What's the deal?

[mamastone]

My soap is turning brown. Not orange (which I would assume = DOS), but brown. What is the deal with this? Is something wrong with the soap?
It's still about a week from the suggested 3 week cure time, but I did a zap test with bsolutely no zap so I tested out a bar... seems fine, but it gets a bit gooey instead of foamy if you rub it in your hands with minimal water. (does that make sense? It's the best I can explain)
Mostly very close to the dried peppermint I added to the soap, which also turned brown/blackish but I'd expected that much.
It's 100% olive oil, plus sweet birch as a EO. I used abgout a tsp of green clay for colourant, but I don't see it at all.

You can't see it well in this photo, but a little bit
http://flickr.com/photos/mamastone/2990403465/

 

[IrishLass]

Hi Mamastone!

Well, the 'gooey instead of foamy' is pretty easy to explain seeing as how it was a 100% olive oil bar. Olive oil is very high in oleic acid, which when soaped, will form a colloidal, or gel-like substance on the surface of the soap when it gets wet. Some people call the colliodal sustance 'slime', and it's a very normal ocurrance with soaps made with a high percentage of olive oil. 100% olive oil soaps will not get all that sudsy, if at all. To get more suds you will have to cut down on the olive oil and add more bubbling oils/fats to your formula. Not to worry about the 'slime', though- it hardens back up when the soap is left to dry between uses on a well-draining soapdish.

As for the brown spots, from your picture it looks to me like it is probably being caused by the chlorophyll of the dried mint bleeding into your soap. I've read that this is quite common with dried or fresh herb leaves, and/or flower petals, which has always made me hesitant to use them.

From the picture, your soap looks fairly white with the dark spots being only around where the herbs are. Are you saying that the whole soap is now turning brown on you, too? If so, I wonder if it's the sweet birch scent you used? I'm not familiar with that particular scent, but I know that some scents can cause brown discoloration throughout the whole soap. I've experienced this quite often with scents that have vanilla in them. Hopefully someone who has soaped sweet birch will chime in with their experience.

As for the clay, it sounds like you may not have used enough to get the color to come through for you. Sometimes, depending on the color of your base oils and scent, you just need to add more to get a strong showing.

Having said all of that, I don't believe there is anything wrong with your soap from what you wrote and from what the picture looks like (it looks very lovely). It definitely does not look like DOS to me, and the 'slime' and brown spots are pretty normal for the kind of formula and ingredients you used.

HTH!
IrishLass

 

[digit]

It still looks fab to me!!

Digit

 

[heartsong]

sweet birch

i have made sweet yellow birch soap and it will discolor with time. yours smells similar to a strong sweet wintergreen scent?

it is very good for non-specific dermatitus.-itchy, flaky dry skin when used in a gentle-cleansing recipe. i usually do an extra lye discount and use the e/o at .5-.7 per pound of oil.

 

[mamastone]

Yes, wintergreen! I was relating it to those pink mints... so after googling them, wintergreen is exactly what it is.
http://gourmeton.com/gum/necco-xi.jpg
I don't think I used enough of the E, I had a .5 oz bottle and only used about half of it in my 1.5 lb recipe. But 2.5 weeks later and it still has scent. it's not super strong (which is OK, because I'm more of a light scent kinda girl)

And the bleeding theory is probably correct. It is only in the areas around the peppermint, and where the peppermint is heavy the bar is very dark. Otherwise, the soap has an off-white tone.

 

[reallyrita]

I definitely would not rebatch this soap. It looks just fine to me. In fact, it looks very appealing. If I saw it for sale, I would buy it!! Almost all the herbs and other organics...pretty as they are when they go into the fresh soap...turn brown eventually. So what?! It is very natural looking, rustic actually. That is a good look for hand made soaps!! It looks as if the bars are really white...which is an achievement in itself. Perhaps the turning brown around the leaves has stopped if the bars are almost cured out.
rita

 

[mamastone]

Thanks Rita. The onyl reason I had considered rebatching is that most of the edges are severely damaged. I suppose I could just trim them, but then what do I do with the trimmed edges?
Maybe I should wait to cut pure castile soaps until they've hardened quite a bit. Most of the damage occured right afer cutting when they were only 72 hours old.