Help with liquid soap that seizes

[Jack's Soap]

Hi I am new here! I have been soaping for a while now. I have made several batches of liquid soap which I am not sure if I am doing something wrong? The soap seizes about 10-15 minutes in to stick blending it.
My recipe is
450 g coconut
250 g sunflower oil
250 g castor oil
50 g Jojoba

Water 722 g
KOH 240 g

I heat the oils to 160 F and my lye to 140 F and mix them together with a spoon then I start stick blending with bursts stopping every 1 minute or so to give the blender a break.

I wonder what I am doing wrong?

Thanks,
Joel

 

[FGOriold]

I think what you are referring to as seizing is when the soap reaches the stiff taffy stage - this is normal. Your paste goes through several stages from very thin when you first combine your oils and lye to applesauce like, thick pudding, lumpy mashed potatoes to thick taffy in which the stick blender will not get through it. There are variations on these stages - some formulas go through stages very fast you might miss them and some, 100% olive, oil, never get to that thick taffy stage.

Once you get to this point (or just before so your stick blender does not get stuck), use a heavy weight spoon to turn your soap and you can start your cook.

So, it sounds like you are doing nothing wrong.

 

[Jack's Soap]

I think what you are referring to as seizing is when the soap reaches the stiff taffy stage - this is normal. Your paste goes through several stages from very thin when you first combine your oils and lye to applesauce like, thick pudding, lumpy mashed potatoes to thick taffy in which the stick blender will not get through it. There are variations on these stages - some formulas go through stages very fast you might miss them and some, 100% olive, oil, never get to that thick taffy stage.

Once you get to this point (or just before so your stick blender does not get stuck), use a heavy weight spoon to turn your soap and you can start your cook.

So, it sounds like you are doing nothing wrong.

Thanks FGOriold,
It seems to take forever to cook tough. 6+ hours. What temperature should it cook at? I know it is low on a slow cooker, but what is the range of temperature for that setting?
It also never seems to get to the vaseline stage? There is a bit of vaseline texture but is mostly big translucent chunks.
Is all this normal?

Thanks,
Joel

 

[FGOriold]

That sounds normal to me. Each formula will act a bit differently. I just did one yesterday that got very hard very fast and after 9 hours of cooking (180 - 200 degrees F) it turned soft and vaseline like. However, once it cooled down, it was hard again. It will start as hard chunks and slowly portions will soften and the hard chunks will lessen until it is all soft. Other formulations may never get those hard portions and stay soft most of the entire cooking time.

 

[Jack's Soap]

That sounds normal to me. Each formula will act a bit differently. I just did one yesterday that got very hard very fast and after 9 hours of cooking (180 - 200 degrees F) it turned soft and vaseline like. However, once it cooled down, it was hard again. It will start as hard chunks and slowly portions will soften and the hard chunks will lessen until it is all soft. Other formulations may never get those hard portions and stay soft most of the entire cooking time.

Thanks again!
So just to be sure, I should continue the cook until it is all vaseline and no chunks at all?

Thanks,
Joel

 

[FGOriold]

That is really up to you. Have you checked for clarity yet? Have you been able to check the Ph?

 

[Jack's Soap]

That is really up to you. Have you checked for clarity yet? Have you been able to check the Ph?

It is clear when hot. But clouds up when room temperature. The pH is of 10,5 when diluted. I add a bit of 20℅ citric acid solution to bring it down to 9,5.
Thanks for all your help,
Joel

 

[FGOriold]

That could be due to the 5% jojoba oil you have in your recipe. Jojoba oil is a wax that has unsaponifiables and at 5% your soap my not stay clear - especially at cold temperatures (could point). I usually try to keep my jojoba at 2% or less for that reason.

Your ph of 9.5 is good. At this point I would dilute it (you don't have to dilute all of it, you can just dilute 10 ounces or so for testing purposes) and let it sequester for about 2 weeks and see how clear it becomes. You may find that the unsaponifiables settle to the bottom as it clears up. Adding glycerin in the amount of 1 - 2 ounces per lb of diluted soap can help with clarity too.

 

[seven]

i could be wrong, but isn't citric acid has nothing to do with bringing down ph? it will neutralize excess lye if any, but bringing down ph is not something it could do. someone please cmiiw.

 

[FGOriold]

Citric acid will reduce PH - so will plain seltzer water. When you neutralize the excess KOH you also will reduce the PH. The problem with citric acid is that you can reduce the PH too much and break down your soap so you have to be careful with it. Boric acid and Borax will act as a buffering agent to neutralize the excess KOH, but it will only take the PH down to a certain level - after that, you just end up with a cloudy mess if you keep adding it but it will not break down your soap.

 

[seven]

ah okay.. thanks for clarifying that

 

[grayceworks]

Different than with bar soap. With bar soap, it will not bring down ph, it will just increase superfat because you're not working lye-heavy, so you don't have excess lye in the soap to need neutralized -- not counting that interesting castile everyone's talking about, of course!

But with liquid soap, depending on the method, you may have excess lye which, which also significantly increases ph, so neutralizing the excess lye with the citric acid or borax reduces the ph as a side effect of creating a no-longer-lye-heavy liquid soap, which is also not superfatted. Some people go with the very-low-superfat method instead and skip needing to neutralize.

 

[seven]

so if i'm using soapcalc, and chose the 90% purity for KOH and 0% SF, i don't have to neutralize, correct? what if i only want to lower the PH? do i then have to do it with excess lye first? my understanding is my soap is not lye heave and i use citric acid, i will end up with a lower PH and a SF (which i don't want).

 

[FGOriold]

I would never just count on the soap calculator to determine your final Ph. You really need to test your diluted soap to determine the PH. I find that that using the summerbeemeadow or brambleberry calculator at 0% superfat (they both always give me the same result for needed KOH and water - Soapcalc is always different than these two) and use glycerin at at least 50% to dissolve the KOH, my soap always ends up with a Ph of 9.2 - 9.7. A long cook time (6- 9 hours) also seems to nudge that ph down a bit.

No matter what calculator you use, what method you use and what formula you use - citric acid will always bring down your soap's ph whether you have a lye excess or not.

No matter what the calculators say about how much neutralizer you will need, you really should test your ph first. If you go below 9.0 with citric acid, your soap will start to cloud and even start to break apart. I don't use borax or boric acid but I know they are buffers and the PH will not go down below a certain level (9.2 maybe???) but adding too much will also could your soap. It is always best to know your Ph when you have to troubleshoot a problem.

If your ph gets too low from the citric acid that your soap clouds or starts to break apart, you can fix that by adding very, very small amounts of KOH dissolved in distilled water until the ph is raised enough to turn it all back into soap.

 

[lady-of-4]

FGOriold is spot on. Always test. I don't trust the tongue test. A few drops of phenol-p on a sample go a long way in determining if your soap is truly done. If you have a color guide, even better. I just use the drops, and gauge based on the intensity of the color, as a light shade of pink is fine since soap is alkaline. But bright pink is definitely lye heavy and needs neutralizing. I don't use SBM calculator to determine pH... I don't think you can with that anyhow. But it does tell you how much borax to use based on batch size. So you do get a rough idea of where to start. My last 7lb batch needed 2oz. I used 2.5 after initial testing, cause i screwed up the glycerin /lye part of the process and needed to add a tad bit more lye.... or so I thought. (don't do what I did) And it was perfect when I tested again as the color of the drops came up close to clear. The drops really are cheap and will last you a long time if you only use 2 or 3 at a time on a sample. Totally worth the headache of a guessing game.