What the heck??? Whine about wine.

[surf girl]

I embarked on an extravaganza of soaping this afternoon and it all went to custard. Batch number one was supposed to be a funnel swirl but it set up so fast that it is now layered soap. I'm cool with that - can always try the swirl another day.

But THIS!! This mess! Batch number two was supposed to be a castile soap with wine as the liquid. I used red wine, mixing the lye straight in. Mixed at 27%. The olive oil was olive pomace. Ran it through soap calc for the numbers. Oil and lye mixture were both at 110F. DISASTER. It globbed up in the pot immediately, and never really mixed properly - separated, I guess. You know how the stick blender is usually coated with a nice film of mayonnaise-like mix when you pull it out of the pot? Well, when I pulled it out of this stuff, it was clean but greasy-looking. There were blobs of white fat or almost-soap or something, and then what looked like icing out of a can, and then a tiny bit of greasy-looking liquid (wine-coloured) around the whole thing. No amount of stick blending would fix it, although that did alleviate the white blob problem.

So. What the heck happened? I just made beer soap the other night, and simmered it for a while which I suppose removed the alcohol as well as the fizz, but I have read of people using beer straight out of the bottle too, and I wasn't really concerned about the alcohol in the wine. Maybe I should have simmered the alcohol off? I had a similar problem with a batch of soap that used an entirely different recipe, and I believe the problem with that one was that I accidentally heated the crap out of it.

Grumble grumble grumble.

 

[Lindy]

Oh - I'm so sorry!!!! How about putting the pot into the oven at 200 F and HPing it for a while?

 

[something to shop about]

Well I guess that answers my wine question! lol guess I'll drink it. :shock:

 

[surf girl]

I am a sort of hillbilly - I have no oven. We've been intending to reno our kitchen for, oh, TWELVE YEARS now. Mr surf girl cooks in a BBQ (he's a genius cook). But I did try throwing the globby blobby mess into the microwave and heating it to piping hot - no joy. So now it's "setting" and I'll give it a day or so and then try rebatching properly.

 

[surf girl]

Oops - double.

 

[Deda]

This won't help with this batch, but I make my wine soap by simmering the wine down to a syrup and adding it cold at trace. Discounting the water. It gives a lovely color and a very faint scent.

 

[surf girl]

Deda - do you think it is the alcohol that did this? If so, how do the straight-out-of-the-bottle beer soap people do it?

 

[Deda]

I don't know if the alcohol was the cause of the problem. But I think it might have been.

I wish I could tell you why, and you can bet I'm going to dig through my notes to see if I can find the answer. I've always heard that when you sub out wine or beer you should boil out the carbonation and the alcohol.

HTH

 

[surf girl]

Cheers, Deda. And now that my furious anger has subsided (actually, I wasn't all that mad, just confounded), I'll do some research as well, and see what I can find.

 

[Gregory]

I hope I can help out on this one! I am new to soaping and I have also made Beer Soap and all I did was let the beer go flat over night and used it as my water and added the lye straight into the beer. Turned out great and I have sold a few of them on Etsy! As for the wine I tried doing the same thing and it turned out to be glop city!! :shock: I like the idea of making a syrup out of the wine and will try that next time but I also read somewhere that you need to at least boil it for awhile to get the sugars and alcohol out. Hope you have better luck next time!

Greg

 

[surf girl]

Thanks, dude!

I did a quick search on this forum, and there are a couple of threads... http://www.soapmakingforum.com/forum/vi ... ine+recipe and http://www.soapmakingforum.com/forum/vi ... ine+recipe

...which pretty much echo what you're saying. One other thing this poster did differently with the successful vs unsuccessful batch was soap at 80F instead of 100F. The fact that this botched batch of mine reminds me of my overheated botched carrot batch makes me think that heat may be a big factor as well.

 

[digit]

Sorry you had the flub batch Surf Girl. Be sure and show us the next one!!! Your soaps make great viewing with my morning coffee!!!!

Digit

 

[surf girl]

Aw, thanks for the cheer-me-up, digit. Maybe the whiny batch will turn out OK upon rebatching. I might have to take a few medicinal glasses of wine to keep me even-tempered as I work.