Soap disaster - Brown GOO - happened to many recipes for some reason...

[RogueRose]

After about a year of soaping I went through all my soaps I hadn't used and found that a number of my earlier recipes had this really sticky brown goo on them. I'm not sure this is DOS as it doesn't really seem the same, it is more of a thick sticky oil. I'm thinking that it might be from the castor oil that I used when I started as that is kind of the consistency but IDK why it would act that way. It was the oil sold at walmart in 8 oz bottles and I never used it above 5%.

All recipes were CP and some other recipes that used the same ingredients & recipe turned out fine so there isn't really any specific reason that I can think of, like a specific oil only used in these recipes, or a FO/EO used. I'm thinking that it may be due to how it was made/processed but I really didn't do anything differently between the batches.

One of the strange things is that soaps stored in the box below one of these soaps would start to get spots/beads of this goo on them, kind of like sweating - so this goo gets air borne and contaminates stuff below it. The soaps that got contaminated had other bars from the same recipe stored elsewhere which didn't get these spots.. I was storing all the soaps in cardboard boxes with a slit on the bottom edge of the sides to promote air flow - so I think this may have helped move the goo.

 

[rparrny]

It's soapy Ebola!
I've honestly never seen that happen and how weird is it that it can migrate to some soaps and not others. Did I read right...it spread from one sealed box to another below it? Or was the box open?

 

[Saponomancer]

Eugh, I have no idea either, my first thought is DOS but you're right about that sticky stuff being really weird

They do look sort of horrifying though

 

[sudsy_kiwi]

I think this is how the zombie apocalypse starts

 

[Obsidian]

Looks like dos to me, a very extreme case. Dos will get soft and sticky, the oily stuff could be from the soap sweating or deteriorating. Where did you store these? Did they get hot? Were the boxes sealed? Dos can spread to nearby soap.

Soap really needs to be kept cool with plenty of air flow. I also see that you used shortening in at least one batch, is it a common ingredient for you? Soy oil really is prone to dos, I won't use shortening anymore because of that.

 

[navigator9]

I agree with Obsidian, it looks like DOS to me......on steroids! How does it smell? DOS has a very off, rancid oil kind of smell, and if it really is DOS, yours should smell like that, and then some. Is there a common denominator in your recipes? Did you use the shortening in all of them? Extra high superfat? Did the oils overheat while you were melting them? That's more DOS than I've ever seen in one place at one time, there should be a clue there somewhere.

 

[reinbeau]

Man, those pictures rather turned my stomach - yes, that looks like an extremely bad case of DOS - didn't know it could spread like that. I would never store my soaps in a closed environment.