loaf mold. I'll watch for answers here before I get started (not ready yet, good thing).

 

[hlee]

I was going to try beer soap this wkend also.
I cooked my beer and now I will wait to see what others say about the gooey prob.

 

[Jessrof]

I thought you weren't suppose to let beer soap gel because you risk a volcano. I was apprehensive about the recipe in general. What are you other future beersoapers using as a recipe? I also found a recipe of 44% crisco, 28% olive oil, 28% coconut oil. Do you think this one would work better?

 

[jcandleattic]

Beer soaps tend to over heat, but that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't gel, just that you have to be careful of overheating and watch it.
I don't use crisco in any of my soaps, so have no idea how that reacts typically, but really any recipe you would normally use should be fine with using the beer as your liquid.
You're other soap will most likely be fine once it's cured. It just may take a bit longer to get there because of the high oo content and the fact that it didn't gel, that's all.

 

[Fran2]

Beer soaps tend to over heat, but that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't gel, just that you have to be careful of overheating and watch it.
I don't use crisco in any of my soaps, so have no idea how that reacts typically, but really any recipe you would normally use should be fine with using the beer as your liquid.
You're other soap will most likely be fine once it's cured. It just may take a bit longer to get there because of the high oo content and the fact that it didn't gel, that's all.

I have heard this before, just watch your soap. If you steps should be followed if one should see signs of overheating? If you stick the soap in it the refrigerator and it has started to gel wouldn't you get a partial gel circle in the middle?

 

[Kansas Farm Girl]

I am looking at this recipe:
Lard: 37%
coconut: 20%
soybean: 10%
palm oil: 8%
olive: 25%
SF at 7%
will give me these qualities:
hardness: 41
cleansing: 14
condition: 54
bubbly: 14 (but I understand beer will increase this)
creamy: 27
iodine: 62
INS: 147
I like lower cleansing unless I am making a shop or kitchen hand soap

 

[Kansas Farm Girl]

So, Mo's Ol' Homestead IPA soap is in the mold with a foam later on top, and nicely gelling. We will see what it does tomorrow.

How is yours as it ages a bit? is it hardening?

 

[Jessrof]

Still pretty gooey on the outside. I am hoping the dry air of this "winter" will help. So how do I go about gelling without getting a volcano? I waited til 70ish degrees to mix and still got a thick trace pretty quickly....

 

[Jessrof]

Here is my beer soap

 

[Ruthie]

Looks great! My beer soap is much darker.

 

[judymoody]

To avoid volcanoes or overheating in beer soap I do the following:

I use half water and half boiled down beer. I mix my lye with the water and then let it cool. Then I add the beer to the lye solution (it will heat up again and bubble and froth, make sure your container has a lot of head space) and I let it cool again. Then I soap as normal.

 

[Badger]

Jessrof, your soap looks wonderful. I was actually thinking about beer soap last night (I had insomnia thinking about soap as I lay in bed...) and wondered if you could make a "beer" soap with root beer or if you could make a cider soap with hard cider? Has anyone tried those or know how they would work?

 

[Jessrof]

Badged, I have wondered the same thing as I would love to make root beer soap for my nephew. As for the light color, I think its because I mixed my lye and beer over a period of 6hrs (my teething infant mad sure of that). I just added a little lye at a time and kept it outside in the cold. The temp never made it above 45degrees F. What climate is the best to cure, cold or warm?

 

[jcandleattic]

Jessrof, your soap looks wonderful. I was actually thinking about beer soap last night (I had insomnia thinking about soap as I lay in bed...) and wondered if you could make a "beer" soap with root beer or if you could make a cider soap with hard cider? Has anyone tried those or know how they would work?

I've made soap with Strongbow which is a hard cider imported from England. It makes a very nice soap.
I've never made a soap with soda (which is essentially what root beer is) so have no idea on that.

 

[Badger]

You used an import hard cider to make a soap? Trying to decide if that is very cool or a form of blaspheming ;-) I have a bottle of ginger apple cider that has been in the fridge since Halloween (yeah, my partner and I don't drink often), it has been tempting me into becoming a soap.

 

[Kansas Farm Girl]

I soaped my beer at about 95 F. I had boiled the beer the night before and put it back in the fridge. When I mixed my lye into I used the cold beer and added lye, stirred, added more, stirred.... until all the lye was in and dissolved. When I mixed that into the oils it took longer to trace than normal because I normally pour hot lye/water over room time oils. I left that sitting in my wood loaf mold on the counter while I prepared a small white batch to use as "foam" and then carefully poured that on. After all that I put a styrofoam cooler over it an left it sitting on the counter. I didn't get any volcano effect, I got a nice gel. I will cut tomorrow.

I hope it looks as nice as yours does when I get it cut.

 

[hlee]

My beer soap turned out pretty good. Boiled my beer and froze until slushy. I used BB oatmeal Stout for fragrance and whatever beer that in the fridge. I see partial gel on one of the end pcs because I couldn't make up my mind about gelling or not.
I see many people don't like the scent of cooking beer. I love it, makes me think brats are coming next.

 

[Jessrof]

My beer soap turned out pretty good. Boiled my beer and froze until slushy. I used BB oatmeal Stout for fragrance and whatever beer that in the fridge. I see partial gel on one of the end pcs because I couldn't make up my mind about gelling or not.
I see many people don't like the scent of cooking beer. I love it, makes me think brats are coming next.

I love the smell of cooking beer! Makes me think of tailgating season