Please help, I'm a disaster at liquid soap!

[Cristy]

I've been working on the same batch of liquid soap for 3 days now and the results aren't good. I found the instructions and the recipe online and of course ran it through the lye calculator to be safe.

Day #1. Melt the oils (coconut oil and sunflower), prepare the lye water, reach the correct temperatures and mix the hell out of it (for like 30 minutes) until I FINALLY reached a very, very thick trace. Put it in the oven (decided on hot process because I wasn't very happy with the last time that I tried in the crock pot) on 250 and cook for 3.5 hours stirring every 20 minutes, reaching every expected step along the way. My final result for the soap paste looked perfect, a slightly amber transparent vaseline looking paste. I consider day 1 a mini success and head to bed for the night.

Day #2. Attempt to dilute the paste by adding the necessary water and putting it back in the oven for what wound up being 5 hours, yes, 5 hours, however there were still big chunks of the paste that would not cook down. I had to go to bed because I had work in the morning so I left it in the oven, covered of course.

Day #3. I still had some soap paste chunks however the rest of the soap in the pot was beautiful, nice and clear. Afraid that if all of the soap paste didn't dissolve in the soap it would be too lye heavy, I cooked it some more, 2 more hours however the chunks still wouldn't dissolve. After over 10 hours of this monstrosity in my oven I'd grown very frustrated and decided to take my stick blender to the lumps. This was my biggest (but probably not my first mistake) as now my pot of soap, the entire thing is the consistency of rice pudding and I know that even when it cools down it will likely never return to the beautiful soap it could have been.

PLEASE tell me, why in the world would that soap paste not dissolve, I mean really....HOW LONG IS THIS SUPPOSED TO TAKE??? :x

 

[JaimeC]

That sounds an awful lot like my first try. I had to low cook my paste/water for almost two days. I've noticed the time it takes varies with recipes. Someone here in a previous thread mentioned she stick blended her water/paste so I tried that night, worked like a charm! Just be extra wary of bubbles!

Jaime

 

[carolyntn]

Cristy, I don't think you have ruined your batch - it should return to the amber liquid it was. You probably need to add a bit more water - you have lost some with all of that cooking. Afterwards, just let it sit somewhere for about a week. I find my liquid soap will SLOWLY dissolve over the course of a week. If still not dissolved completely, then a bit more water and more waiting.
Sorry - liquid soap can be time consuming!!

Carolyn

 

[Fragola]

Enough heat should melt your soap, unless it's very hard and dry. Maybe the oven doesn't create enough heat, compared to the crockpot.

Which means: add more water earlier during the cooking, to prevent dryness. Actually, when I used HP for liquid soap, I'd keep adding water during cooking, so that at the end of the cooking, it wasn't a soap paste, but more like a thin jelly. This way, the dilution takes much less time.

Also, maybe the oven doesn't give out enough heat.

 

[Cristy]

Thanks so much for the responses!! Carolyn and Jamie, you were both right, the stick blender didn't ruin anything, after a few hours had passed it started turning into what I recognize as liquid soap again. I'm sure with some more time it will clear up even more.

Fragola...I love the idea about adding the water during cooking...how much did you ad at a time?? Did you boil the water first so that it was already hot and therefore didn't slow down the cooking process??
!!

 

[Bigmoose]

I always do mine in a crocpot. Some recipes I make are tuff to dilute, I let them go many hours set at warm. If you have seen methods that include cooking with alcohol you do not have this problem using that method.

Good luck.

Bruce

 

[Fragola]

I add few Tbs at a time, hot water and give it few stirs.

 

[carolyntn]

Christy, when I make liquid soap, I make my paste in the crock pot. This is how I dilute my paste:

Step 1: In a large pot bring dilution water to a roiling boil on the stovetop.
Step 2: Lower heat and add in chunks of soap paste to the simmering hot water. Careful not to let anything bubble over!
Step 3: Reduce heat to low, cover, and let it set for many hours.
Step 4: Turn off heat and sequester for a week. After this nearly all chunks should be dissolved. If not, they should dissolve in the next step.
Step 5: Warm liquid soap back up, neutralize, scent and bottle.

Carolyn