Weird soap

[Catscankim]

My last two batches are so weird. Both of them, the exact recipe that i have always been using, only upscaled to fit a bigger mold.

I thought maybe i mismeasured the first one or unmolded too soon. I made another batch last night and now its 24 hours later, definitely not ready to unmold. Its sticky, soft, and gooey/almost oily like the first batch. And, two days later, the first batch is still gooey on top.

33% lye concentration

50% lard
25% olive oil
20% coconut oil
5% castor oil

cpop, oven on until i pop it in the oven. Light on till morning/early afternoon.

2oz fragrance

When i took the molds out, both times they were still warm.

ummmm....the first one i mixed my colors with extra oil. Last night i used batch oils (olive).

The only thing i think MIGHT be different, is trying to be as fluid as possible for the challenge. Could i have not quite gotten to emulsion yet? And would this be causing these problems?

 

[Arimara]

Maybe give it the week and see later? These things do happen.

 

[LilianNoir]

are both batches sticky, etc?

Did you upscale both? By how much?
Larger batches can behave differently I think because of the mass and heat generated. When I upscaled a recipe and used a slab mold, it needed 3 days before it was firm enough to cut.

 

[dixiedragon]

Could be a mixing issue? Really make sure you are getting top, middle, bottom, the "corners" etc.

I think you might be used to the way your smaller batch looks/feels/behaves and not used to the way the larger batch looks/feels/behaves.

 

[Catscankim]

As of now, one is 3 days old and one is 2. I could honestly stick my finger right through them if i really wanted to. The newer one has been on the counter covered with a towel, and it has the impression of the towel on top.

I upscaled by 50%, so its not really huge. I did a lot of hand stirring, let sit, hand stir. Only stick blended in the beginning to get it to emulsion.

I think a rebatch might be in order. Its really scary looking right now lol.

edit, and i should mention that the upscale was more than i needed for the TS mold, so i filled my regular loaf about halfway for four oversize bars. That one is all wonky too

 

[Obsidian]

Its possible it wasn't mixed enough but if that was the issue, it should have separated at least a little by now.
Before resorting to rebatching, I would trying to force gel in the oven.

Heat your oven to 170, turn it off and pop your molds in. You might need to check after a hour or so and reheat your oven. A complete cool loaf might need a bit more help getting heated up.

 

[Catscankim]

Its possible it wasn't mixed enough but if that was the issue, it should have separated at least a little by now.
Before resorting to rebatching, I would trying to force gel in the oven.

Heat your oven to 170, turn it off and pop your molds in. You might need to check after a hour or so and reheat your oven. A complete cool loaf might need a bit more help getting heated up.

Can i put them in the oven if they are already unmolded? The first on is acutally cut. The second is still in loaf form, but unmolded.

 

[Obsidian]

No, you would need to put them back in the molds. They could get soft and loose their shape.
Have you zap testes them?

 

[DeeAnna]

I've put cut bars into the oven without being in a mold. It works okay as long as you watch it carefully.

Saponista has a video about her "rescue" method. She sets the oven temp at 275F and watches the soap bars like a hawk -- you cannot step away when heating soap this hot when it's not in a mold.

I stick with 170 F and still watch it closely. I line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and put the soap on the paper.

Link to Saponista's video about her method and a description of how I do it -- Rescue oven processing | Soapy Stuff

A tip -- don't pick up or handle the bars at all when removing them from the oven -- just remove the cookie sheet gently and let the soap cool without any touching.

The bars (at least in my experience) usually don't look any different on the outside compared to when they're at room temp, but they can get really ooey gooey on the inside. That's much more likely to happen if you set the oven to the hotter temp that Saponista uses. But I've had this happen when I left the soap in the oven too long at 170F.

If you try to pick up a bar that's like that .... well .... let me just say it doesn't go well.

 

[lenarenee]

Your description of being able to push a finger through it reminded me of when that happened to me. The soap sat in the mold for days and made very slow progress in hardening up. I discovered that the essential oil I used (given to me by a friend) was a fraud - it was scented carrier oil so there was an extra 2 ounces of oil in my recipe. Surprisingly - it did eventually harden up and was a usable soap with poor lather.

I wonder if your scale is off, or your lye. Seems unlikely that you could have mis-measured water or oil for both batches, but still possible I guess. Your fragrance oil can really slow things down - but again - the likelihood of that happening to two batches in a row is small but possible (BRV from Nurture takes a week or more to unfold for me - and a couple more days to cut)

 

[linne1gi]

My last two batches are so weird. Both of them, the exact recipe that i have always been using, only upscaled to fit a bigger mold.

I thought maybe i mismeasured the first one or unmolded too soon. I made another batch last night and now its 24 hours later, definitely not ready to unmold. Its sticky, soft, and gooey/almost oily like the first batch. And, two days later, the first batch is still gooey on top.

33% lye concentration

50% lard
25% olive oil
20% coconut oil
5% castor oil

cpop, oven on until i pop it in the oven. Light on till morning/early afternoon.

2oz fragrance

When i took the molds out, both times they were still warm.

ummmm....the first one i mixed my colors with extra oil. Last night i used batch oils (olive).

The only thing i think MIGHT be different, is trying to be as fluid as possible for the challenge. Could i have not quite gotten to emulsion yet? And would this be causing these problems?

The first time I made the tall and skinny shimmy, I was trying for a really fluid pour - I used my usual 33% lye concentration - and I thought I blended to emulsion. But, days later, my soap still hadn't firmed up - it took over a week to get out of the mold and I set the soaps aside. A year later - the soaps are fine, but have shrunken quite a lot. I still don't know if I didn't blend enough or if I somehow added extra water.. But they are fine, just not very sellable. I gave them away.

 

[Catscankim]

Im gonna say that it had to be underblending. I made the same recipe, nice and simple itp but blended to light trace, poured and cpoped as usual, and it came out beautiful.

This is really scary looking soap. Every time i lift the towel theres another scary surprise lol. It now has a really thick layer of ash that you can rub off with your fingers lol. The ones that i cut got hard, but theres still a top layer of goo

These were two different fragrances, so its not that.

@DeeAnna I used that rescue method once and melted my soap lol. I watched and watched, then in a split second it was all buckling over. I ended up rebatching in a crock pot. I cant remember what was wrong with it to begin with.

 

[linne1gi]

Im gonna say that it had to be underblending. I made the same recipe, nice and simple itp but blended to light trace, poured and cpoped as usual, and it came out beautiful.

This is really scary looking soap. Every time i lift the towel theres another scary surprise lol. It now has a really thick layer of ash that you can rub off with your fingers lol. The ones that i cut got hard, but theres still a top layer of goo

These were two different fragrances, so its not that.

@DeeAnna I used that rescue method once and melted my soap lol. I watched and watched, then in a split second it was all buckling over. I ended up rebatching in a crock pot. I cant remember what was wrong with it to begin with.

It took 12 months, but it’s good now!