Bright white, non-zappy spots inside a soap bar?

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Anich

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Okay, now I'm confused again. I've been using my very first well-cured soaps for some time now and I've found some very bright white spots inside them. I think they look a bit like powder. The first thing I came up with was obviously lye, but the spots do not zap nor color paper napkin brown (I dug some spots out, placed them on a napkin and dropped some water on them ---> nothing happened).

What could this be? The soap itself is brown and I can't think of anything that could have caused this - except lye, but I think that's not possible either.
 
100g coconut
75g palm
25g shea
50g olive
37g lye
83g water
1tsp cocoa powder

SF% was 5, I know it's on a low side, but I guess it should not be a problem? At least it shouldn't cause this if I'm correct...

I don't measure temps, maybe I should... :oops:
 
I would get a thermometer. I've been making soap for a long time and no longer use it, but I know if I touch the side of the pot and it's warm but not hot, I know I'm ready to go.
 
I guess I should but it won't help this batch :) Are these stearic spots (I'm assuming these are stearic and not lye, I think I'd notice the difference ;)) harmful in any way? I've almost finished the first bar - without noticing the spots until now - and it didn't do anything funny so I guess it's ok, but I think it's better to ask anyway... :D
 
"Stearic Spots" are spots of relatively pure Sodium Stearate, a very very very hard sort of soap and Hydrogen Stearate (pure stearic acid). Stearic Acid is one of the fatty acids that go into making soap... some oils have more of it and sometimes, depending on what temperature you soap at, the stearic acid may precipitate out of the oil solution before being saponified. Given a good cure, most of it will resap, but some of it will remain as pure hydrogen stearate (stearic acid) and form little white dots. Because stearic acid is a very weak acid, it will not affect your bar in any way other than cosmetically; however, temperature control when using coconut, palm kernel and palm oils will help to manage this effect.
 
And how high should the melting temperature be ? As high as the melting point for stearic ? Which is pretty hot ...
 
Usually, if you have a good saponification going, the stearic will resaponify at the warmth level generated by the chemical reaction. The problem usually arises when soaping too cool with high stearic oils such as coconut and PKO.
Other problems often arise as well that occlude the formation of stearic spots, such as fase trace and so forth that force rebatching. In this case, though, I suspect the OP got lucky and didn't have to do any of that.

Of course, rebatching would make the spots go away, but would end up with a rebatched texture instead of the usual creamy one.

Personally, as long as the soap itself doesn't zap, and the entire cure has passed, I wouldn't worry too much about a few spots.
 
Thank you dieSpinne, it's good to know there's nothing wrong with this batch except cosmetically, as it's been very nice to use. Gentle and pleasant scrub bar is how I'd describe it. If I remember correctly I was very, very careful with the temperatures when I made this batch - it was my very first one as I said - because I was sort of terrified of the hot lye, overheating and everything, so it's very much possible that the temps were way too low. This is also the only batch in which I've noticed these spots and I've been using four of my first batches for a while now, so I think everything is fine with the rest. At least I'm very pleased with the results, they may not be very pretty but nearly every single one of the soaps have been very nice to use :)
 
Is it possible to rebatch a soap like this and it to be normal? I just had this happen and want to save the soap????
 
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