herbal tea lye solution

[renaissancemom]

i wanted to experiment using herbal tea to dissolve the sodium hydroxide instead of water. how should i do this? what is everyone's experience with it?

 

[jenn624]

I've used chai tea, peppermint tea, and green tea so far, and have always just brewed REALLY REALLY strong tea, let it cool down, and then used it as my liquid. Then I add the recipe's usual amount of lye to the tea, and soap away

 

[MikeInPdx]

I do it the same way that jenn624 does. Be aware that sometimes you get stinky mixtures, but that goes away.

 

[JanO]

I've also done this with blackberry leaf tea, and strong apricot tea. They come out really really nice.

 

[Guest]

Green tea and Chai tea have worked well for me made very very strong.

 

[ewenique]

I've also used herbal teas. The ones that turn dark pink (eg. Tazo Passion) undergo a cool transformation when mixed with the lye. The solution turns green/blue then settles down into an orange color which usually turned tan in the finished soap. Mixing the herbs from the tea bag into the soap at trace added a nice texture, as long as the herbs are fine pieces.

 

[Jola]

You might as well experiment but mine didn't turn out anything like I thought. I used a very berry herb tea that was a beautiful dark pink color. As soon as the lye hit it it turned very dark brown and stunk! The resulting soap was light brown in color and I added FO so it did smell good.

 

[I love soap!]

hmm... Sounds cool, i'll have to try this soon!

 

[renaissancemom]

thanks for the info, i will definetly try those suggestions. just one other question. what would you say is the benefit to using tea instead of plain water? is it the color in your final soap, or the scent, or something else? thanks again!

 

[rubato456]

tea bag in lye solution

i dropped some herbal tea bags into the lye solution, while it was hot, to brew the tea in the lye. it got dark fairly quickly, then i removed the tea bags. seemed to work well....i've seen other ppl throw in tea leaves and brew them in the lye and leave the tea in the lye solution, to be incorporated into the soap though ive not tried that yet

 

[skinbyroi]

Hi, there. Has anyone experienced their lye-water solutions getting sticky? Almost like a glue-like texture after adding it to tea? I used tea and aloe vera juice (that I made) and it’s began to stink and the top has turned gooey.

 

[AliOop]

Hi, there. Has anyone experienced their lye-water solutions getting sticky? Almost like a glue-like texture after adding it to tea? I used tea and aloe vera juice (that I made) and it’s began to stink and the top has turned gooey.

It's pretty normal for a premade lye solution to thicken and become gloppy over time. However, I've never tried adding organic materials like tea or homemade AVJ to my lye solution, unless I was going to use it up pretty quickly. How long have you let this sit? If it has been more than a day and is now starting to smell bad, it's probably gone bad and needs to be poured down the drain.

EDIT: for future, it's best to start a new thread with your specific questions. This thread is 15 years old, and most of the folks in that discussion are no longer active here on SMF. A new thread will be seen by a lot more people, and then answered more quickly.