I just made cream soap, I think. Does it have to rot?

[Rune]

Hi!

I tried to make liquid soap today, but it ended up as cream soap. At least it looks like cream soap, but I have not added any supercream to it.

So what did I do? I created a recipe as follows (1000 grams of oils):

Oils:
60% refined olive oil
20% coconut oil
10% stearic acid (from a candle wax with approximately 50/50 stearic and palmitic acids)
10% palmitic acid (from the candle wax)

0% superfat

Additives:
3% citric acid + extra KoH to make sodium citrate
3 tbls sugar (2 added to the lye water and 1 added during dilution)
1 silk cocoon

Lye: 100% KoH
Lye concentration: 30%
Water as % of oils: 58,6%
Dilution rate: Unknown. But my crockpot take 4,5 liter, and it is now full to the rim. After a while I gave up counting the deciliters of water I added.

I cooked the soap in my crockpot. Diluted with boiling water. Little by little. It thickened more and more the more I tried to dilute it. When it reached a manageable consistency, my crockpot was full. And it does look like cream soap at the moment. I did take the crock out of the pot just now, and will let it cool overnight. It seems that I still have some lumps, but it is less lumpy than it was. I have tried to stickblend it together, but it really is too thick to be able to stickblend. It did help to stir and stir and stir. But my arms are tired, so I will just wait and see if it evens out on its own. If not I will have to stir like crazy tomorrow.

I just hope it does not separate on me or something. I have close to zero experience with liquid soapmaking (this is my second time trying it). I have absolutely no experience in making cream soap.

Well, I have tested my soap and it is just perfect! It does not have that nutty/seedy smell at all (I had that last time). I suspected the castor oil to be the cause of that funny smell, so I did not use any of it today.
The lather is like shaving cream if I work it a little. All in all it is just the way I want a shower gel to be. Because that was what I was trying to make. I think I can call it a success! Unless something strange happens during the night. I hope not.

I will use a preservative since I used sugar + quite a lot of water, which was tap water (I can't get distilled water. Our water is soft, clean and has no additives).

I think I will leave the main batch unscented and instead scent smaller portions of it. Just to be sure I don't ruin the success with any bad scents.

The soap is not too pourable at the moment. Luckily I have 6 squirt bottles I originally bought for tie dyeing, but I have not used them yet. Because of the wide opening, I guess they'll have to act as shower gel bottles instead.

I do have a question or two for you experts:

Do I have to put the soap away to rot/sequester?
If so, for how long?

I have seen DeeAnna write that liquid soap does not have to cure. Does that apply to cream soap as well, or is cream soap something different that will need a rotting period? And did I really make cream soap or just liquid soap? To me it looks more like cream soap than anything else, but I a have no clue what it really is per definition. I did add stearic acid, but not as a supercream, instead I let it saponify. I had no idea it would turn into looking like cream soap, which was not what I was trying to make in the first place. But I am pleasantly surprised. I just hope it stays like that and don't do strange things during the night.

 

[Rune]

I can take a picture tomorrow (it is too dark now for the ancient camera on my old phone).

 

[DeeAnna]

It's not going to be a stable cream soap, because there is not enough stearic and palmitic acids in your soap. Cream soap needs to "rot" because the stearic and palmitic soaps take a long time to form a stable structure. Until that happens, the texture of a cream soap will gradually change over time.

Liquid soap doesn't show this type of behavior because it's normally a soap mixture that's high in oleic, myristic, and lauric acids and low in palmitic or stearic acids.

You have something in-between. I'm not quite sure what your goal was when you created this recipe.

 

[Rune]

Here it is, the big soap monster that almost comes out of my crockpot. I do suspect that it is a soap that has not been diluted enough and not cream soap. But I don't have bottles enough for twice the amount of soap, so I just bottled it up as it is. Not that I had enough bottles for this amount either. So I put some away to make my sister a foaming sugar scrub. Unless it separates. So I will "forget" the soap for a couple of weeks, just to see how it behaves before I start to use it for anything.

 

[Susie]

Nor am I sure why you decided to add sugar during dilution. You have just created the perfect habitat for all your favorite pathogens. Never, ever dilute with anything but water or glycerin.

ETA: Nope, no giving it to anyone with that sugar added during dilution. ESPECIALLY if you are not going to load it with preservatives. And especially not something you are adding additional sugar to and having someone add extra bath water to on a regular basis. Ewww....

 

[Rune]

I did not see your messages, DeeAnna, since I was writing myself at the same time But thank you, now I know a lot more.

My goal was to create a regular liquid soap and to find a use for my stearic/palmitic candle wax. I had no idea it would become this. I thought it would be just like ordinary liquid soap. I should have thought that it might not, but I didn't.

Do you think I can whip in some melted stearic acid and make it into a regular cream soap with stability enough?

Susie, yes I know. But I added a preservative because of the sugar and that I used tap water instead of distilled water (I can't find it at a reasonable price). I would probably have used a preservative anyway. I added some sugar to boost lather, if sugar does that in liquid soaps. Well, I just thought it didn't matter too much to try a little sugar since I would preserve it.

 

[DeeAnna]

Adding more stearic-palmitic acid is not going to turn this into cream soap. There needs to be a high enough percentage of stearic-palmitic soap to begin with. Only then would you add more stearic acid to act as a thickener.

Sugar is added BEFORE saponification, not afterwards, to boost the lather.

Adding preservative doesn't mean a person can then add sugar or other "bug food" to a liquid soap or other product without worries. A preservative is only one thing that keeps a product sanitary. You must also use sanitary manufacturing methods and ingredients, minimize sources of food for microbial growth, choose proper packaging, etc. You can't take away one of those other factors and expect the preservative to compensate.

 

[Rune]

I have a lot to learn about liquid soapmaking, I see. Next time I will start from scratch with a simple recipe, olive oil soap or something, to gain experience. And also research things before I dump everything I have on hand in the pot. And I will not make any scrub for my sister, since I did just what you say not to do, expect the preservative to compensate.

Yes, I guess it was not clever to add sugar at all. And definately not to add some of it after saponification. I will not do that again.

I was impatient and wanted to make something there and then, so the recipe was just thrown together in a hurry, 20-30 minutes before I started. The only thing I knew was that I would like to get rid of some of my stearic/palmitic acid, since I have too much of it. I just thought "it is hot process, so it will probably work", and dumped it in. And it did work beautifully until I started to dilute it. Then I thought "oops, perhaps not so clever after all".

Now I wonder what I what I can do with the soap since it 1: most likely will separate and 2: can be unsafe to use after a while?

It will for sure not end up as another car wash, since I already have the whole batch minus a squirt left over from last time (yes, I have only washed my car once since then). I have to come up with something else.

 

[DeeAnna]

I will say that people do use cream soap to make sugar scrubs. But they're using an abundance of sugar in the scrub so the sugar becomes self-preserving, in exactly the same way that pure honey is self preserving.

With your "not really cream soap", I am not sure what I would do with it.

 

[Susie]

And also research things before I dump everything I have on hand in the pot.

Always a wise idea.

Sugar (in proper amounts) added before mixing lye and oils is good for bubbles. But it has to go through that part of the process to help. If you are looking for a good, easy liquid soap recipe, I use IrishLass' GLS in post #8: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/soaping-101-liquid-soapmaking-video.46114/ . That thread, while large, is chock full of good info.