Undissolved Salt? Spots in soap.

[peachymoon]

Hi everybody,

I finally remembered to photograph the spots on this soap I made a few weeks ago. This is a brine soap. I used fine pink himalayan salt for this. I tried dissolving it in the hot lye solution, but it did not fully dissolve and I ended up adding it all to the batter without straining it, hoping it would dissolve at some point in the process, 'cos it wasn't very much. Anyway, the bars have these spots on them and I'm not sure if it's possibly just the salt that sank to the bottom? I didn't use palm oil in this recipe, Idk if you can get stearic acid spots from something else. The recipe is: 45% Coconut, 20% Olive, 20% Safflower, 10% Apricot Kernel, and 5% Castor, SF @ 10%. I don't remember all the details on why these are the numbers, but I adapted this from some other brine recipe online, lol.

The bars are velvety smooth, I'm hoping it's just a cosmetic issue and they are still usable.

Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you. ☺

 

[Obsidian]

It could be salt but it almost looks like stearic spots. Either way, the soap is perfectly fine to use.
If it is undissolved himalayan salt, it could be scratchy so watch for that if you rub the bar directly on your skin.

Next dissolve your salt first then add your lye. If you use pink salt, I'd strain out any grit before adding the lye.

 

[peachymoon]

It could be salt but it almost looks like stearic spots. Either way, the soap is perfectly fine to use.
If it is undissolved himalayan salt, it could be scratchy so watch for that if you rub the bar directly on your skin.

Next dissolve your salt first then add your lye. If you use pink salt, I'd strain out any grit before adding the lye.

Thank you! I thought stearic spots were only caused by Palm Oil. Do you know if there any ingredients I used that also contribute to them?

 

[Obsidian]

Stearic spots can be caused by any oil that has stearic in it. Your recipe is really low in stearic, so that probably not the issue. They could be bubbles.

Are the spots only on one side of the soap? Its hard to tell. You are probably right that its salt.

 

[atiz]

Yeah, for brine soap it is easier to dissolve the salt first (lye is more soluable). Or I mostly use the split water method: have a 50% saturated(-ish) lye-solution, and dissolve as much salt in the remaining warmed up water as you can (about 25-27%). This works quite well for me, no extra salt bits remain.
But these look really nice -- and soleseife soap is so smooth and velvety! I need to make some soon...

 

[peachymoon]

Stearic spots can be caused by any oil that has stearic in it. Your recipe is really low in stearic, so that probably not the issue. They could be bubbles.

Are the spots only on one side of the soap? Its hard to tell. You are probably right that its salt.

Yes, the spots are only on that side (which was the bottom), so I thought it could've been the undissolved salt that sank. It just wasn't apparent the salt might've still been there once I was mixing the batter, so I wasn't sure.

 

[peachymoon]

Yeah, for brine soap it is easier to dissolve the salt first (lye is more soluable). Or I mostly use the split water method: have a 50% saturated(-ish) lye-solution, and dissolve as much salt in the remaining warmed up water as you can (about 25-27%). This works quite well for me, no extra salt bits remain.
But these look really nice -- and soleseife soap is so smooth and velvety! I need to make some soon...

I will remember that for next time! Thank you.