tired of mixing lye

[Guest]

Hi All, Im thinking of batching my lye. It seems pretty straight forward, and IrishLass' explanation was really quite helpful, but here is what im wondering...

I started out using soapcalc and have just manually adjusted all my recipes on paper as i have gone along, so instead of thinking about concentrations, i focused on discounts. I know its just a different way of expressing the same value, but im having a difficult time wrapping my head around it in terms of concentrations rather than how much water i can or cannot remove from a particular batch.

So, here is what im wondering ... I know in one recipe i can safely remove about 20 oz of water right off the top with no ill effects. So, say im making a batch using a 50/50 lye mix, if i took that 20 oz out of the additional water i would add after adding the 50/50 mix, is that equivalent?

 

[judymoody]

I may be misinterpreting your question, but I'll give it a go.

I don't masterbatch lye because I have kids at home. But based on what I've read, it seems that if you made a 1:1 lye/water solution, the logical thing would be to calculate your lye (say it's 100 grams for simplicity's sake), use 200 grams of your premixed solution, and then add whatever additional water your particular recipe requires. Does that make sense?

 

[Loolee]

You could add some other liquid to drop the % down... like aloe, or more water, or goats/coconut milk. But I don't understand how to figure exactly how much to add.

 

[Guest]

I may be misinterpreting your question, but I'll give it a go.

I don't masterbatch lye because I have kids at home. But based on what I've read, it seems that if you made a 1:1 lye/water solution, the logical thing would be to calculate your lye (say it's 100 grams for simplicity's sake), use 200 grams of your premixed solution, and then add whatever additional water your particular recipe requires. Does that make sense?

Perfect sense Judy. It just seemed so straight forward i thought i must be missing something.

Loolee, i may not be explaining it well, so please search around and dont take my word for it, but from what i understand, if its a 1/1, you add double the amount of lye called for, take the total water called for and subtract out what you just added, and the remainder is the liquid you need to add.