Soap soft, dry and crumbly

[cascarral]

Hello!

I made a brine soap (15% of water weight) with AC (1tbs PPO), scented with mint, bergamot and rosemary eos but very odd things happened to this bar: first, I couldn't get the silicone liner out of the wood mold, then when I did (after freezing it) it started crumbling down. It has a ver weird consistency, like wet sand, it crumbles when I cut it but it’s soft and I can make balls out of the crumbles. It is like kinetic sand!

In another post someone suggested it might be lye heavy so I PH tested and it’s about 11-12 but it hasn’t cured so maybe this is why PH is high? Also ZAP tested but I didn’t feel anything, tastes more disgusting than my other soaps, though. Maybe I’m not doing the test right.

Someone else said that he has had this happened with rosemary EO, I hope it's not that, love that scent!

Another idea is that it was the temperature... I soaped at 100 F and when I put in the mold the soap was around 86 C.

Here’s my recipe, and I just checked my scale with another one as a reference, it seems to be OK, I don’t know how to test further. When I was making the soap I did have to replace the batteries... could this be a reason for it not to work?

 

[Obsidian]

I would think it was cut too soon, soft and crumbly is too soon, hard and crumbly is too long.
Your recipe has a lot of sodt oils and it doesn't look like it gelled. Both of those will slow down how fast to soap sets up.

 

[cascarral]

Thank you This is my base recipe, I've done it thousdands of times but I usually do at least 2-3 kilos, and this was 1 kilo so maybe temp went down faster? It's still crumliyng after one week.

 

[amd]

I did a rosemary, eucalyptus, menthol EO brine soap last year, this was my experience also. I suspect the EO's as my other brine soaps using FO's did not do this. The soaps were fine after cure.

 

[cascarral]

I did a rosemary, eucalyptus, menthol EO brine soap last year, this was my experience also. I suspect the EO's as my other brine soaps using FO's did not do this. The soaps were fine after cure.

Thank you!

i also noticed that the smell almost vanished, have you had the same experience with this group of eos? I used 3%, was expecting more aroma.

 

[amd]

i also noticed that the smell almost vanished, have you had the same experience with this group of eos? I used 3%, was expecting more aroma.

Did you calculate for oils or total batch weight?

When I do EO's, I take into consideration safety usages as well as total batch weight. The rosemary/eucalyptus/menthol sticks really well, I have a few of last year's bars that are holding the scent well, although the rosemary is not as strong as it was when they were fresh (but I don't use much rosemary in it to start with because I'm not a huge fan...).

 

[KiwiMoose]

I've had crumbly soap if i don't gel. Also maybe a little heavy on the charcoal?

 

[Primrose]

Interesting problem. I'm not sure what's causing it but I soap with rosemary EO all the time, though not brine bars, and have never encountered this issue. I use rosemary at about 3.5-4% and use with peppermint.

 

[Dawni]

I've used rosemary EO in brine soap and have never had this problem so while it could be a cause, I'm thinking it's more like a combination of causes? I can't say what those could be though, sorry..