Recipe Failure

[squigglz]

I decided to make a soy-free, palm-free soap with EOs for my boyfriend's aunt (mostly for her. I'd sell the rest, of course). The recipe I used was as follows:

Water 17.2 oz (a bit high, I know-I do HP so I sometimes up my water to 43% to make coloring/pouring easier)
Lye 5.6oz

Coconut Oil 13.2 oz
Rice Bran Oil 12oz
Olive oil 10.8oz
Castor oil 2oz
Sweet Almond Oil 2oz

This has been run through soapcalc.net, and came back fine. It should, in theory, work.

It doesn't.

I melted the oils down, added the lye water, stick blended to trace, yadda yadda. Left it to cook (my crockpot cooks a 3lb batch in about fifteen minutes), and when I checked on it, it hadn't risen at all. I attributed that to the extra water, and decided to just sort of poke it with a whisk to be sure it was okay (because why not?).

Instead of descending through fluffy soap batter, it looked akin to pressing a whisk into the middle of a pumpkin pie that's been chilling for quite some time. I mixed it up, again, and set it to cook, again.

It never came together, no matter how much stick blending I did. Had to throw the whole thing out =/

Any advice? I've only had one other failed batch and that was because of too many floral scents, so I have no idea what went wrong here. Everything went to pot before I even put the EO in! I really want to make this soap, I think my boyfriend's family would really enjoy it, but it's just not cooperating.

Possibly pertinent information: I soap at night, and it's pretty dang chilly here. Wondering if I may have reached a false trace?

 

[lsg]

SoapCalc calls for 14.4 oz of water, and that is the max. you should use. Other lye calculators usually call for less. It looks like you did use almost 3 oz. more than SoapCalc called for.

 

[squigglz]

SoapCalc calls for 14.4 oz of water, and that is the max. you should use. Other lye calculators usually call for less. It looks like you did use almost 3 oz. more than SoapCalc called for.

It was my understanding (and have done before) that adding 5% more water in HP is perfectly acceptable. Regardless, I'll try it with the lower water tonight, and see what happens. As I said in the OP, I used 43% water instead of their standard 38% for ease of coloring and pouring ^_^

 

[Genny]

To me it sounds like not enough lye or too much water.
But do you usually use palm oil? If so, is this your first recipe without it? With most of your oils in this recipe being soft oils, it would have taken a while for it to trace, definitely longer than recipes with palm.

 

[squigglz]

To me it sounds like not enough lye or too much water.
But do you usually use palm oil? If so, is this your first recipe without it? With most of your oils in this recipe being soft oils, it would have taken a while for it to trace, definitely longer than recipes with palm.

I do use palm oil now, yeah. I didn't used to. It's kind of looking like it may have been a false trace =/ That makes sense, about the softer oils. I'll give it another go later today, thank you

 

[judymoody]

From your description, it doesn't sound like false trace, but no trace.

Could you possibly have mismeasured? Sounds like not enough lye.