Second batch under my belt

[SoapDaddy70]

Cut my second batch into bars today. Made it Friday night and it was adventures in soap making. I had to make dinner for my kids (wife went out) so I was rushing through it. Definitely soaped too hot. Did a 2 layer batch with Australian Green Clay and French Pink Clay and Cedarwood essential oil mixed with some fragrance oil/essential oil citrus energizing blend I bought from wholesale supplies plus. Earlier in the day I mixed the fragrance oils with a couple of Tbs of Kaolin clay and added that to the oils. I thought i was conscious of only mixing to emulsion. Split the batter into 2 containers and added the clays to each pitcher. I had mixed the clays with a little water beforehand. Mixed that with a spatula and it poured ok but definitely was thicker than I thought it would be. The second color was already pretty thick before I even mixed with the spatula. Second color had to be scooped out with spatula. Wrapped it up and it definitely went through gel phase and the next day looked like it would have come out of the mold no problem but let it sit another day. Had a little soda ash, will have to do the rubbing alcohol spitz from now on. Will post the recipe in next post. Sorry for the long post but figured my first few batches i would like as much feedback as i could get.

Here is the recipe.
55% Olive Oil - 437g
15% Shea Butter - 119g
15% Coconut Oil - 119g
10% Hemp Oil - 80g
5% Castor Oil - 41g

7% Superfat
32% Lye concentration
221g Water
104g Lye

I got a little confused about how to deal with water needed needed to mix the clays. To be honest I do not remember what I ended up doing. I think I reduced water for the lye solution.

 

[Zing]

Hey, @SoapDaddy70, and congrats on your second batch! Also congrats for soaping while making dinner and parenting alone.

I really like your color combo! I have not used clays so can't give you feedback there. I love cedarwood (it's in almost all my batches) and citrus so I can imagine it smells great (still waiting for scents to go through the interwebs). I also have not used hemp oil but have used all your other ones. Castor oil was a game changer for me and I love what it does to bubbles -- I do 4 to 5%.

Soaps with a lot of olive oil will need a long cure time, like 6-12 months. You have a lot of soft oils. I typically do a 60:40 hard:soft combo, with hard oils that are solid at room temperature and soft oils liquid at room temperature. Yours is 85:15 hard:soft.

I plugged in your oils -- not your lye, water, clays, or scents -- into SoapCalc. To be honest, I resisted using SoapCalc for many months because it was overwhelming both visually and science-ly. But once I got many batches under my belt I discovered how helpful it is. The main thing that stood out to me is that you will have a very soft bar -- it's a 29 and 29 is the lowest. Also I learned from @SeaSuds to "aim for a combined palmitic and stearic value in the range of 28 - 33 (longevity) and yours is 18 so it may dissolve quickly when you start using it.

And good for you for trying for emulsion already!! I took 2 years to master thin trace and medium trace and am just now concentrating on emulsion.

 

[earlene]

Actually, olive oil gets quite hard after cure. The lye calculators don't tell you that, but it does. There are at least a couple of things the numbers in the calculators can't quite get right, but the one about the hardness of an olive oil soap, is the most glaring, imo.

So after a good cure, this soap should be harder than you may expect. But it is true that it will dissolve in use a little faster, but as a second batch, it's great to have that learning experience. Plus the kids get to take baths with more and more soap. What kid cares about how long a bar of soap lasts in the bathtub anyway, right?

 

[AliOop]

Very nice looking, esp for only your second batch!

Clays do thicken the batter fairly quickly, IME. With that thicker batter, it is esp important to bang down the mold a bit more often and more vigorously to eliminate air pockets. It is just an aesthetic issue, and I only see a few, which is really great for a new soaper working with thicker batter!

ETA: because water and oils don’t mix, I only add water to my clays if I am not mixing the clays with EOs/FOs in advance.

 

[cmzaha]

You should be very proud of your second batch of soap with the pretty color combination. I can guarantee my second batch never looked so nice.

 

[GemstonePony]

Excellent second batch! I don't think I've used water with clay before, it's usually been FO and just enough batch oils to thin it. I've learned to split just before emulsion when using clay as it does thicken the batter, and I usually have to stir enough to get the clay in to certainly take it past emulsion.

 

[SoapDaddy70]

Excellent second batch! I don't think I've used water with clay before, it's usually been FO and just enough batch oils to thin it. I've learned to split just before emulsion when using clay as it does thicken the batter, and I usually have to stir enough to get the clay in to certainly take it past emulsion.

I like the idea of mixing the clays with some of the fragrance oil. For this batch I added all the fragrance oil to some Kaolin Clay because I read somewhere that it "anchors" the fragrance. Next time I used colored clays I will hold back some of the fragrance oil and mix with the clays instead of mixing with water. Thanks for the advice.