My soap is dry/crumbly

[DomTheDillyHoo]

Hello! I just made my bar of soap, its very dry and a tad crumbly/cakey.. Here are the ingredients:

INGREDIENTS:​

• 285g Olive Oil
• 221g Palm Oil
• 221g Coconut Oil (76 deg)
• 166g Shea Butter
• 124g Lye
• 251g Water
• 1.4tsp Kaolin Clay
• 1tsp Sea Salt
• 2tsp Orange Mica
• 10g Patchouli Essential Oil
• 10g (Australian) Sandalwood Essential Oil
• 10g Lemongrass Essential Oil
• 10g Bergamot Essential Oil

It may be important to note the acceleration was rocket speed, too quick to mix the colors in fully, turned out like meat soap lol. Anyways what do you guys think caused this? I used a lye concentration of 33%

 

[lsg]

What caused acceleration? It might have been because of your water discount. You had a large percentage of hard oils/butters in your recipe.

 

[DomTheDillyHoo]

What caused acceleration? It might have been because of your water discount. You had a large percentage of hard oils/butters in your recipe.

Im unsure. I'm guessing the essential oils but its hard to find out if they accelerate or not

 

[AliOop]

I still question whether your sandalwood EO is actually that. Real sandalwood EO is crazy expensive. Here is a reputable seller that lists it for $35 for 1/6 of an ounce.

If you paid any kind of reasonable price for that alleged EO, it's probably adulterated with other fragrance components that could be causing acceleration. That's a common occurrence, especially if you bought it from Amazon.

Also, how hot were your oils and lye solution?

 

[DomTheDillyHoo]

I still question whether your sandalwood EO is actually that. Real sandalwood EO is crazy expensive. Here is a reputable seller that lists it for $35 for 1/6 of an ounce.

If you paid any kind of reasonable price for that alleged EO, it's probably adulterated with other fragrance components that could be causing acceleration. That's a common occurrence, especially if you bought it from Amazon.

Also, how hot were your oils and lye solution?

They were down to 120 ish

 

[AliOop]

That's pretty warm, but shouldn't cause soap on a stick. I'm looking at the sandalwood as the likely cause because it's probably adulterated.

 

[Whillow]

I still question whether your sandalwood EO is actually that. Real sandalwood EO is crazy expensive. Here is a reputable seller that lists it for $35 for 1/6 of an ounce.

I had no idea it was that expensive.

 

[cmzaha]

With your lye concentration at 33% and superfat 6% I see no problems with your recipe. My go-to recipes run high in either palm oil with shea or high tallow/lard with my liquid oils at 23% in my palm/shea and 13% in my tallow/lard recipes plus I soap with vinegar to further harden my soaps. I do soap at room temp with a 30-33% lye concentration and 2% superfat, but have no crumbling unless I wait too long to cut my soaps. did you possibly leave your soap in the mold too long?

I have tried Sandalwood Fragrances which has given me acceleration issues and no acceleration with the other EO's you used. The cheapest price I have seen for Sandalwood EO is at Gemlite and I did buy a sample a few years ago, but liked their Sandalwood Fragrance better. I found this company from a discussion back in 2015 Gemlite Fragrances?. This member did a lot of testing of different Sandalwood FO's.

 

[KiwiMoose]

None of those Eos should cause acceleration in my experience. SO I'm running with the naughty sandalwood theory.

 

[Fernando Sage]

Found this post today when looking for info about Australian Sandalwood EO. I tried it yesterday twice, the first time we were able to put it in the mold but the second time we got soap on a stick. Wondering if we used the same “Australian Sandalwood“

 

[ScentimentallyYours]

Found this post today when looking for info about Australian Sandalwood EO. I tried it yesterday twice, the first time we were able to put it in the mold but the second time we got soap on a stick. Wondering if we used the same “Australian Sandalwood“

Interesting question! It appears that some of the fragrances are in the process of being reformulated due to IFRA guidelines. Perhaps some of us are getting older/newer batches of fragrance oils and getting different results because the ingredients are not the same? Would love for others to weigh in on this.