Oatmeal milk and honey soap c.p. honey settling to bottom

[Proverbs31lady]

Hi! I'm a new soap maker and this Is my third batch of soap. I haven't had any problems with the others so I guess I got a little confident and tried a really complicated soap and now I'm wondering if I skrewed it up. I did a ton of research on my oatmeal milk and honey soap made with goat milk, raw honey, ground oats and Shea butter. The base for the soap is mostly olive oil then lard (just butchered a pig and have a lot on hand) coconut oil and castor oil. The 2Tab of Shea went in at trace with the honey and oats. It's unscented for sensitive skin. I read that it would have a natural scent from the additives but now all I can smell is goat! Not pleasant. The soap lathers wonderfully, has a mild exfoliation and wonderful conditioning properties. But now I'm considering scenting 4 of the 7 pounds of it with a fragrance oil from brambleberry. Hopefully I can grate it down and scent it? Also, after I cut it the next day I noticed some of the honey I added (5Tab.) settled to the bottom of the soap in spotted sections, mostly in the middle. I thought i stirred it in really well but i didnt want to use the stick blender knowing that honey can speed up trace so much. I'm assuming that it's still ok to use it like that but will that cause it to go rancid? Also, the soap never went through a gel stage. Will that mean it should take longer to cure?

 

[Lindy]

Re: Oatmeal milk and honey soap c.p. honey settling to botto

How about a picture?

 

[judymoody]

Re: Oatmeal milk and honey soap c.p. honey settling to botto

For what it's worth, I add honey directly to my cooled off lye solution. It will heat up again (and may threaten to volcano) so I use a tall pitcher and leave it in the sink in case it should overflow. It never has. This method has a couple of advantages - first, the honey solubizes fully and I don't get specks or globs of honey in my finished soap. Second, once the lye mixture has cooled for the second time, it's unlikely to heat up your soap. In my experience, honey doesn't accelerate trace but it definitely can cause overheating.

Any scent you get from honey & oats will be very mild, almost like bread or a graham cracker.

The goaty smell from the milk should fade within a few days or a week. Give it some time. However, rebatching due to the unincorporated honey sounds like a good idea to me.

Also, if you're doing CP soap, you don't need to add your superfatting oil at trace. The lye is very active at that point and will interact with any and all oils available.

Posting your complete recipe will also help us to trouble shoot.