HP soapers.....a question for you
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Wowzers mulline, that looks like some nice fluid HP you have there! Can I pick your brain on how you did that? What did you add before volcano (I'd say cook, but that doesn't really hold true in this case) to force gel? Sugar, extra water,...? And what did you add after volcano to make it that fluid? Only yoghurt and extra water or do you have more tips? And how is the soap holding up in the shrinking and warping department? Your soap looks really amazing and I'm very curious how you did it, but of course it's all up to you how much and which information you're willing to share 
@Holly8991 That sounds like a great excuse to go mold shopping And no need for the oops smiley, you soap when you can and want and I'm just being curious about your results
And no need for the oops smiley, you soap when you can and want and I'm just being curious about your resultsHiWowzers mulline, that looks like some nice fluid HP you have there! Can I pick your brain on how you did that? What did you add before volcano (I'd say cook, but that doesn't really hold true in this case) to force gel? Sugar, extra water,...? And what did you add after volcano to make it that fluid? Only yoghurt and extra water or do you have more tips? And how is the soap holding up in the shrinking and warping department? Your soap looks really amazing and I'm very curious how you did it, but of course it's all up to you how much and which information you're willing to share
I´m willing to share everything, i live in Denmark, so no problem :-D I save half the liquid for lye, til after cook (volcano ) and add it to my soap, i also add youghurt and ACV with sugar
I don´t add much, so no problem in the shrinking and wraping department You wan¨t to se recipe ? 
jentlesoaps
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I love countertop hot process. You can get creative with it and I've found with very large batches that 190 is just too hot and 175 has less explosive and long lasting volcanos. NEVER walk away from it. Valerie Mosher makes lovely swirls and I just love the quality of her soap. She uses exotic ingredients that are good for the skin like I do. I bought her stuff just to see how it really looks once dry and ready to use and LOVE it. Here is a picture of one of my favorite all time soap. If you want to watch me make it, I've also included a link. 
ThanksI do! Its beautiful
Lard 50 %, canola oil 10 %, castor oil 15 %,coconut oil 25 %......... HP
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I follow Valerie Mosher of Shakebrook Soaps in Nova Scotia's method for making my HP soap because i'm too impatient to wait for a longer cook. Although she doesn't make liquid soaps, i've used the same principles she shows when making my liquid soap paste.. The swirls she's able to achieve are amazing! As for the use of yogurt, in my opinion, in addition to adding to the fluidity of the soap after the cook, it's also a way to add the benefits of lactic acid to your soap. I've also seen where she's used other nondairy milks (e.g.; hemp, coconut, etc) after the cook. I don't believe adding yogurt is essential to increasing fluidity of HP soap... the main thing is to add your liquids of choice at end of the cook... i've also poured my HP soap into individual silicone mold and haven't had a problem with the soap picking up the details within the soap...
BrewerGeorge
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FWIW, you can buy a Lactobacillus culture from a brewing store online and inoculate just about anything you want that has sugar to create your own non-dairy lactic acid. Or alternatively you could take a culture from naturally fermented sauerkraut or pickles and do the same thing.
dixiedragon
Well-Known Member
I'm not as knowledgeable as BrewerGeorge is on this, but from my Google research into yogurt making, you can buy a non-dairy yogurt (Whole Foods has a good selection) and use that as a starter to make more non-dairy yogurt. So if you are looking for a non-dairy source, that might work.
Yes! I tried it a couple of years ago and it works like a charm
Hmmm... Interesting! Do you have any idea if it is possible to know the concentration of the newly produced lactic acid? I have a hard time finding sodium lactate, so maybe adding lactic acid to the water before adding lye could be an alternative
but it would be useful to know the concentration of LA to know how much extra lye to add to compensate for the lye neutralized by the lactic acid. I'm imagining the LA concentration (by weight) could be similar to the concentration of sugar in the original substance you feed the bacteria on (hoping my biology is not failing me... 1 molecule of glucose is converted into 2 molecules of LA, which is half the molecular weight of glucose, so if the bacteria don't use or produce any other substances the weight of the LA produced should be about the same as the weight of the glucose you started with) but I'm really not sure if that theory holds up in real life.
I'm not even sure if it's a good idea to try to make my own lactic acid to make sodium lactate, but I think it's interesting to explore the possibility
Ok, so I was going to do a HP soap tonight and thought, I might as well add some sugar to the lye water, keep some more liquid to add after saponification and add the hot lye solution to hot oils..
I have to say, it was a recipe with a lot of soft oils, so I'm guessing it might not the best for this method. After about 5min nothing happened and I started to heat the oven, just to be prepared. After 10min I decided to put my soap in an open oven at 70C (158F), to add a bit of heat to encourage the soap to gel. After hovering above the open oven for 15min with my long sleeves and boots to protect me from the volcano monster I decided to close the door for just a little bit.. It just wouldn't gel! not even the slightest! I had to get my oven up to 100C (212F) to finally get some gel (after a rediculously long time), while I normally get that at around 70C (158F) - also with this recipe, although I tweaked it quite a bit since last time I made it. I'm actually really amused by this. Apparently I made a recipe that is pretty much unable to volcano and very hard to gel. A useful recipe to have on hand, but not really suitable for this experiment i'm afraid...
I'm thinking it might be because I added less water to the lye and kept more for after the cook that made the soap gel at higher temperatures than normal and not volcano. I did get some really fluid batter because I added a lot more liquid after the cook!
I have to admit one thing, that might also have influenced the unsuccessfulness of this experiment... I don't have a thermometer... I put my hand against the outside of the jug and measure in terms of not at all warm - comfortably warm - uncomfortably warm - EEK!. Both lye and oils were pretty much at 'EEK!' (similar to a cup of boiling water) so that should be around the same temperatures as described (190/200F), but of course I'm not entirely sure and I might have misjudged and soaped at much lower temps than required for this.
Moral of the story - just adding some sugar and soaping at very high temps might not be enough to make this method work, or maybe my temps were just off.. Oh how useful this post is..
I have to say, it was a recipe with a lot of soft oils, so I'm guessing it might not the best for this method. After about 5min nothing happened and I started to heat the oven, just to be prepared. After 10min I decided to put my soap in an open oven at 70C (158F), to add a bit of heat to encourage the soap to gel. After hovering above the open oven for 15min with my long sleeves and boots to protect me from the volcano monster I decided to close the door for just a little bit.. It just wouldn't gel! not even the slightest! I had to get my oven up to 100C (212F) to finally get some gel (after a rediculously long time), while I normally get that at around 70C (158F) - also with this recipe, although I tweaked it quite a bit since last time I made it. I'm actually really amused by this. Apparently I made a recipe that is pretty much unable to volcano and very hard to gel. A useful recipe to have on hand, but not really suitable for this experiment i'm afraid...
I'm thinking it might be because I added less water to the lye and kept more for after the cook that made the soap gel at higher temperatures than normal and not volcano. I did get some really fluid batter because I added a lot more liquid after the cook!
I have to admit one thing, that might also have influenced the unsuccessfulness of this experiment... I don't have a thermometer... I put my hand against the outside of the jug and measure in terms of not at all warm - comfortably warm - uncomfortably warm - EEK!. Both lye and oils were pretty much at 'EEK!' (similar to a cup of boiling water) so that should be around the same temperatures as described (190/200F), but of course I'm not entirely sure and I might have misjudged and soaped at much lower temps than required for this.
Moral of the story - just adding some sugar and soaping at very high temps might not be enough to make this method work, or maybe my temps were just off.. Oh how useful this post is..
Lab report! The failed soap unvolcano yesterday tickled me, so today I got some wheat germ oil that had been sitting in my kitchen for too long and decided to try countertop HP again with a low stakes recipe (oil that I was going to have to throw away, soaped at 0% SF to maybe make some laundry soap or rebatch or whatever). This was the recipe:
213g wheat germ oil
27,8g lye
56,9g distilled water
8,8g sugar
(33% lye solution)
I read that more water in the recipe could aid gel/volcano, so I decided to use all the water for the lye solution to promote gel.
I heated the oils as much as possible, dumped all my lye in the sugar water at once and as soon as the liquid became clear I mixed it with my hot oils. Stick blended until trace and waited.. again nothing happened! After a while I decided to add some heat by putting my soaping pot in hot water. I stick blended, waited, stick blended, waited,... nothing. At 1pm I looked at the clock (no idea how long I had been busy already, maybe 30min?). At 1:20 I put the soap in the oven, because the hot water bath wasn't doing it's job and slowly I put the temps up (up until 150C/302F!!). At 2pm I gave up and dumped all of it in molds. There was still oil floating on top if I dissolved some soap in warm water, so it wasn't completely saponified, but I was fed up with it. This went even worse than yesterday, even though I added more sugar, more water and as much heat as I could to the recipe. Now, almost 7 hours later, the soap is still soft.
An idea came to mind.. maybe the problem was with the soft oils I was using. Mulline's recipe contains a lot of hard oils and that works well for her with this technique. I couldn't find anything on the interwebs about soft oils and gel/volcano. All tips to promote or avoid gel talk about water discount vs full water and soaping temps. Maybe the following is common soapmaking knowledge I'm not aware of yet, but I couldn't help myself and started another experimental batch.
I grabbed some coconut oil and made the exact same recipe with the same amounts of oil/lye/water and sugar, so both lye solution and water as % of oils would be the same. This came down to a 28.5% superfat.
213g coconut oil
27,8g lye
56,9g distilled water
8,9g sugar (woopsie)
Same procedure, heated oils about the same amount, mixed in lye water as soon as it was clear and mixed until medium/thick trace. Trace already looked a bit different in this soap. It wasn't creamy, but more translucent looking. After reaching trace I let the soap sit for a while. Just when I thought nothing was happening again I stirred to discover gelling soap under a thin layer of creamy colored soap. YAY! No need for extra heat, just some stirring every once in a while. It took 30min from adding the lye to the water until molding the soap. I have to say I was grateful I didn't have to spend another hour snuggling up against the oven on a warm summer sunday.
So, long story short: hard oils are better for countertop HP (or gel), whereas soft oils prevent volcano/gel. Again, this might be completely obvious for some of you, but I had fun today and I'm off to read up on rebatching soap
213g wheat germ oil
27,8g lye
56,9g distilled water
8,8g sugar
(33% lye solution)
I read that more water in the recipe could aid gel/volcano, so I decided to use all the water for the lye solution to promote gel.
I heated the oils as much as possible, dumped all my lye in the sugar water at once and as soon as the liquid became clear I mixed it with my hot oils. Stick blended until trace and waited.. again nothing happened! After a while I decided to add some heat by putting my soaping pot in hot water. I stick blended, waited, stick blended, waited,... nothing. At 1pm I looked at the clock (no idea how long I had been busy already, maybe 30min?). At 1:20 I put the soap in the oven, because the hot water bath wasn't doing it's job and slowly I put the temps up (up until 150C/302F!!). At 2pm I gave up and dumped all of it in molds. There was still oil floating on top if I dissolved some soap in warm water, so it wasn't completely saponified, but I was fed up with it. This went even worse than yesterday, even though I added more sugar, more water and as much heat as I could to the recipe. Now, almost 7 hours later, the soap is still soft.
An idea came to mind.. maybe the problem was with the soft oils I was using. Mulline's recipe contains a lot of hard oils and that works well for her with this technique. I couldn't find anything on the interwebs about soft oils and gel/volcano. All tips to promote or avoid gel talk about water discount vs full water and soaping temps. Maybe the following is common soapmaking knowledge I'm not aware of yet, but I couldn't help myself and started another experimental batch.
I grabbed some coconut oil and made the exact same recipe with the same amounts of oil/lye/water and sugar, so both lye solution and water as % of oils would be the same. This came down to a 28.5% superfat.
213g coconut oil
27,8g lye
56,9g distilled water
8,9g sugar (woopsie)
Same procedure, heated oils about the same amount, mixed in lye water as soon as it was clear and mixed until medium/thick trace. Trace already looked a bit different in this soap. It wasn't creamy, but more translucent looking. After reaching trace I let the soap sit for a while. Just when I thought nothing was happening again I stirred to discover gelling soap under a thin layer of creamy colored soap. YAY! No need for extra heat, just some stirring every once in a while. It took 30min from adding the lye to the water until molding the soap. I have to say I was grateful I didn't have to spend another hour snuggling up against the oven on a warm summer sunday.
So, long story short: hard oils are better for countertop HP (or gel), whereas soft oils prevent volcano/gel. Again, this might be completely obvious for some of you, but I had fun today and I'm off to read up on rebatching soap
szaza, I'm liking your detailed updates! (it makes it so much easier to understand what you are doing )
Looking at your recipe, I think there could be a few possibilities causing the slow saponification you are experiencing.
A few quick things came to mind as being possible culprits:
The sodium hydroxide might be a lower concentration than you expect (is it old or clumpy in any way)?
The superfat is close to 30% (you've soaped using the SAP value for olive oil, at a 5% superfat - I watched someone do this once, and their soap took forever too)
Your batch size is small. Very small batches are prone to large variances in outcome (an little error can have a large impact).
Holly, did you decide to try this HP technique?
)Looking at your recipe, I think there could be a few possibilities causing the slow saponification you are experiencing.
A few quick things came to mind as being possible culprits:
The sodium hydroxide might be a lower concentration than you expect (is it old or clumpy in any way)?
The superfat is close to 30% (you've soaped using the SAP value for olive oil, at a 5% superfat - I watched someone do this once, and their soap took forever too)
Your batch size is small. Very small batches are prone to large variances in outcome (an little error can have a large impact).
Holly, did you decide to try this HP technique?
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