soap batter tracing fast

[Arabella H]

hi soapers,
i'm a beginner and i've made some attempt in making soap, but i don't understand why my soap batter traces so fast, so i hope someone here can inform me.
here are my attempts:

Trial 1 (brown, black & white color )
extra virgin olive 40% (248 gr)
coconut (76 deg) 30% (186 gr)
palm 20% (124 gr)
almond 5% (31 gr)
castor 5% (31 gr)
lye concentration 35% (water 165 gr & lye 89 gr)
fragrance ratio 0.2 (0.12 gr)
i didn't check my lye temp when i put it into the oils mixture but it was a bit warm, did a few second burst with my stick blender to emulsify - took my stick blender out on thin trace - my mixture reached thick trace in less than 1 minute and i had to scoop my batter to mold.
i mixed my TD with oil (olive) while it's water soluble, causing ugly TD spots

Trial 2 (blue & white color)
i used same recipe as above for smaller batch, but this time i used water as percentage of oil 38%, room temp lye, TD diluted with water (1:3), and no fragrance [as i read water ratio, fragrance, and lye temp can fasten trace]
did a few second burst with SB to emulsify - took my SB out on really thin trace - mixture traced to medium in around 1 minute (slower than my 1st attempt but still really fast), so i panicked and added more water into the mixture in the last minute (hence, glycerin river).
mixture was on thick trace when i poured it to the mold.

Trial 3 (just now)
i googled further and found that castor oil causes mixture to trace fast, so i tried another recipe:
extra virgin olive oil 40% (95 gr)
coconut 25% (90 gr)
palm 25% (90 gr)
almond 10% (36 gr)
lye concentration 35%, room temp lye, TD diluted with water (1:3), and no fragrance.
mixture still traced really fast (around the same as 2nd attempt)

i hope someone can help me to find out why my mixture traces so fast. around how long do it normally takes for thin trace mixtures to turn into medium or thick trace if you just let it sit on the counter?
thank you so much

 

[Tara_H]

Welcome, Arabella!

One piece of info I don't see here is what temperature the oils were when you added the lye, do you have a record of that? I see you're in Jakarta, and Alexa tells me that the current temperature there is about 32 degrees Celsius, so if your oils and lye are around that temperature after melting/cooling, that's probably warm enough. If your oils are significantly warmer that could be the cause of your fast trace.

As a reference point, my slow-moving recipe will stay pourable for hours if I add no colours or fragrance, and just leave it alone. But it took me many batches to find a recipe that would work for me - I have the problem that it's too cold here and my oils would set up, so it was difficult to find the sweet spot between warm enough to be liquid and not so warm that it would set up too fast.

 

[Arabella H]

Welcome, Arabella!

One piece of info I don't see here is what temperature the oils were when you added the lye, do you have a record of that? I see you're in Jakarta, and Alexa tells me that the current temperature there is about 32 degrees Celsius, so if your oils and lye are around that temperature after melting/cooling, that's probably warm enough. If your oils are significantly warmer that could be the cause of your fast trace.

As a reference point, my slow-moving recipe will stay pourable for hours if I add no colours or fragrance, and just leave it alone. But it took me many batches to find a recipe that would work for me - I have the problem that it's too cold here and my oils would set up, so it was difficult to find the sweet spot between warm enough to be liquid and not so warm that it would set up too fast.

hi Tara,
thank you soo much for your reply
my oils were in room tempt, so yeah its around 32' C in here everyday.
whoaa up to hours.. so i guess i just have to find the perfect recipe that works better with the climate here then?
or should i make soaps in airconed room?

 

[KiwiMoose]

Hi Arabella,

A few months ago it was about 28-29 degrees here with high humidity and I had real trouble with fast tracing soaps.
Having said that, now that the weather is cooler, I still can't let my soap just sit for more than about 2 minutes once it gets to light trace. In my shortish 2.5 years of soaping I have found that once my soap batter reaches thin trace, it's like a freight train in motion and can't be stopped. TD can also cause the trace to accelerate - have you tried making soap without it? If you are trying to counteract the yellow-ness of the olive oil then don't use extra-virgin. It's wasted in soap anyway - just buy the extra light version of olive oil.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Welcome Arabella!

much of the folklore around soapmaking is from more temperate climate – e. g. you will likely never have issues with false trace. Your recipes appear fine (from a cold & rainy European perspective). Lowering castor and coconut oils has helped others, however as long as it doesn't really work for you …

Reducing TD is worth a try anyway. As KiwiMoose recommended, watch out for a light-coloured, (non-pomace) olive oil, and save the extra virgin for the kitchen. If available, consider high-oleic sunflower oil, which is even lighter. Any colour you don't bring into the oils in the first place, doesn't have to be compensated by TD.

Which palm oil did you use? I have no idea how diverse the Indonesian market is. Incompletely refined or inferior palm oil qualities can accelerate trace in an erratic way. I've worked with (red) palm oil that barely gave me the time to stir in the lye (no chance for stick-blending), before it turned into very thick trace by itself within a minute.
When in doubt, you could even try to try a recipe without palm oil. If it makes a major difference in tracing speed, you have your culprit.

An AC room might be a good option for cooling the lye, and working with the batter (not so much for mixing oils, there you have the “luxury” that you don't need to melt up the hard oils).

HTH to improve the “playground” for your lovely swirling ambitions!

 

[Arabella H]

@KiwiMoose @ResolvableOwl
thank you so much, i'm so happy i found this forum and able to ask questions about soap making
i'll change my olive oil to extra light, eliminate TD and try a recipe without palm oil on my next attempt.
i used refined palm oil (RSPO), but i'm not too sure about the details.. any tips on choosing palm oil?
haha you got me @ResolvableOwl , i fell in love with swirl designs and its the one that made me want to make soap

 

[Zing]

Welcome and good luck to you. Just popping in to support one of my favorite oils, castor. In my experience, I have not noticed castor oil affecting trace. I like its effect on lather so much that I use it in every recipe. My first year soaping, my recipe was very similar to yours -- still is except I sub rice bran oil for olive.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

i used refined palm oil (RSPO), but i'm not too sure about the details.. any tips on choosing palm oil?

As already said, I have not the faintest idea how easy/difficult it is to purchase different palm oils in less-than-tank-truck quantities in Indonesia. Here in temperate regions, you can either buy it as cosmetic ingredient (soapmaker stores), cheap fyring oil, or unrefined for African cuisine.

RSPO doesn't tell anything about the chemical nature of the oil.

Refined (RBD) palm oil should be fine and reasonably well-natured/slow-moving, if produced and stored correctly. I can't judge this from the distance, you'll have to collect your own experience. You are in the luxurious situation that palm oil is a staple from your home country, unlike for the many soapmakers in North America and Europe. So it is an obvious choice for soapmaking. I can understand that you want to use it, but unfortunately the only advice I can give you in this respect is to try out a few different sources and observe if the results vary.

 

[KiwiMoose]

Maybe also work your batter to get to emulsion only, and not light trace. I usually just bring it to emulsion if I'm doing colours/swirls ( emulsion is just before trace - where the oils and lye are only just blended with no oil slicks on the top). Sometimes i may even split off the different colours just before emulsion - because I know that once I blend my colours in it will provide the extra mixing it needs to get to light trace.
And check your fragrances - they are often guilty of accelerating trace, especially florals. Citrus are good for slowing trace.

 

[Arabella H]

thank you all for the advices, really appreciate it.
you guys are the best!
i'll definitely make some more attempts knowing i have this forum to support my trial & error

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Welcome Arabella!

I put recipe #1 through a calculator and based on the numbers I’m seeing, it should be a reasonably friendly recipe. You could try working a tiny bit warmer. I aim for 95-100F (35-38C) as a starting temperature for my batter, which I find helps me to avoid false trace and stearic/palmitic spots when using palm.

I wouldn’t expect problems with TD or castor using your recipe, which is close to a recipe I used for swirling early on in my soap making journey. Did you mention how much of the TD blend you added to the recipes? I don’t use TD all that much, but when I do I use 1 tsp or less of 1:3 TD in oil for 450 g of oils in the recipe. At those usage rates, I haven’t noticed any acceleration issues across a wide range of recipes.

Is your palm oil fairly soft or almost liquid when you‘re using it? Palm oil can separate in the container and, if it does, what you scoop off the top versus bottom could differ in fatty acid composition. The oil at the bottom may have more of the longer chain fatty acids that will trace faster. If the PO is very soft/almost liquid, one solution is to scoop through from the top to the bottom of the container to help ensure a more even mix, or stir it first and then measure out what you need.

You should not have issues with evoo accelerating trace, but if it’s older oil, there may be free fatty acids present that could speed up trace significantly. I only occasionally use evoo due to the cost and the color issue. Mostly I use a very light yellowish OO, or a high oleic sunflower oil and rice bran oil combo.

You eliminated the fragrance as the issue, but I thought I would mention that for a batch with 620 g of oils, .12 g of fragrance is a minute amount. For a 3% concentration, which is the low end of concentrations commonly used, the weight for the fragrance would be 18.6 g (3% of 620 g of oils). Be careful when selecting fragrances because they can be real troublemakers, especially florals and anything with spicy notes.

 

[cmzaha]

Welcome Arabella!

I put recipe #1 through a calculator and based on the numbers I’m seeing, it should be a reasonably friendly recipe. You could try working a tiny bit warmer. I aim for 95-100F (35-38C) as a starting temperature for my batter, which I find helps me to avoid false trace and stearic/palmitic spots when using palm.

I soap with high percentages of palm oil (40-45%) with oil temps around 90 degrees F and lye temps around 65-70 degrees F with a 31% lye concentration. I do not worry about False Trace as many here do because the lye will heat the batter will thin back out. Mine always goes into a false trace in the beginning so I just stir my batter until the color changes and the batter heats up and thins out, keeping your batter at an initial temperature to slow down accelerating a little. Palm does accelerate so you may do better just SB'ing for a second or so and stirring your batter just to emulsion. Unlike what Zing mentioned with castor not causing acceleration, I have done tests and even a 2% difference in castor can make a difference in acceleration. I tested this in my slow-moving recipe several times with different amounts of castor. You have enough CO for lather so you might try cutting your castor to 2% or leave it out. I do not use much castor anymore and do not notice a quality difference in my soaps and use Sorbitrol to up lather.

Frankly only 20-25% Palm should not cause you issues so I would try lowering your lye concentration. I would wonder about the freshness of the OO you are buying.

 

[Mobjack Bay]

To clarify a bit, I generally make batches that are 450 to 1000 g of oil and often start pouring with the batter at emulsion or a very light trace. My batter tends to cool off quickly given that the temp in my house tends toward the high 60F in the winter. I’ve found that the happy place for most of my recipes is to use a starting batter temp that is a little warmer than what might work well for a larger batch. An exception for me is a lard base recipe that produces lovely looking soap even when I start with the batter temp in the high 70sF.

 

[Arabella H]

sooo i bought extra light olive oil and higher grade of palm oil, and made single oil soap from each oils.
my extra virgin oo (current oil) traced way faster compared to extra light oo (new oil), and after i checked, the expiry date of my extra virgin oo is August 2021. Thank you @Mobjack Bay and @cmzaha to inform me regarding the freshness of oils!
(self note: ALWAYS check expiry date)
no significant difference in tracing speed for palm oils, however, higher quality palm oil (palm oil A in photo) traced slower and looks noticeably whiter compared to my current palm oil (palm oil B).
finalllyyy i found the answer, and i made another small batch with new oils using my first recipe's ratio. It stayed on thin trace for around 20 mins. YEAY!
Then i divided this mixture into 2, one with TD and another one without TD.
the one with TD did set faster but i didn't measure the TD so probably it set faster because i put too much TD, will definitely look more into Mob's suggestion (1 tsp or less of 1:3 TD in oil for 450 g of oils)
thank you so much everyone!!

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Congratulations on making so much progress so quickly! Making the single oils soaps was a great way to sort out the issues and the striking color differences of the oils. If you’re stick blending all the way to thin trace, try stopping earlier, when you have a stable emulsion, and then hand stir until you achieve a very light trace. That should give you plenty of working time for swirls and fancy pours.