What happened?!

[Miku_Miku1990]

Hello. I'm a very new soap maker. I have had 1 successful soap batch under my belt. I just made a new batch today, and OMG. I have no idea what happened.
Here's my recipe:
8.2 oz coconut oil
7.0 oz Palm oil
9.9 oz olive oil
4.9 oz sweet almond oil
1.6 oz shea butter
4.440 oz Lye
10.43 oz water
1.28 oz Brambleberry's Sweet pea fragrance oil
Okay, now that you have read my recipe here's what happened. I poured my lye into my water as usual. I let my oils cool down to 170 F, and my lye was at 179 F. I mixed it with my stick blender to a very light trace because the fragrance I have accelerates trace a bit. However, once I mixed more my soap started to rice, and then when I got it into the mold it started to separate. After that it started to poof out into a volcano. Can you say triple whammy? Am I doing something wrong? is there something about my recipe that needs to be changed? Any advice would be most appreciated.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Recipe to one side - you're soaping rather hot there! Many people soap more around the 100F or lower - more like room temperature.

At your heat, I'm not shocked that it reacted that way at all. The saponification process also generates more heat, so it just builds on itself too.

 

[hozhed]

I am new at this as well, but that seems VERY hot. All the videos I have watched have mixed the lye with the oils at much lower temps.....around 100 deg F or so..............

 

[Susie]

Its definitely the process on this one. Soap a LOT cooler with a known accelerant. And mix your FO into the oils before the lye so that there are no surprises.

 

[Miku_Miku1990]

Thank you so very much for all the advice. I will definitely be soaping at a much lower temp in the future. I'm just glad to know that was the mistake I was making. I was getting a little discouraged ^^"

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

There is often a reason for a result with soaping. Alas, not always! But often

 

[Miku_Miku1990]

Quick question. Can you reverse gel phase?

 

[newbie]

No going back once it has gelled. If a soap starts to gel you can try to stop the rest but then you get the partial gel look. Most people would rather have it fully gelled or not at all because people don't care as much for the circle look in the middle.

 

[Miku_Miku1990]

Oh poo! Okay, thank you so much for the information ^^"

 

[Miku_Miku1990]

But if it can't be reversed how come when I put my soap in the freezer the gel phase appeared to reverse. So I'm fairly confused. :???:

 

[hmlove1218]

What do you mean by it appeared to reverse?

 

[Obsidian]

You can stop the gel process from continuing but you can't reverse it. Once your soap has gelled, it can't be un-gelled.

 

[DeeAnna]

"... the gel phase appeared to reverse..."

Cooling your soap would have caused the gelled parts to solidify. It will change from a darker, translucent look when hot to lighter and more opaque when cool. But gelling the soap causes the soap to change its physical structure, and that change doesn't go away when the soap cools. You can compare a bar of soap that never gelled with another bar from the same batch that did gel, and you can see the difference.