Help

[malymaka]

The last batch of soap I made developed these tiny little dots. I have checked all my oils, and none seem to be rancid, I use goats milk powder and I could find anything in that, and I checked my lye. I have a big order to do, but I am afraid to start incase these little brown spots appear again. Does anyone know what they are??

 

[Dorymae]

How old is the batch? It looks like FO to me. Sometimes if the EO, FO doesn't get fully mixed it will come out in little dark spots. Was their any indication of problems when making this recipe? Was the top oily, or did it ever look like there might be some separation?

Anyway, FO or EO is my best guess.

 

[Obsidian]

Another possibility is the milk powder, did you fully dissolve it with water? I've had powder bits burn and turn brown. I agree that it is most likely the FO though.

 

[KristaY]

I agree it's most likely the FO/EO. I had the exact thing happen to me a few months ago with a misbehaving FO that accelerated so I wasn't able to get it mixed in well. Normally I add the FO to my oils before lye but I was doing a bunch of test batches so added different FO's to smaller portions of the batter. Luckily it was only a 1 lb batch so I only have few goofy looking bars.

 

[TVivian]

Is it possible that some random botanical snuck it's way into your soap?... Maybe in a spatula or on your stick blender? I once spilled soap onto the counter and scooped it back into my bowl, not knowing there were some stray coffee grounds or black pepper (still don't know which) on it.

 

[malymaka]

Hi Everyone, thank you so much for your feedback on my problem. Tonight, I have made 2 soaps using the same ingredients, but this time I did one without the fragrance I used and one with. Listening to your comments, I thought too that maybe it is the fragrance. The soaps I posted were freshly made there was no problem with it, no separation and no oil on top and the fragrance was mixed in properly. The fragrance was "The perfect man" I checked all my oils and butters and none seem to be rancid as they were nearly all new and I checked the expiry date. I mixed the goats milk with some of the water and then added it to the warm oil through a strainer and blended it until I couldn't see any sign of the powder. I then strained the lye into the oils and blended until trace. I poured the unscented one off and then added the fragrance to the soap and blended again until it was at a thicker trace before pouring into the mold. I will check the soap tomorrow and will let you know what the results are. I am praying that there is no spots, as I really have to make 4 large logs (14 pieces each) for a customer plus he wants another 3 different fragrances about 1/2 a log of each. I don't want to throw soap away again. such a waste of money. Thank you once again for all your input.

 

[dixiedragon]

I'm leaning towards some undissolved goat's milk. The spots look to have a different texture than the rest of the soap to me.

 

[cmzaha]

I am also going for undissolved gm. I have seen fo's act up but I have really never seen it leave small dark specks, definetly looks like something in the soap besides fo

 

[shunt2011]

I agree with the GM. I've used Perfect Man for 4+ years now and have never had anything like that happen.

 

[malymaka]

Update on soaps, I did one without fragrance and 1 with. The one with fragrance developed only a couple of spots, the plain none. BUT, I did strain both the lye and the goats milk, so you could be right it might have been undissolved GM. One question though, I did a rebatch of the first batch of soap that developed the spots, and they didn't go away, look worse than ever. Well I will go ahead and make one log tonight and just see how I go. I love making soap but this makes it not so fun, waiting for something to go wrong.