Lychee517
Member
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2017
- Messages
- 14
- Reaction score
- 11
I started making soaps over a year ago. I have temporarily settled on a goats milk recipe I took from a book and altered. I use Brambleberry's lye calculator. I use Olive Oil, lard, coconut oil, and castor oil (5% superfat). I really love the recipe and it turns out very well whether I leave it at room temperature or even oven process it at a 170 degree oven turned off and left overnight.
The problems start when I add fragrance or essential oil and colorant. I work the recipe and everthing seems normal. I bring it to a medium trace and swirl or layer. I'm very happy when I'm finished and leave it to set, covered, at room temperature. Then in the morning 50% of the time I feel that its cooled off, uncover it and discover its ruined. (The other 50% of the time its fine). The soap looks curdled with soft spots and normal spots. The soft spots pool or leak oil that looks like olive oil. The color and smell seem normal and the liquid leaking out does not burn my skin. It just seems like oil.
This has happened too many times now. Every time I spend hours reading troubleshooting soap blog posts and comments and don't seem to find any cases exactly like mine. I triple check my measurements. I am more careful about soaping temperature (110-120 degrees). What baffles me is that the heat or goats milk can't be the problem because I have never had this problem with my plain bars. Sometimes I can rebatch it and its fine (but I loose my beautiful swirls and colors and solid smooth texture.)
Every tutorial I've seen mixes colorant (mica) with a bit of the liquid oil (olive) from the recipe. I swirl uncolored soap with colored. Sometimes I lighten the uncolored with a bit of titanium dioxide also usually mixed with oil (this time water because I didn't reserve olive oil for it.)
Is this my problem? Not mixing colorant in well enough (I don't want a thick trace). Or maybe the uncolored soap doesn't have the extra ounce of oil that the colored soap has?
I make 5lb batches so I really hate when it doesn't turn out :/
The problems start when I add fragrance or essential oil and colorant. I work the recipe and everthing seems normal. I bring it to a medium trace and swirl or layer. I'm very happy when I'm finished and leave it to set, covered, at room temperature. Then in the morning 50% of the time I feel that its cooled off, uncover it and discover its ruined. (The other 50% of the time its fine). The soap looks curdled with soft spots and normal spots. The soft spots pool or leak oil that looks like olive oil. The color and smell seem normal and the liquid leaking out does not burn my skin. It just seems like oil.
This has happened too many times now. Every time I spend hours reading troubleshooting soap blog posts and comments and don't seem to find any cases exactly like mine. I triple check my measurements. I am more careful about soaping temperature (110-120 degrees). What baffles me is that the heat or goats milk can't be the problem because I have never had this problem with my plain bars. Sometimes I can rebatch it and its fine (but I loose my beautiful swirls and colors and solid smooth texture.)
Every tutorial I've seen mixes colorant (mica) with a bit of the liquid oil (olive) from the recipe. I swirl uncolored soap with colored. Sometimes I lighten the uncolored with a bit of titanium dioxide also usually mixed with oil (this time water because I didn't reserve olive oil for it.)
Is this my problem? Not mixing colorant in well enough (I don't want a thick trace). Or maybe the uncolored soap doesn't have the extra ounce of oil that the colored soap has?
I make 5lb batches so I really hate when it doesn't turn out :/