What happened to my hot process liquid soap paste?

[Faolin]

Hey everyone,

I a new here and new to soapmaking. I wasn't sure whether to post here or in the beginners forum but it seemed more related to liquid soap than beginners issues. Anyway...

I have only made one batch of castile liquid soap which took ages to trace and saponify but eventually it worked perfectly. I discovered that the castile soap was very drying for my skin so I decided to try a mix for the next batch, which is the one I am asking about here.

Here's my recipe (I ran it through soapcalc first)

Hemp oil: 225g Coconut oil: 200g Sweet almond oil: 90g KOH: 189g Water: 189g Glycerin: 189g

So I mixed the water and glycerin together and added the KOH and then added to heated oils and mixed with blender. The paste got super thick so I stopped with the blender and started using a spoon. However, after a few hours the paste did not change and was still a huge sticky mess - kind of like cottage cheese.

Here's a pic of that stage: https://i.imgur.com/nY6aY2r.jpg?

I did some reading and it seemed that the recipe may not have had enough water so I added some more. At this point I was silly and I didn't measure exactly how much, I just added. I then re-blended with the stick blender and incorporated all the water but now the paste looks like this:
https://i.imgur.com/EdVGtEc.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/QxuHTx1.jpg

The paste is extremely aerated, it looks like thick foam from a super lathery soap. There are tiny bubbles and it is very soft and airy in texture. It also has not saponified properly as it zaps me. I left it over night to see what would happen (this is what I did with the castile paste when it all seemed lost and it was fine in the morning).

Is my paste salvageable at all? Was it the extra water I added?

I forgot to add that this recipe has a 3% superfat

 

[DeeAnna]

You don't need to cook soap for hours. All that does is cook out the water. The visual stages you're worried about are not absolute mandatory requirements regardless of what the tutorials say.

Your soap was fully saponified after an hour of cooking and possibly even 1/2 hour. At the point when your soap batter became thick enough that you had to stir with a spoon, you could have turned off the heat, covered the pot tightly, walked away, and left the soap alone at room temp overnight to finish saponifying.

The airy bubbly texture is due to your stick blender. You didn't hurt anything by adding more water. It only changes how much extra water you'll add for dilution. In the future, if you don't want the froth and bubbles, incorporate the water into the paste more gently using a potato masher or spatula.

As far as zapping, my recipe calc says you should have used 120 grams KOH. I assumed 90% purity for the KOH and a 3% superfat. You used 189 grams. That might explain why the soap has excess alkali.

Salvageable? Yes, it might be, but the challenge will be getting rid of the abundance of KOH. I wouldn't neutralize that much excess KOH by adding citric or boric acid. Instead I'd add sufficient new fat to the paste and let it react with the excess KOH. If my calculations are correct, you'll have to add a little more than half again as much fat as you originally used to get the job done.

Is it worth it for you to use the new fat to fix this batch ... or would it be better to use the new fat to make a fresh batch that's good right from the start? That answer is up to you.

 

[SaltedFig]

@DeeAnna ... Faolin has said that she used 90g KOH (not 120 grams).
I suspect that the reverse might be the problem - it looks like about a 16%SF (@90% purity).

@Faolin Can you try and estimate how much extra water you have added? Even if it's rough, it still gives us an idea of whether the soap can be salvaged.

 

[DeeAnna]

I don't read it that way. Here's the line:

"...Hemp oil: 225g Coconut oil: 200g Sweet almond oil: 90g KOH: 189g Water: 189g Glycerin: 189g..."

And here it is broken up into legible sections:

Hemp oil: 225g
Coconut oil: 200g
Sweet almond oil: 90g
KOH: 189g
Water: 189g
Glycerin: 189g

And the use of 189 for KOH, glycerin, and water also supports my reading of this information -- it's a common way of making the lye solution to dissolve KOH in an equal weight of water and then add another equal weight of glycerin.

 

[SaltedFig]

Oh wow. Caught out by the writing style. Lye heavy it is.

So there would need to be just over half the amount of oils again, to bring it up to the correct value ... that does raise the question of whether it's worth continuing with the batch - taking a small test portion and diluting it with some extra oils might be a good test to see if it's a viable solution.

@Faolin, if you want to try rescuing the batch, calculate your figures and post them up before you start, so someone can double-check them for you (it's always a good help to have double-checks on maths )

 

[Faolin]

Thank you everyone! I appreciate your help and advice. I ended up just redoing the batch again, and I got a more accurate scale for measuring the lye so this batch has worked perfectly!

I'm just taking it as a lesson on the learning curve and all your advice will definitely be used in the future.

Thanks <3