First two soaps and some questions!

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catbinch

catbinch

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Hey, brand new to soap. I made my first CP batch on the 2nd, and my second yesterday. Ive been using lard, coconut oil, and I used 20% olive oil for my second batch. The first one i made was with goat milk that I scorched (unsurprisingly), and the second was with a coffee base, which worked pretty good!
I do have an important question, and thats about cure times. I live at around 6000 feet, and thw humidity in my house never goes above 15%. I read that for low humidity, soap can cure in as little as 2 weeks! Is that true?
20171205_105025.jpg

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The white and pink are the first try, and the brown is my second (I know, the pink shouldnt be touching, sorry)
 
Those coffee soaps are beautiful, well done!

As for curing time - there's no way to shorten the curing process because it involves much more than just water evaporation - the whole crystal structure of the soap slowly changes to become more mild, long-lasting, etc. After 4-6 weeks, the soap is in a pretty good state - but if you wait even longer, it will keep improving. So 4 weeks is definitely the minimum. Pretend it's a fine cheese or wine, and cure it for a looong time. ;)
 
Hello and welcome. Congratulations on what I'm sure are the first of many. Soap needs 4 weeks minimum. 6 is better. A couple suggestions, when soaping with milk do the split method. Use 1:1 water with lye to mix then add the rest of the required liquid at milk and mix with your oils before adding the cooled lye mixture. No scorching that way. Lard makes great soap. Mixed with CO and some olive is excellent. Might want to consider adding 5% castor for bubbles too. Just make sure you run all your recipes and any changes through a lye calculator.
 
catbinch said:
I do have an important question, and thats about cure times. I live at around 6000 feet, and thw humidity in my house never goes above 15%. I read that for low humidity, soap can cure in as little as 2 weeks! Is that true?
Click to expand...

I live in Denver, and no, that is not true about curing in 2 weeks. It may be hard, and the water evaporated out of the soap by then, but actual curing is more than just water loss in the soap. It's an actual chemical change that takes place, and nothing but time will allow that to take place.
To get a nice full cure, 4 weeks is minimum for most soaps, however, I can feel a difference from a 4 week old soap and a 6 week old soap. After 6 weeks the difference in feel on my skin is minute, so I will not cure for less than 6 weeks.

So basically, exactly what toxikon just said. LOL
 
Thanks everyone, and thanks for the tips! My next batch is gonna be with wine, I boiled and froze it for next time, cant wait! Does anyone know if vermouth wine would make a different soap than say, merlot?
 
Like shunt, all wine did for me was make my batter super hard to work with and discolour/go dark, with added lather after cure. Not worth it and wouldn't do it again. Only reason I did it in the first place was I was in a challenge for a book character, and the character was a wine connoisseur, so wanted to incorporate that.
 
I mostly wanted wine for the color and maybe a smell. After I boiled mine it still have a strong cheap vermouth smell, which i think would smell great when diluted with usual soap smell.
 
You are picking recipes that are not for newbies, so hats off to you.

Working with milk and wine is an intermediate technique IMO. Coffee is easier.
 
catbinch said:
I mostly wanted wine for the color and maybe a smell. After I boiled mine it still have a strong cheap vermouth smell, which i think would smell great when diluted with usual soap smell.
Click to expand...

It will definitely make the soap go dark brown (no red or other color will survive), and no smell will survive saponification, and if by chance it does, it will quickly fade out during the cure.
 

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