oatmeal?

[Marilyn Norgart]

i get together every once in a while with a few ladies to make soap. we use their recipe, and one of them gets all the scents. the recipe came from one of the ladies nieces who makes beautiful soap. it said to have the temps at 130--i usually do 90-110. the first batch i couldn't talk them into going lower with the temps the second one they did. the first one though was a hot mess. it wound up looking like oatmeal--which i am sure was from the scent cuz we split the batch and didn't scent the one part but as soon as we added the scent it looked like thick oatmeal---it didn't rice though but i have not seen that texture before. we got it mixed and tried a swirl. but the non scented part was so much thinner that i couldn't do a swirl on top. so i just used a spoon to add some texture. there was a lot of oil sitting on top in the divets from the spoon. i was doing something else when the oils were measured out so i don't know how it was done. i didn't have my phone with so i couldn't take any pics. does anybody have any ideas on the oatmeal texture. the scents came from a candle making place and they all had vanillan in them. but i don't know because the second batch was much better to work with. sorry this is so winded--what i am trying to ask is what causes the oatmeal effect?

 

[lsg]

Was the recipe run through a lye calcualtor before you made the soap? It sounds to me like the FO reacted badly in the oatmeal-like soap.

 

[Marilyn Norgart]

Was the recipe run through a lye calcualtor before you made the soap? It sounds to me like the FO reacted badly in the oatmeal-like soap.

its not my recipe and i don't know if the owner of the recipe ever ran it through a calculator or not--we have used the recipe before without issues--my thought is its the FOs that we used also. i think the lady who bought it found some cheap scents and went with them. i hate to say it cuz it sounds kinda snobby but...…………. i need to ask her where she got them from cuz i cant remember the name, just remember part of the name was candlemaking--but not the name i have heard on here

 

[dibbles]

It's hard to say without a picture, but since the batch was split and half was fine I would say whatever happened was due to the FO. The texture could still be ricing, or quite likely separation. I have one FO that causes this. It takes quite a long time of stick blending, letting it sit, stick blending, letting it sit, etc. for it to come together, but it eventually does.

 

[Christine Beale]

it sounds to me like ricing as well.. a mild form of it. Was the fragrance oil soap safe? YOu said that the FO possibly came from a candlemaking place. I wonder if that has anything to do with it?

 

[Marilyn Norgart]

I emailed the lady that bought it so I could get the company name and do some research--I do a lot of research before I make my soap and this just didn't feel right to not know more about the scents before I used them--or at least having some info on the bottle to read. I will have to look into separation some more--can scents cause separation? or maybe it was a false trace cuz the unscented seemed to get a little thinner also--maybe a combo of issues? with me not being in control from step one I feel at a disadvantage even if I was there. thanks for your thoughts

 

[cmzaha]

You still should have run the recipe through a soap calc. Yes, scents can cause separation and it still most likely was ricing with separation. When a batter separates so badly there is no way to pour and mix swirls. You have to get the separated batter back together

 

[dibbles]

As Carolyn said, fragrance can cause separation as well as ricing. In the case of the FO I referere to earlier, I know it was the fragrance since I split the batch and only the part with that FO separated and riced.

 

[Marilyn Norgart]

As Carolyn said, fragrance can cause separation as well as ricing. In the case of the FO I referere to earlier, I know it was the fragrance since I split the batch and only the part with that FO separated and riced.

and that is what happened with ours. and I was thinking it was the FO too--so thank you all for confirming my suspicions. I did get the info I needed to check out the FO and it is skin safe but it all has vanillan in it.