Temperature to work with high butter recipe

[dragonmaker]

I’m trying to use up some Shea butter, mango butter, and cocoa butter that are old. I know old oils can trace quickly, as can Shea normally. I’m wondering what temperature you would recommend to use for a recipe with 29% Shea butter, 15%mango butter, 23%cocoa butter, 28% coconut oil, and 5% castor oil so I don’t get soap on a stick. Any tips besides temperature you can think of?

 

[Nona'sFarm]

Wow, I would not be brave enough to try that - all those solid oils in one recipe. I would add some liquid oils, at least 40% of the total. Sadly I have no advice for a soap with such a high percentage of butters and coconut oil.

 

[not_ally]

Yes, that's a lot of hard oils, especially old ones! Definitely use lots of water/low lye concentration and a very well-behaved FO/EO. And have troubleshooting strategies in place, I'd expect trouble with this one. ETA: agree with @Nona'sFarm's suggestion to add in a good amount of liquid slow-trace oils, maybe OO if you don't hate it.

ETA: you're going to have an issue soaping at lower temps with this mix, which you will want to do to slow trace with all those solid/old oils. But because of all the stearic/palmitic acids, you are likely to encounter false trace and have stearic spots in the final product at a low temp. Just a heads up and another reason to mix in liquid oils.

 

[dragonmaker]

I went ahead and made the soap at 74F oils and 110F lye. The lye solution included frozen milk and honey, which got quite hot, so I waited for it to cool to 110F before starting to mix with the oils. I wanted it to warm up my oils that had cooled more than I wanted them to in my cool garage. I was aiming for a total temperature in the mid 80s to low 90s. I stirred briefly with spatula then hit it with the stick blender for literally one second to reach emulsion and got a pourable light trace in that one second. I poured immediately into my cavity molds. It stayed fluid the whole pour, thankfully, and hasn’t separated in the molds. I’ll remove them from the molds tomorrow and see then if I got stearic spots. I won’t mind if I do get stearic spots though, as long as I didn’t get false trace and separation. It’s going to have milk and honey spots anyway, so any stearic spots would fit right in.

I used my usual 33% lye concentration and a well-behaved fragrance oil (chocolate ganache from Brambleberry)

 

[not_ally]

Yay! I'm glad it worked out, I'm kind of surprised, especially after seeing you added milk and honey!! Thanks for updating, I always want to hear the end of the story

 

[dragonmaker]

I’ve learned that dissolving my honey in distilled water then freezing it before adding the lye let’s all the heating drama happen before it becomes soap, and it hasn’t heated my soap batter so far since I started doing honey in my lye solution. I got the idea from IrishLass’s honey soap here on the forum.

 

[AliensrReal]

Good job! I’m glad you tried the recipe.

 

[not_ally]

I’ve learned that dissolving my honey in distilled water then freezing it before adding the lye let’s all the heating drama happen before it becomes soap, and it hasn’t heated my soap batter so far since I started doing honey in my lye solution. I got the idea from IrishLass’s honey soap here on the forum.

I love IL's recipe! It is the one I use, too. It is so shivery-fun to see the lye water turn that dangerous looking red color when you put the honey in, even though you know it will be ok