Not a soap beginner but a liquid soap newbie

[hairyfizzog]

I made my first foray into liquid soap this weekend. I wanted a pure Castille soap (Dr Bronners is out as I have a coconut and tree/peanut allergy). I used this recipe from Voyageur Soap and Candle after checking it through soap calc:
Olive Oil 49 ounces
Potassium Hydroxide 10 ounces
Soft or Distilled Water 30 ounces

I cycled the slow cooker to keep it between 160/170 and hit it every 5-10 minutes with the stick blender while continuously stirring. It didn't hit trace for almost 2 hours. I cooked it for almost 4 hours after that. It never gelled, never hit taffy stage, more like pizza dough. I figured it was a failure and set it aside til I had space in the dishwasher and surprise it gelled almost 48 hrs later.

I had bought phenolphthalein for testing but our water (even the distilled) makes it go pink. I did try zap testing. It didn't zap, but my tongue went numb.

Any ideas where I went wrong?

 

[Susie]

Your soap is soap, start dilution.

There is no need to cook liquid soap. Are you OK with glycerin? If so, I can cut your stickblending time down to seconds.

Go read this thread:

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=46114

Then follow the procedure with your own recipe above, except swap half glycerin for some of the water. Otherwise, grate 0.5 oz shredded soap, add that to shorten trace.

 

[Zany_in_CO]

Any ideas where I went wrong?

You didn't do anything wrong! Looks good! Actually, most newbies to LS generally keep on cooking. You were smart to stop when you did. And tah-dah! The soap did its thing all on it's own! LOL Here's the thing to remember about 100% olive oil castile LS -- it takes a long time to get to trace, longer than any other oil, and a long time to cook. You can shorten that time, as Susie suggested, by using glycerin for all or part of your water amount. To shorten the time to get to trace, change the ratio of water to KOH from 3:1 (normal) to 2:1. There's a place on SoapCalc that allows you to do that.

 

[Susie]

However, paste made with a 3:1 ratio of water to KOH is easier to dilute.

 

[hairyfizzog]

Thanks for the advice. I was a bit freaked out between it never getting 'stiff' and the tongue numbing thing. I'm guessing the vaseline texture is from just using only olive oil?

I do want to try the glycerin option, but I'll have to track down some palm oil based glycerin as most are made from soybean or coconut oil.

 

[Susie]

The "tongue numbing" is normal. The vaseline texture is gel, which actually told me it was ready to be diluted.