Liquid Soap Separating

Hi all,

I have been trying to make liquid soap from grated bar soap for a while now! The general recipe I have been following is:

1 Gallon Water
10 oz soap (in my case I am using my homemade CP castile soap)

Each time I make the recipe, it ends up being too watery (works great in a foaming soap dispenser though).

I decided to add salt to the mixture and it separated (I started with abuot 2 cups, then added another 2 for a total of 4 cups).

Now it looks like this (see images attached).

I scraped the "goop" from the top and added it to a mason jar. Not sure what to do with this!

Anyone else experience this before? Thanks!

Hey Katie!

You made what we commonly refer to as "snot". It is that odd texture you get when you melt bar soap in water. It is never going to be good liquid soap. You need to make liquid soap using KOH(potassium hydroxide) rather than NaOH(sodium hydroxide). That will yield true liquid soap.

Thanks so much Susie... I've been meaning to try my hand at true liquid soap for a while now, but I'm just a little intimidated. It looks so hard!

Jump off into this thread to get the easy way to make liquid soap. Look especially for posts by IrishLass, DeeAnna, and Grayce. They are awesome soapers. If I get time tomorrow, I will post a new thread on CP liquid soapmaking so everyone can chime in on a shorter thread. Got the refrigerator repair guy coming in the morning, so I am praying I am not shopping for a new one in the afternoon.

www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=46114

also, when you add salt to a CP soap with water mixture, you're "salting out" glycerine in the soap. this could be what you've inadvertently done. it makes the soap separate out from the water.... I've never done this, but read a few times on how to salt out glycerine. you can then cook off the water, and have homemade glycerine. HTH

Thanks so much Susie! I'm checking out those threads now!

@Neeners, that is so neat! No wonder why the "snot" felt so soft and silky!

Yes, Neeners, it is "salting out" but this process really has little to do directly with glycerine.

Salting out is done to separate a sodium soap from the water phase (which would include any glycerine). The white stuff in the OPs picture is the soap curds -- small particles of soap. She grated up sodium soap, mixed in water, added salt, and ended back with most of the soap floating on the water phase (salt, glycerin, water, some dissolved soap, etc.) She could dry the curds, press them into a mold, and have a usable bar of soap back again, but the soap would be pretty much glycerin free.

The water phase (sometimes called niger or nigre) contains the glycerin. If one wants to separate the glycerin from the rest of the water phase, that is a whole separate process that doesn't include salting out.

The reason why one doesn't make liquid soap using NaOH has to do with solubility. Sodium soaps are less soluble in water than potassium soaps (soap made with KOH). When you dissolve sodium soaps in water, the gel that results is usually "ropy" or "snotty" because the sodium soap molecules want to align themselves into sheets or ropes. When you add more water, the gel doesn't ever smooth out really. Instead the gel structure just breaks down and the mess turns into a watery liquid. A potassium soap makes a smooth, consistent gel because its molecules are much less likely to form sheets or ropes.

Susie -- I wish you good luck on the fridge problem! I have replaced two refrigerators in the past two years. First one died when a bat (yes, the furry flying creature) got stuck in the cooling fan and the compressor went out. Two years less one single day, a bad lightning strike took out its replacement. May I not have to go through all that again any time soon!

Yikes! The lightning strike I can relate well to. I learned the hard way that you need to go buy surge protectors that have actual warranties on the packaging, and save that packaging along with receipts of both the surge protectors and the items they are protecting. Now everything electrical is plugged into a surge protector of some sort, and I have had a couple of things replaced by surge protector companies once I produced the warranty and receipts.

This fridge is 14 years old, and the repair guy is coming back tomorrow once I get the freezer defrosted. He said it is not terminal, and should not cost much. He just needs to get to the <insert doohickey name here> or the <insert other thingy name here>. Sorry, but I don't speak repairman mumbleese, and the choices of what could be wrong with it were too numerous for me to try to tackle the job myself.

Repairman mumbleese. <snort! snicker!> Pretty funny, Susie -- and oh so on target! My fridge repair guy did the same thing.

I think they do it on purpose so you don't go look it up, replace it yourself, and cancel the next trip.

aah...DeeAnna....to the rescue again! thanks for clarifying my bad information. what would this forum do without you???

I've been making liquid soap from bar soap lately. I tried for years with store bought soap. It was always snotty and gross. Except for JR Liggett's Shampoo bars, I don't know what was different, but those worked. I was going for a "watery" dr bronners type of soap. Ironically, Dr. b's bar soap was the worst to make into liquid soap.

On a whim a couple months ago, I decided to liquefy a bar of my homemade castile (olive oil only). It worked! No snot, liquid like Dr. Bronner's.

Recently, I decided to dilute it less and see what happened. I grated probably 8 oz of soap and mixed it in a bowl with enough water to cover. When it was almost all dissolved, I used my stick blender and kept adding water until I liked the consistency. I poured it into 2 16 oz bottles. To one I added some tangerine EO, to the other some spearmint and peppermint EO. The tangerine has been perfect ever since. The mint got a tiny bit thick and snotty, I added about 2 oz water and shook it up really good and the consistency has stayed very nice ever since. Feels like regular liquid hand soap.

I made a batch yesterday with some coconut/olive/palm soap that my sister made. It is still ok today, but is acting like it might turn snotty. We'll see. If it doesn't work, it was just made from the end scraps from a batch of soap, no waste really, just a fun experiment.