And hopefully my last!
I was making beer & wine soap. Used 4 different beers and 2 wines, simmered them down by about 1/3 (2/3 volume left) over 20-30 minutes to get all the alcohol and carbonation out. Put each in containers then in the fridge overnight. All worked great except..... a hard cider.
It's a really sweet beer so I have a feeling there's more sugar in the cider than in regular beer and wine. I was slowly adding the lye, bit by bit, gently stirring between additions, got to about half the lye added when BOOM! It just boiled right up and over the container, onto the counter top, down the cupboards and onto the floor. All I could do was jump back and watch it happen. Luckily I always wear all my PPE's (goggles, mask, gloves, long sleeves, long pants and close toed shoes) so no bodily injury occurred. A few colorful expletives flew out of my mouth though, lol. (good thing my mother wasn't around or she would have grabbed one of my bars of soap and stuck it in my trap!)
It really surprised me how quickly it happened. There was no warning, just sudden boiling up and over the container. It was a good thing I was working with beer because of the bright orange color it became. So it was easy to see where the spills were and clean up. I used LOTS of water then vinegar on the surfaces.
I had just enough beer (cider) left over to mix another batch of lye but used it for 50% of the water instead of 100%. I also put the container into the sink basin just in case. That went just fine, thankfully!
I learned a valuable lesson about lye volcanos. Once it starts to happen there's no time to get it into the sink. All you can do is step away until it's done then get to cleaning it up!
I was making beer & wine soap. Used 4 different beers and 2 wines, simmered them down by about 1/3 (2/3 volume left) over 20-30 minutes to get all the alcohol and carbonation out. Put each in containers then in the fridge overnight. All worked great except..... a hard cider.
It's a really sweet beer so I have a feeling there's more sugar in the cider than in regular beer and wine. I was slowly adding the lye, bit by bit, gently stirring between additions, got to about half the lye added when BOOM! It just boiled right up and over the container, onto the counter top, down the cupboards and onto the floor. All I could do was jump back and watch it happen. Luckily I always wear all my PPE's (goggles, mask, gloves, long sleeves, long pants and close toed shoes) so no bodily injury occurred. A few colorful expletives flew out of my mouth though, lol. (good thing my mother wasn't around or she would have grabbed one of my bars of soap and stuck it in my trap!)
It really surprised me how quickly it happened. There was no warning, just sudden boiling up and over the container. It was a good thing I was working with beer because of the bright orange color it became. So it was easy to see where the spills were and clean up. I used LOTS of water then vinegar on the surfaces.
I had just enough beer (cider) left over to mix another batch of lye but used it for 50% of the water instead of 100%. I also put the container into the sink basin just in case. That went just fine, thankfully!
I learned a valuable lesson about lye volcanos. Once it starts to happen there's no time to get it into the sink. All you can do is step away until it's done then get to cleaning it up!
