Why does my soap sweat??

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winusuren

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Hi,
I made a 1000g batch of carrot turmeric soap yesterday. I made my lye solution and added sodium lactate after the solution reached room temperature( used SL for the 1st time). I substituted half of the liquid portion with carrot juice and added the juice after emulsion. I used 15 drops of ROE (7% carsonic acid) for the first time and mixed it thoroughly with the measured oils before adding the lye solution. After 12 hours, while I was about to unmould, I saw few water droplets on the soap(soap sweat). I have nearly 35 soaps curing in the same room without any water droplets. What mistake have I committed??
My superfat was 5% and added another 10 grams of olive oil to mix the turmeric powder. Lye concentration was 32%

I made the same recipe 2 days back with 2000g oils without adding sodium lactate(used salt instead) and ROE and had no issues of soap sweat.
 
Last edited:
It might help to focus the responses if you post your recipe. Someone might suggest that a certain ingredient or combination of them could be to blame, but it's not something that you actually used and so is no help to you. By letting people know what you did use, it takes out a lot of the guessing elements
 
Did you add any fragrance oils to your recipe?
No, I used a blend of essential oils..Now the soap is ok. I just cut the soap and kept it aside. I just now saw, there were no water droplets. I'll use the soap after a week and update.

Could you please tell me how many drops of ROE should be added to base oils?? I just read from a site. They've mentioned to add 4 to 8 drops per pound of oils. Is it right? Can I go ahead with this??
 
I don't think it's realistic to measure rosemary oleoresin extract (ROE) by drops, because it's so thick and gloppy.

Also drops are not precise, because the weight of a drop depends on the density and viscosity of the material. The chem lab rule of thumb that 20 drops = 1 mL = 1 gram works only when you're measuring water. For a liquid like ROE that's so thick and viscous, I'd think the "drop rule" would be wildly inaccurate.

Like @dibbles, I also measure ROE (and nearly everything else) by weight.
 

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