Ok, so I've been using this method almost exclusively for the last six months. That said, I've been tweaking and adjusting along the way, so by now I'm not following Sharon Johnson's instructions all that closely.
I've not tried it again but I have a theory that you don't need to SB it the whole time. I really would like to try it again at around 250 F. I think you need to SB it to thick trace, then stir it continually.
You're on to something here! I get much better results when I heat the oils to about 235 F, and I stop stick blending well before the volcano. At this point I'm stick blending less than 60 seconds. When it starts to look "right" -- maybe 45 seconds of stick blending, on LOW -- I stop, cover the pot with a clear lid, and watch for the volcano, which shows up within a minute usually. Don't walk away from it, you need to act fast to stir it down so it doesn't boil over onto your counter. (I had that experience once, it was interesting! No damage, thanks to safety gear, etc.)
I use sodium lactate at 3% of the oil weight, and I've never found that it does anything weird to the texture or firmness of the soap. After 3-ish weeks of curing they're just as hard as my cured CP, but I like a hard recipe with a lot of stearic acid, so that could be a factor. I haven't done this with a softer recipe.
It would be interesting if one of you doing this method tests the shrinkage of these soaps over time - like over at least six months, preferably a year. See if they shrink, warp, etc.
I second what Reinbeau said. I often see bars that are newly made with this type of method that look fantastic, but I've yet to see a any pics of the bars 6 months to a year later. It would be very helpful to see how they fare in the shrinkage department.
IrishLass
I can't speak for others, but mine DO shrink/warp in typical HP fashion. My first "stick blend" HP bars are 6 months old now. They don't seem to shrink/warp as MUCH as bars made with other HP methods, but I'm not going to pretend that it doesn't happen at all. It drives me up the wall when people are not truthful about this stuff.
I've spent the last year trying to solve the warping issue, and it's possible that there simply isn't a solution, but I'm not ready to accept defeat quite yet.
I also don't do this with the "standard" 38% water as % of oils. I use about a 30% lye concentration, which in my recipes is usually about 32% water as % of oils.
Okay, I checked it out....it's not a new method. It's an old method which I tried years ago. I abandoned this method because I wanted to not have to replace my stick blender at the cost of an additional $30.00. I don't mind cooking the soap in a crock pot for a total of around 60 minutes until it is totally cured.
Really? This surprises me; for some reason I didn't think people were using stick blenders to make soap until about 10 years ago, but what I don't know would fill several libraries. My stick blender's doing just fine, but like I mentioned above, I don't actually run it for more than a minute. I use a 200 watt Cuisinart and it's quite the little workhorse.
Her minions will demand you prove that this is an old method. Because none of them have been soaping longer than a year, have learned everything they know from a Facebook group, and seem to be like little children who think life began when they did
Yeah, Facebook soaping groups can be pretty obnoxious like that. I don't think it's fair to single out any one group, though, since those attitudes seem pretty universal on Facebook. I don't follow them very much, but every once in a while you come across a little gem that turns out to be quite helpful.
I will say that I've been troubled by the viciousness I've seen directed at Sharon Johnson, particularly on Facebook. People are entitled to their opinions, and they're entitled to disagree, but there's no reason to be nasty about it. I imagine she's enthusiastic about the way she makes soap and she wants to share that. How is that a bad thing?
I suppose one could argue that she's endorsing this idea that you can/should sell your soap just a few days after it's made, but that's hardly an original thought. "Instant cure!" nonsense is all over the place.
I'm also not sure why people are so outraged by her selling a book about the method. There are lots of soapmaking books out there. Why is this any different?
