Rice water soaping enquiry

[earlene]

Yes, we did talk about this on a recent thread: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/rice-water-soap.76216/#post-785324

Hi fellow soapers,
Need a little help here... I did a batch of soap using rice water to dissolve the lye...

While waiting for the temperature to drop, the lye mixture kind of gel up... Is that normal?

I am now thinking if the soap should be done the way like milk soap where you do at super low temperature. What do you people think?

But, no, soaping cooler would not help prevent the thickening. It would encourage it, I am sure of it. I keep my rice water in a jug in the refrigerator to drink and it thickens up pretty fast when it's cold. It will thicken up pretty fast at room temperature, too, so basically it's just the nature of the starches in the rice water. I am used to it because I have been drinking rice water (I make congee regularly) for many years.

I suspect there is a huge difference in how you obtain your rice water as to the amount of starch content however. Water simply used to rinse or even soak hard rice in then poured off before the rice is cooked in new water, would have far less starch and may not thicken much at all. I don't know, as I have never used that water. I only use water from cooked rice where I add lots of extra water to the rice. My goal is a drink that is high in rice starches, so that's how I make it. I strain the water through a sieve and the rice may be overcooked, but edible if desired and can be added to other food dishes to thicken or as a filler. The resulting rice water liquid that I reserve after straining is what I drink, but also can be used in other ways such as adding to soup for thickening, or even soap as part of the water replacement. But I have never added lye to it because I use a masterbatch 50% lye solution, to which I add additional liquid to create the desired lye concentration for any given soap recipe. But also because it's just too thick and cloudy anyway; I don't add dry lye to solutions that aren't clear enough for me to see if the lye is truly dissolving (been there; done that; moved on.)

 

[MGM]

I've wanted to try with basmati, the long grain rice used in biryani, coz that boils in a lot of water that's drained out. I have a feeling that will be less starchy after it's blitzed..

Mine was basmati. And of course, it's hard to be scientific about this without measuring the cooking water and the blitzing water and the amount of rice itself....I just mixed it all together, strained out the lumps and was done. The pureed rice milk wasn't super-thick though: it had the body of whipping cream. It only solidified when mixed with lye (and made the Loch Ness monster in an ice cube).
I've got one of my first rice soaps in the bathroom now...has a dense lather. Maybe should try it on my face though, to really test.
Here's an interesting photo...When making this soap, it took FOREVER to trace. I'd been mixing and mixing, SB like mad, walking away, etc. I finally though, maybe this is it, maybe I should pour. So I made one soap with the batter and kept mixing to get to proper trace. When they cooled, the pre-trace one was grainy and all the others were smooth. You can see it in the photo: it's not ash, it's just lumpier. And the only difference between the two is about 10 minutes more of mixing. Weird.

 

[runnerchicki]

Don’t know how you make your oat milk but I rinse 1 cup oats in water for a minute or so. Strain it and add it to 3 cups of water. Let it sit for 30 mins or longer. Then I blitz it in a food processor and strain it through muslin. I just let it do it’s thing but squeeze it a bit at the very end. That makes one recipe for me. If there’s too much liquid for a recipe I pour off the top (the milk seems to settle to the bottom) and use all the thick milk part.

I'll have to try using muslin. I think nut milk bags are hard to strain oat milk through because it's so thick.