Rebatching

sugar_soap · Oct 3, 2014

Hi all,

I tried to make up my own recipe using
400gr lard
250gr sunfl. oil
100gr sweet almond oil
184gr shea butter
46gr co
20gr jojoba oil

140.59gr lye
140.59gr wine (not boiled / straight from packet)
183.12gr water

and ended up with a horror soap full of air pockets, crumbly bits with the texture and (unfortunately) the smell of brie cheese. I was thinking of rebatching and maybe trying to add cinnamon and cocoa powder & fo to hide the smell.

Now my question (finally) is: do I need to add more water to melt or can I just cut it in small bits and melt it like that? The original was smthing like 2.33:1 liquid to lye ratio.

If you've managed to read this far without falling asleep I'd appreciate some help

IrishLass · Oct 3, 2014

Hi SugarSoap- I just plugged your recipe through SoapCalc, and it's telling me that your soap has an excess of 2.41% lye, which would explain the crumbliness. Brittleness/crumbliness are usually a tell-tale symptom of lye-heavy soap.

I've never added wine as part of my water amount, but I know of several soapers that do and they always stress the importance of boiling off most of the alcohol before soaping with it. Did you boil the wine before including it in your formula?

Re: rebatching. Yes, it can be rebatched, but no extra liquid is needed if you rebatch soon.

I would, however, definitely add more oil to it during the rebatch in order to reverse the lye-heavy problem. Stir a little bit of whatever oil of your choice at a time into your melting soap as you are cooking it, and test for zap periodically as you proceed along. Once there is no longer any zap, you can stop adding more oil to it.

As for the cheesy scent it is exhibiting right now.....I'm not sure, but that might be due to the wine. Happily, though, such initial off-scents from additives usually cure themselves out over time, so perhaps an added scent is not needed.

You can still add a scent if you wish, but I personally would avoid cinnamon (especially powdered cinnamon) since it is a known skin sensitizer.

HTH
IrishLass

Susie · Oct 3, 2014

^What IrishLass said.

But the bigger concern is why you are making lye heavy soap in the first place. Did you not use a lye calculator?

sugar_soap · Oct 6, 2014

I just checked again and actually used 137.34gr lye. Must have copied the amount of wine by mistake. Ran it through a calculator at 0% superfatting came out ok but I was calculating manually for the recipe as my internet was down...

Susie · Oct 6, 2014

Wow, that is really brave of you! I would not dare make a batch of soap without at least verifying it through a reputable lye calculator.

sugar_soap · Oct 6, 2014

Well as I said internet was down and I keep a printed sheet with all Sap values on it. Hehe as someone commented, this is addictive...so I just had to soap

Re-batched yesterday, will try to cut soap tomorrow