Need help sorting out lye miscalculation

[susuofsoap]

Hi. I'm Susan. I'm in Tennessee. I've been making cold process soap for several years now and recently scaled up to a one loaf cutter. (YAY me!). I've been having trouble resizing my recipes and yesterday I really messed up. Also, my brain has been in a quarantine fog and simple math calculations are very difficult. So. I'm hoping one of you experienced folks can help. Essentially, instead of pouring 55 ounces of oils to 16 oz of water and 8 oz of lye (which would be my proper calculated recipe).
I poured 81 ounces of oil to 16 oz of water and 8 oz of lye.
What to do? Chuck it? Each loaf got 2 oz essential oil so.....
Anyway, I hope you all are doing well and soaping on....I would so appreciate any advice.
Susan

 

[moodymama]

Why not use a lye calc to resize? Seems you have 32% extra oils so you would need to rebatch and add the extra lye.

 

[susuofsoap]

Thanks MoodyMama. I've already poured the soap......

 

[DeeAnna]

Doesn't matter if you've already poured the soap. Moody Mama gave you the answer -- "...you would need to rebatch and add the extra lye ..."

If you want someone to check your numbers, ya gotta give us the exact recipe. Just knowing your batch has 81 oz of oils isn't enough.

 

[IrishLass]

Welcome Susan! It looks like you made a highly superfatted soap there. I did that once early on in my soaping endeavors.....ended up with something like a 25% superfatted soap......which came down with DOS about a month later because it had a lot of linoleic acid in it. I ended up tosssing mine because of the DOS, but if I had known what to do early enough before the DOS set in, I could have saved it. Happily, yours is still young enough to save. Here's a fairly recent thread that will help you to save it: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/how-do-you-save-a-soap-with-too-little-lye.77171/

IrishLass

Edited to add, looks like DeeAnna and I were posting at the same time. lol

 

[susuofsoap]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. This is soap with 6 oz of EO in it so I'd like to try to salvage it, even if to just cut for samples.
I follow soapcalc always. So:
Per loaf:
The proper recipe was 55 oz oil to 16 oz water to 8 oz lye.
What I poured was 81 oz oil to 16 oz water to 8 oz lye.

Again, according to soap calc for 81 oz oil I should have used 23.6 oz water and 11.8 oz lye.
I made three 81 oz loaves incorrectly. So to rebatch should I triple the difference in lye and water and add to soap I poured this morning. Using a stainless steel pot to do so? Do I warm it up?
Much obliged. I feel like an airhead.......
Susan

 

[moodymama]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. This is soap with 6 oz of EO in it so I'd like to try to salvage it, even if to just cut for samples.
I follow soapcalc always. So:
Per loaf:
The proper recipe was 55 oz oil to 16 oz water to 8 oz lye.
What I poured was 81 oz oil to 16 oz water to 8 oz lye.

Again, according to soap calc for 81 oz oil I should have used 23.6 oz water and 11.8 oz lye.
I made three 81 oz loaves incorrectly. So to rebatch should I triple the difference in lye and water and add to soap I poured this morning. Using a stainless steel pot to do so? Do I warm it up?
Much obliged. I feel like an airhead.......
Susan

That's a lot of soap for rebatch. I've only rebatched once and it was due to over heating ugly soap that smelled really good. That said I would not attempt all three of the 81 ounces loaves at once. Just 1 loaf per time. I'd use extra water since you are pretty much melting it down and going to try to mix it enough to get the lye mixed in really good.

 

[cmzaha]

Wow, I am really confused. You mention you used 81 oz oils 16 oz water 8 oz lye with 2 oz EO in each loaf. Was the 81 oz oils split between 3 loaves with 2 oz EO in each loaf or did you make 3 different batches with 81 oz of oils? That is a Big Boo boo. This is a little confusing.

I have to ask why do you not print out a Calc sheet for each batch check off your oils, lye liquid additives then no mistakes like this. Even then mistakes can be made but usually not quite such big ones. Usually only 1 batch will get an error not 3.

You really have no choice but to rebatch and it. Put the 81 oz oils in a pot mix the additional lye in the missing liquid and wait until the soap has started melting down before mixing in the lye solution well. If you can melt down your soap in the oven it will melt smoother and you will be able to mix the lye solution in better.

 

[DeeAnna]

I'm reading this as three batches of soap, each one using 81 ounces of oils. If so, I'd rebatch each batch on its own. Don't combine the three together in one rebatch. That much soap will take a long time to heat, be hard to stir, and difficult to carry around.

 

[cmzaha]

I was also reading it as three separate batches at 81 oz each.

 

[susuofsoap]

Thanks you all for all the suggestions and questions. I do enough oils for 6 loaves in a stainless steel canner. Never been a problem when I was cutting loaves one bar at a time. Now I am cutting an entire loaf of 14 bars @ 5.6 oz each.
So, as I was trying to determine the lye for each batch (cause I do the lye separately for each batch. haven't mastered storing it) I looked at the TOTAL SOAP WEIGHT on soapcalc (81 oz) and used that for OILS rather than actual amount needed of OIL (55 oz) PER LOAF.
As I was pouring I noticed my loaves were much larger than usual but truly I've been in such a pandemic confusion state it didn't dawn on me to figure out what was going on. So I just poured three massive loaves that are way too super fatted to be proper.
I hope that makes sense....
So now I need to individually and one at a time cut up my super fatted loaves into chunks into a stainless steel pot and then add the 8 ounces additional water with the 3 oz additional lye (that was left out when i made the mistake)?
I'm assuming I pour the lye water into the pot with the soap chunks.
Or is this just not going to be good to sell and I'll use it as potpourri. Sounds like a lot of work and it may end up a disaster and super ugly.....
It's really only the 2 oz per loaf of essential oil wasted that is bothering me. But, lesson learned.
You all are invaluable help and thanks for helping me...
Susan

 

[TheGecko]

So to rebatch should I triple the difference in lye and water and add to soap I poured this morning. Using a stainless steel pot to do so? Do I warm it up?

No tripling. EACH batch will need an additional 7.6 oz water and 3.8 oz of lye; you'll want to make a regular lye 'solution' and then add.

I have never rebatched, but I understand the process. First, you will need a stainless steel pot that is large enough to hold 106 oz of grated soap plus 10.4 oz lye solution. Yes, you will need to grate up your soap or at least chop it up into small pieces because you will be melting the soap on a low heat.

There are a lot of videos on YouTube that show how to rebatch, would recommend watching them so you know what to look for.

Also, it you don't have a large enough stock pot, you may have to divide your soap in half...53 oz of grated soap with a 5.2 oz ly solution.

 

[susuofsoap]

Thanks Gecko and thanks everyone for the welcome. I may just chalk this one up to lesson learned. The idea of lye water over a burner kinda freaks me out.......
Susan

 

[TheGecko]

So, as I was trying to determine the lye for each batch (cause I do the lye separately for each batch. haven't mastered storing it) I looked at the TOTAL SOAP WEIGHT on soapcalc (81 oz) and used that for OILS rather than actual amount needed of OIL (55 oz) PER LOAF.

STOP. If I'm reading this right, then just toss the soap now 'cuz you're going to screw it up more.

Your 'total soap weight' is the weight of your oils AND your water AND your lye. If you use 'total soap weight' instead of 'total oils', you're going to end up with a lye heavy soap. Just put your original recipe into SoapCalc and then note the differences between what you SHOULD have used and what you DID use.

 

[susuofsoap]

Yes, thanks. I understand that. I ran it through soap calc with 81 oz of oil to determine proper amount of lye/water. You all are wonderful.