Weird Color Question

[KudzuGoddess]

I seek the guidance of my revered soapy elders! How do I make a soap intentionally colored the same color as fragrance oil discoloration but without the fragrance oil? Will coffee in the lye solution do the trick? Beer? Tea? What if I soaked a vanilla bean in the oils and then strained out the bits? When I use micas, clays, or cocoa powder it comes out too opaque, I am looking for something brown with a hint of translucency when it gets a good gel and if possible it wants to be natural. Is this a soap that only exists in my mind? Love to you all and thanks!

 

[LynetteO]

I seek the guidance of my revered soapy elders! How do I make a soap intentionally colored the same color as fragrance oil discoloration but without the fragrance oil? Will coffee in the lye solution do the trick? Beer? Tea? What if I soaked a vanilla bean in the oils and then strained out the bits? When I use micas, clays, or cocoa powder it comes out too opaque, I am looking for something brown with a hint of translucency when it gets a good gel and if possible it wants to be natural. Is this a soap that only exists in my mind? Love to you all and thanks!

Others will chime in as far as other additives, but… Neem oil turns soap a natural earth tone light brown, but it has a STRONG scent of its very own. Cocoa does color batter but it needs to be dispersed well to avoid specks. I’d also like to know if a beer like say Guinness would change the soap?

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Caramel food colouring? It is water soluble and very transparent. Pre-disperse it in water, otherwise it might clump up a fair bit. Black tea works well too.

 

[TheGecko]

I seek the guidance of my revered soapy elders! How do I make a soap intentionally colored the same color as fragrance oil discoloration but without the fragrance oil? Will coffee in the lye solution do the trick? Beer? Tea? What if I soaked a vanilla bean in the oils and then strained out the bits? When I use micas, clays, or cocoa powder it comes out too opaque, I am looking for something brown with a hint of translucency when it gets a good gel and if possible it wants to be natural. Is this a soap that only exists in my mind? Love to you all and thanks!

Mica would be your best best, along with gelling your soap.

 

[Zing]

I make lots of brown soaps! There's good micas (Bramble Berry), and I love using cocoa powder to the max, and using brewed coffee at twice strength for lye solution (use distilled water to make coffee).

 

[violets2217]

I love using Green Tea powder in soap for a warm brown with speckles or some aloe power for a nice tan color.
The top one was an attempt at green tea Ombré and the second I used both green tea powder(brown) and aloe powder (tan). The white is kaolin clay.

 

[Zany_in_CO]

I am looking for something brown with a hint of translucency

Coffee, beer, tea, cocoa powder, etc. will all give you lovely browns, but opaque like @violets2217 above.

For translucency, you might get an idea from this thread:

UNUSUAL TRANSPARENT SOAP

 

[AliOop]

Cocoa works well, but I have a lifetime supply of carob powder to use up first. Both can be clumpy and will create speckles if you aren't careful to mix them very well in oil or liquid before adding them to your batter.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

I have a lifetime supply of carob powder to use up first.

First-world problems! Could be worse, really. Hot chocolate made with half-half cocoa:carob powder is amazing!

But back to soapy realms, carob syrup/molasses might indeed be another viable addition to soap. Guess it's appropriate to ask my fridge if it can spare some for non-food purposes.


ETA: Why has nobody in this thread mentioned honey (+ heat/gel/CPOP) yet? Everyone under the sun is complaining about OMH discolouring.

 

[DMack]

First-world problems! Could be worse, really. Hot chocolate made with half-half cocoa:carob powder is amazing!

But back to soapy realms, carob syrup/molasses might indeed be another viable addition to soap. Guess it's appropriate to ask my fridge if it can spare some for non-food purposes.


ETA: Why has nobody in this thread mentioned honey (+ heat/gel/CPOP) yet? Everyone under the sun is complaining about OMH discolouring.

My honey soap was definitely tan coloured but also smelled a bit scorched

 

[Nona'sFarm]

Others will chime in as far as other additives, but… Neem oil turns soap a natural earth tone light brown, but it has a STRONG scent of its very own. Cocoa does color batter but it needs to be dispersed well to avoid specks. I’d also like to know if a beer like say Guinness would change the soap?

I made a soap with stout once and the section with no colorant came out a light brown. Coffee grounds also do that in my coffee soap, but then you also have brown specks.

 

[KudzuGoddess]

All, thank you so much! This is fascinating! I finally got to experiment today and here are the results, ignore all the air bubbles, I was mixing up this batch before work and it was a bit devil may care, but the color is pretty dang close to what I was hoping to achieve. This is a coffee lye solution, my normal recipe, and oven process gel. Next, I think I'm going to try tea, then I am going to give that honey thing a try. Woohoo!

 

[Zany_in_CO]

Indeed! Well done!