Keep Getting Stearic Spots! Help!

[KiwiMoose]

CO is not the best replacement for Palm. Your bars will be firm, but won't last long. CO is high in lauric acid, whereas Palm is high in palmitic acid. I recommend using either cocoa butter, shea butter, or soy wax to offset the no-palm. However, ironically., these are all high in stearic which would make stearic spots more likely.

Maybe they are not stearic spots since have very little stearic in your recipe?

Recipe tweak recommendations:
25% CO
20% Shea
30% OO
20% Rice bran
5% Castor

 

[merg_a]

Hmm.. my thoughts exactly with the little amount of stearic already in my current recipe. If not stearic spots/streaks, then what could they be? Air bubbles make actual little tiny holes that I can see the difference of. My wire cutter isn’t the culprit either, because the spots are present when I cut with a knife. Hm! So bizarre.

I’ve always been weary of using more shea butter since I’ve been getting the spots. Thanks for the recipe tweak recommendation! I’ll make any tweaks necessary to get rid of this darn spots!

 

[KiwiMoose]

Hmm.. my thoughts exactly with the little amount of stearic already in my current recipe. If not stearic spots/streaks, then what could they be? Air bubbles make actual little tiny holes that I can see the difference of. My wire cutter isn’t the culprit either, because the spots are present when I cut with a knife. Hm! So bizarre.

I’ve always been weary of using more shea butter since I’ve been getting the spots. Thanks for the recipe tweak recommendation! I’ll make any tweaks necessary to get rid of this darn spots!

Well - it will have more stearic, so no guarantees there. But it will be less likely to get hot/gel once you reduce that CO.

 

[GoBlue]

Hello there, @merg_a ! I hope this response is not too late, and I hope this helps.

1. I ran your recipe through Soap Calc and you have ~10% palmitic and ~6% steric acid. Both of these are culprits of steric acid spots. These two are dominant components of hard oils and they tend to aggregate together (forming spots) instead of nicely blending into the soap batter.

2. Something you can try is melting the hard and soft oils together to 120 F and mixing that with the lye solution, which is also at 120 F or higher in temperature. Stick blend this until thin trace, and then keep stirring every 2 minutes until you reach ~100 F or until your soap starts to get to medium trace, whichever comes first. Pour into non-silicone molds (such as wooden boxes lined with plastic bags) and DO NOT put into the freezer and do not wrap the loaf. Just leave on the kitchen counter to set up. Not putting your soap in silicone molds will help a lot toward not gelling your soap.

I believe what was causing the steric and palmitic acids to aggregate together and create spots was:

1. Putting your soap in the freezer (as you suspected)
2. Using lye solution which was too cold

 

[merg_a]

@GoBlue thanks so much for taking the time to reply!

I definitely think my issue all along has been putting my soap in the freezer. I have since stopped and that seems to have resolved the problem.

I mix my oils and lye at around 90-95*, pour in wooden molds, and just leave on my work station. No fan and uncovered. After about 2 hours, it looks like it’s gelling and then after about 15-20 hours I’m able to cut the bars - no cracks, no gelling, no stearic spots! Woot!

 

[GoBlue]

Success, @merg_a!! Yay - I am excited for you. Problem solved!

 

[pjknight]

Reporting back!

Made my Rosemary bar: 35% lye concentrate. (recipe above)
Mixed all oils 200degrees for several minutes. (hard oils then liquids - until VERY clear)
Lye temp: 86*f / Oil temp: 104*f (trying to prevent stearic acids spots, but yet stay ungelled!)

Instead of putting in the freezer as I do all of my bars - I propped up on cooling racks and had cooling near a fan on medium-high (about 1 foot away). Came back an hour later - BOTH molds had cracks down the middle from both ends. ARG! Was the fan too cold? Too close? Should I not have even used a fan? I smeared the cracks together with my finger and put both molds in the freezer for ~5 hours.

Cut bars today: both have partial-gelled to just almost the edges. Some stearic acid spots and/or air bubbles? (Even though I mixed with bursts of my immersion blender and mostly spatula). Ugh. I thought higher lye concentrate PREVENTED gelling? I suppose I need to go higher? 38%? 39%? Just not wanting bars to crack with my high-ish coconut oil % --- even though they cracked anyway.

/rant. Hahaha.

now sure I understand why you don't want your soap to gel? Its my understanding soap must gel in the process of soap making.

 

[GoBlue]

@pjknight, soap does not need to gel necessarily. There are reasons to force gel or not to. Here are some excellent articles:

https://www.brambleberry.com/tips-a... does contain,we recommend skipping gel phase.

https://thesoapcoach.co.uk/blogs/on-my-soap-box/what-is-gel-phase-and-why-does-it-matter