WEll, I tried again. This time I made two oil batches, each with their own lye water, one high water and one low. I have been wondering what role my recipe plays in this as it is over 60% hard oils. DId the low water get thicker when everything was under 70 degrees because of those hard oils? I felt suspicious when the cups didn't get even a touch warm, as my soap usually does when mixed with lye.
This time I soaped with the oils very warm and the lye water was warm. I used 5 colors, each with a high and low water portions, so I was working with 10 cups. After hitting emulsions, I poured all the batter out. When I'm working with a number of colors/cups, I tend to act like an automaton and just go down the assembly line. I think I'm pretty consistent in my timing with each cup. Added my colors and used my Badger paint mixer (whoever rec'd that has my eternal gratitude. Bonus: all the attachments from my other frothers/mixers fit on the Badger so I've got loads of options) to mix everything in, then went back and stirred each with a straw to get all the batter from the sides mixed in. High water came to a light trace and the low batter was very thin and liquid. I went down the low water side and mixed each color for a good 15 seconds with the best mixer attachment and I made certain to stir each highwater color a few times with the straw so it was not sitting still for too long. No trace. I had to go back over each low water cup 3 times, blending each with the mixer for 10-15 seconds each time and giving a stir to the high water ones. The high water ones were thickening a little more and I never got a light trace from the low water ones when I decided to just go ahead and pour. The high water batter was heavy cream-pancake batter consistency and the low water was like pouring olive oil. In the mold, the whole thing was extremely fluid. Swirled and spun.
Tonight I made a small batch but just with low water. Again, I soaped with the oils warm and this time the lye was just barely warm. I blended the colors for forever and got impatient trying to get to trace. Had tons of time.
I wonder if the low water trick might work well for recipes that are higher in solid oils. I don't generally make any recipes that are largely liquid oils so have not tested that, but this has been pretty consistent, except in the situation of soaping cool. I would love to hear if anyone else tries this. I know you said you work with a high solids recipe, Carolyn. I would love to hear if you try a small batch using low water (I've been using 1:1.4 lye to water, for the record.) and what your experience is.
