Soft Soap - Small rant, need advice

So last Saturday I made this pumpkin soap. I added about 3 oz of pumpkin to about 60 oz of soap at trace. Did a pencil line, it was going to be beautiful! I put the molds into the freezer to avoid gel, let alone overheating. So I checked one of the molds on Sunday, still way too soft but that was expected because of the pumpkin adding more water to the equation.

Tuesday pH'ed, looked good. I pulled one of the soaps out of the mold, the top seemed fine but the bottom of the loaf was still soft (the layer with the pumpkin). I started cutting it up, realized that there was an ugly partial gel. I cursed and cut it up anyway hoping to get some decent bars out of it. So I left the second loaf in the mold, went to remove it from the mold today and disaster happened! I was wiggling (err, forcing) the still super soft soap out of the mold, and of course, the layers separated at the pencil line. Some primal noises came from my chest, I threw the layers back at the mold, and stomped off like a 2 year old.

I am so fed up with soap not working for me. I have had plenty of successful batches, but lately, I can't seem to make a decent batch to save my life. And the main problem I'm having is the soap being too soft. I usually do a 20% water discount. I have learned to be a lot more patient and waiting a few days to even attempt to take my soap out of the mold but no success as of late. I have a soap room in my basement that is not fully finished but there is a dehumidifier so it's not damp or anything.

What am I doing wrong?? I don't even want to make soap anymore!

I am going to rebatch this soap so it won't be a complete waste. But my God am I disappointed! I do have a few semi-successful bars but I don't even want to look it at so for now, I don't have a picture of it.

Thanks for letting me post this here. End rant.

Open to any suggestions! You are all awesome!

A couple things stand out to me. First is the amount of castor, you have almost 10% in your pumpkin soap, try lowering it to 5%. I also wonder if your soft batch have all been made with the same container of lye? If so, you might get a different bottle and see if that helps.
Personally, I have nothing but trouble when I try and add veggie puree to soap so I don't do it anymore. I would love a carrot soap but it always fails for me.
Maybe try a couple simple batches until the gremlins go away.

I wish I had some great advice for you, but I've never actually soaped with purees. I do have a question for you, though. Did you use canned or fresh pumpkin puree? All of the recipes I've found use canned, but I usually do a batch or two of fresh pumpkin puree in the fall so that I can make pumpkin pies. I was curious if it would make a difference in soap making if I use fresh instead of canned? I have some pumpkin spice FO on order, so I'm really excited to try this.

Did you make one batch of soap and separate it and only add pumpkin to half? Did you discount your water to compensate for the pumpkin? It sounds like you have a soap with different water/lye concentrations which would explain the issues you are having.

Obsidian said:

A couple things stand out to me. First is the amount of castor, you have almost 10% in your pumpkin soap, try lowering it to 5%. I also wonder if your soft batch have all been made with the same container of lye? If so, you might get a different bottle and see if that helps.
Personally, I have nothing but trouble when I try and add veggie puree to soap so I don't do it anymore. I would love a carrot soap but it always fails for me.
Maybe try a couple simple batches until the gremlins go away.

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When I was weighing out my lye, I had to open up another container because I didn't get enough out of the first one. That could be it. I've been doing a 10% castor soap for a while now, but come to think of it, I guess those were the soaps that were on the soft side, but not like this. The soap does come out really nice when it works. Next time I'll use 5% castor.

As for pureed, I haven't done a pumpkin before but have done a carrot/tomato blend which came out really nice.

I def need to do something simple as you said, get the morale back up lol!

SplendorSoaps said:

I wish I had some great advice for you, but I've never actually soaped with purees. I do have a question for you, though. Did you use canned or fresh pumpkin puree? All of the recipes I've found use canned, but I usually do a batch or two of fresh pumpkin puree in the fall so that I can make pumpkin pies. I was curious if it would make a difference in soap making if I use fresh instead of canned? I have some pumpkin spice FO on order, so I'm really excited to try this.

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I used canned. I would imagine fresh pumpkin puree has an even higher water content so I would take that into consideration. Let us know how it turns out for you!

Meganmischke said:

Did you make one batch of soap and separate it and only add pumpkin to half? Did you discount your water to compensate for the pumpkin? It sounds like you have a soap with different water/lye concentrations which would explain the issues you are having.

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I took out about 60 oz of soap and added 3 oz of pumpkin to that. I was already doing a 20% discount so figured with the pumpkin it would be somewhere between a 17-19% discount (not calculated but I thought it made sense). With the essential oils that I used I didn't want too much of a discount because of the nature of them. Was working with layers so I didn't want it to accelerate.

Edit: I guess I meant that I took out about 60% of the batch and added 3 oz of pumpkin to that.

Your recipe's oil % makeup actually looks pretty fine to me 'as is'. I only say that because I use 10% castor in my 50% OO formula and always get a nice hard bar with the same 38% hardness rating as yours (on SoapCalc). My bet is on the extra liquid (and possibly the natural sugars) from the amount of puree you added, plus the added component of it being un-gelled.

This is just me, but if I had made your pumpkin soap, this is how I would have gone about it. I would have kept each of your recipe oil percents 'as is', but I would have used half the amount of pumpkin puree, and I would have used 1 part lye to 1.7 parts water (a 37% lye solution) to compensate for the extra pumpkin liquid. And with the pencil line, I would have gelled it (I've read from others that layered soap and pencil lines have a lesser chance of separating if the soap is gelled).




IrishLass