Jack Daniels Soap

[MorpheusPA]

So! Here's my update! Turns out, I didn't quite get all of it melted down, which I didn't think I did, but I thought it would be ok. Silly me. I cut it into bars tonight and there were still chunks in the middle. Had hubby lye test it for me. After a few choice words and something to rinse his mouth with(it was quite entertaining), we discovered the chunks are lye heavy.
So, I'm going to try to rebatch this. Any suggestions? Do I just make sure it's all melted and there are no chunks left?

That's too bad, I really like the chunky look here. And a +1 to you for getting somebody ELSE to lye test for you!

Yeah, you'd need to thoroughly re-melt all that again and make sure it's very well-mixed and completely...goop, I guess, since it doesn't go liquid. I'm assuming your recipe wasn't lye-heavy to begin with, of course.

 

[RockinRodeoChick]

Yeah, I thought it looked pretty. maybe I have another bar I can chunk into it. Hmm

I thought it was pretty slick getting him to test it for me.

And just to make sure I didn't goof, here's my recipe:
Water(whiskey in this case)- 4.543 oz
Lye- 2.238 oz
CO-3.52 oz
PKO- 1.28oz
Castor- 1.28 oz
Soybean- 2.4 oz
Olive- 7.52 oz

I ran it through soap calc, but thought I'd post it anyway. The soap I got remelted doesn't zap, just the chunks. (Hubby checked it all for me. Lol. He's such a sweet guy.)So I'm guessing it should be ok if I just get it all melted and mixed well.

I had to add more water to the whiskey and lye, because I discovered that lye doesn't dissolve very well in whiskey. It took me probably 20 minutes to get it all dissolved.

 

[MorpheusPA]

Yeah, I thought it looked pretty. maybe I have another bar I can chunk into it. Hmm

I thought it was pretty slick getting him to test it for me.

And just to make sure I didn't goof, here's my recipe:
Water(whiskey in this case)- 4.543 oz
Lye- 2.238 oz
CO-3.52 oz
PKO- 1.28oz
Castor- 1.28 oz
Soybean- 2.4 oz
Olive- 7.52 oz

I ran it through soap calc, but thought I'd post it anyway. The soap I got remelted doesn't zap, just the chunks. (Hubby checked it all for me. Lol. He's such a sweet guy.)So I'm guessing it should be ok if I just get it all melted and mixed well.

I had to add more water to the whiskey and lye, because I discovered that lye doesn't dissolve very well in whiskey. It took me probably 20 minutes to get it all dissolved.

The recipe's fine at 6% superfat. That's cool. The extra water's no problem, either. It just extends setup and cure time, but doesn't do a thing to the lye heaviness/lightness of the formula.

I wonder if the lye doesn't dissolve in the JD because it's already a weak alkaloid? Hum. No matter, as long as you got it to dissolve with the extra water there's no problems there.

So a full rebatch should take care of it just fine.

 

[gekko62]

Okay, so if you are making beer soap, you burn off the alcohol, and then reduce to a syrup - do you use that syrup weight as your 'water' or do you add water till it is more watery??

I am very close to making my Corona with lime soap and don't want to mess it up.

Pour the beer into a jug & let it sit a day,whisk it like crazy every now n then.Needs to be flat or you'll have a beery/lye volcano on yr hands.I freeze mine to a slushy,use as full water amt & add lye little by little.Be warned,that stuff smells EVIL!!! (not quite as on the nose as lye&coffee but certainly up there on the stink-o-meter)

 

[RockinRodeoChick]

Pour the beer into a jug & let it sit a day,whisk it like crazy every now n then.Needs to be flat or you'll have a beery/lye volcano on yr hands.I freeze mine to a slushy,use as full water amt & add lye little by little.Be warned,that stuff smells EVIL!!! (not quite as on the nose as lye&coffee but certainly up there on the stink-o-meter)

Oh man, does it ever smell. My house smelled like burnt beer(at least that's what it was to me) for a week after I made the stuff. Bleh


The longer setup time with the extra water was really hard to explain to hubby. He kept insisting that with the extra water it wouldn't be lye heavy. :roll: Hehe. I wasn't sure why the JD wouldn't dissolve it very well. I figured it must've had something to do with the alcohol content. It did some of it, but not nearly all of it. It being an alkaloid itself makes sense though.

I went ahead and rebatched it tonight. I got bored with it not being colored or scented though. All I had was some color from micheal's, so I threw some of that in. It's now pepto pink and smells like black raspberry vanilla. I'm hoping the color will mellow out some. I'll post more photos when I unmold it.

 

[RockinRodeoChick]

Ok, just thought I'd post a final update.

My bars came out just fine. They no longer zap, but they're really really soft still. I think they'll harden up with a little more time. I had to add just a little more water when I melted the soap the 2nd time. Heh. The chunks are from some of my other bars that I was going to rebatch, but decided they might look interesting in these bars, so I threw them in. I kinda like it.

Didn't quite capture the color, but the photo of the actual bars is pretty close.

 

[Pepper]

Yummm! It looks like raspberry nougat.

 

[dagmar88]

Great job, I love the colors!

 

[RockinRodeoChick]

Thank you lovelies! I'm glad I'm not the only one.