That's Just My Cup O’ Tea

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ResolvableOwl

Notorious Lyear
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I felt like I had to appease my Camellia sinensis caffeinist me, for selling my soul to coffee lately.

tea.jpg


Long-time lurker for giving Tea causes boiling when adding lye? a chance. In the end I couldn't really tell if there was a heat difference to plain water, since I've added 1%TOW of citric acid in form of lime juice to the tea, prior to dissolving the lye into it in many small portions.

A few recipe/process details: 30% lye concentration, with two thirds of the liquid from a strong black tea (1 part leaves + 10 parts distilled water), a loose-leaf tea with caramel flavouring; I'm curious if I would detect anything of this smell after cure (in the brew it's a bit too strong for my taste, I either drink it with plenty of milk, or “diluted” with unflavoured tea). Currently the smell is mostly the weird earthy odour of tea in the alkaline (like when cleaning the thermos flask with soda).
The last third of lye liquid is lime juice. Unlike the vain decoration, it is diabetics-friendly sweetened with sorbitol (1.8%TOW). It's a tiny batch, cast into a PP measuring cup. I needed to soap quite warm (ye know, palm stearin struck again); not gelled, you can tell by the stearic spots, lol (or was the milk sour?). Easy to unmould after 12 h.

Ah yes, and stroopwafels! 😋
 
🤣 I read your dedication to international coffee day or whatever it was. That coffee soap looked amazing. I love coffee (hate coffee scrub but like coffee soap).

This looks sensual and sweet. Look forward to hearing about the how the smell changes.

I like using tea in soap especially matcha.
Stroopwafel is a nice touch? Homemade??
 
Stroopwafel is a nice touch? Homemade??
Hell no. I do have a flat waffle iron, but filling waffles with that butter syrup is a huge mess, and (more importantly) I have to be very patient to wait until cold, so that they don't float away when biting into them. I admire the Dutch stroopwafel masters who manage to divide these waffle slices in half to fill them on the fly.
 
Well, words vs. colours … always difficult. I'd rather call it a “tea with milk” colour. A tad into reddish-brown, distinct from a more yellowish-brown “coffee with milk” colour, but not as reddish as hot chocolate.

tea_cut.jpg

If I had to, I might compare the colour as well to fudge or peanut butter.
After cutting, the inside is lighter and creamier (still the same hue). Middle in the photo is a cut that is about 1 minute old; an earlier cut (left) was 1 hour ago, one can see that quite some late discolouration going on there! Where might have I seen soap darkening upon air contact lately as well? 🤔
The top of the bar (right in the photo) caught quite some soda ash. For the record, I have added ROE and lime juice, but no other reducing agents, that could interfere with the colour-deepening oxidation of tea tannins (?).

ETA: The smell is gradually shifting away from the initial, burnt chemical odour, and actually faintly reminds of the caramel tea.
 

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