Is it the Stick Blending Demon?

"If this starts to happen to you (FALSE TRACE), keep stick blending! The oils and lye need to be stick blended until the batch is emulsified."

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When I arrived ever-too-soon at a false trace today, I took the above advice which I found on a very reputable soapmaking site. Unfortunately when I did, my mixture just separated, with clear lye solution (or maybe water?) sitting at the bottom and refusing to join the party.

This is the second time this is happening to me and it seems to have happened the only two times I've actually used a stick blender (didn't have one all this time).

Is it the stick blending?

Does anyone know why this might have happened and what I can do to avoid it next time?

My recipe is for laundry soap, uses a single hard oil, and looks like this:

Lye 1040g
Water 3405g
PKO 4110g

Thanks, guys!

Um... that's an awful lot of lye for that recipe. Have you run it through a lye calculator at all? According to SoapCalc and Soapee, even at -10% SF you only need just less than 800 grams of lye Did you maybe swap your oil and water weights on your post there? 13620g of PKO makes a LOT more sense with 2600g of lye than 4110g does.

If that is a typo and you're actually using the larger amount as oil, then temperature is probably your culprit. If you still have that separated batch, dump it into a crock pot and warm it up. Um... if it'll fit. That's a big batch. Do you have a really big stainless steel stock pot?

Kittish said:

Um... that's an awful lot of lye for that recipe. Have you run it through a lye calculator at all? According to SoapCalc and Soapee, even at -10% SF you only need just less than 800 grams of lye. I'm thinking what you may be seeing is the lye solution that's left after all that can has reacted with your oil.

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Hi Kittish, I did try to experiment with half the quantity of lye in my recipe (and that's a lot more than 800g of lye) and I got an unusable gooey mess. While I'm still working on a better recipe, I was trying to stick to this one.

Only concern now being why it separates when I stick blend it but doesn't when I hand mix it?

Thanks, Kittish!

MissE said:

Hi Kittish, I did try to experiment with half the quantity of lye in my recipe (and that's a lot more than 800g of lye) and I got an unusable gooey mess. While I'm still working on a better recipe, I was trying to stick to this one.

Only concern now being why it separates when I stick blend it but doesn't when I hand mix it?

Thanks, Kittish!

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I did edit my original post, when it occurred to me that you might have switched the numbers for oil and water in your post. Did you?

Oh, Lord, I'm just looking at the recipe again and I am terribly wrong! Let me update it!:headbanging:

Silly question... you did run this recipe trough a soap calculator before hand right?

Ah, your recipe looks a lot more reasonable now. Still pretty heavy on the lye. Is your lye old, or not 100% purity? Gonna guess your separation problems are temperature related. Too cool for the PKO, and it's hardening up on you. That (updated) size batch would probably fit into a large crock pot. Failing that, a stainless steel stock pot on the stove would let you apply heat as needed to keep the oil melted.

MissE said:

Hi Kittish, I did try to experiment with half the quantity of lye in my recipe (and that's a lot more than 800g of lye) and I got an unusable gooey mess. While I'm still working on a better recipe, I was trying to stick to this one.

Only concern now being why it separates when I stick blend it but doesn't when I hand mix it?

Thanks, Kittish!

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Have you run the recipe through a lye calculator?

Can you tell us where you got this recipe and advice? Generally, if you have false trace, you need to gentle heat the soap while stick blending.

Well, when I ran it through Brambleberry's Lye Calculator, I got Lye (731.58g) instead of my 1040 g
Water (1356.30g) instead of my 3405g and the same amount for PKO 4110g. I am intentionally going for a lye-heavy soapbut maybe it is just too heavy, I'm beginning to think?

I think my biggest question right now is about it separating so terribly when I stick blend it, because it never separated before the stickblending!

Any ideas?

Unfortunately I don't think many of us are going to have any experience knowing what to expect with something so lye heavy and with so much water. It's possible that you saponified all the fat you had available and the separation was just the leftover lye solution. You might be essentially "salting out" your soap except with left over NaOH instead of added NaCl. But who knows with such an unbalanced recipe?

MissE said:

Well, when I ran it through Brambleberry's Lye Calculator, I got Lye (731.58g) instead of my 1040 g
Water (1356.30g) instead of my 3405g and the same amount for PKO 4110g. I am intentionally going for a lye-heavy soapbut maybe it is just too heavy, I'm beginning to think?

I think my biggest question right now is about it separating so terribly when I stick blend it, because it never separated before the stickblending!

Any ideas?

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Why do you want a lye heavy soap? IMO, deliberately making lye heavy soap is intermediate level stuff, and you seem very new to this?

dixiedragon said:

Why do you want a lye heavy soap? IMO, deliberately making lye heavy soap is intermediate level stuff, and you seem very new to this?

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Especially one that's THIS lye heavy.

If I'm not still working from a misconception of the amounts somehow, that soap you tried to make is a -42% superfat! or 42% excess lye.

Water as percent of oils is also about 84% or as lye concentration that's 23%.

I'm getting a little confused. What was the actual recipe you used when you used the stick blender? Was it this one?

NaOH 1040g
Water 3405g
PKO 4110g

If so, I think Brewer George is right -- you had far too much water for a stable emulsion. There is a long thread about a soap recipe that has about this much water and NaOH in it. It is extremely difficult to make. THere is so much water in it that the emulsion fails easily and a stick blender doesn't help much.

edit: here's the thread http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=42922

I'm not sure how you ended up with this recipe, but it's not something I'd recommend as a regular recipe to use.

What recipe did you use for the batches you did not stick blend? And what did you use to mix the soap batter for these batches?

When I've made laundry soap in the past, I keep the SF at 0% and it works wonderfully. I used 100% coconut oil (very similar to PKO) and it formed a nice, white hard soap that I grated and pureed and mixed with washing soda.

I'd recommend trying again with a 0% SF and a standard water amount, 25% lye concentration.

Good luck!

Oh oh! I need an emoticon that has me hiding under a bed right now!

I suddenly see all that lye and all that water in my recipe, I see!

I got that recipe from trying (unsuccessfully, obviously) to convert a volume measurement into weight using online calculators.

Just to clarify for everyone, I have been making very small batches successfully with the volume measurement. I am not sure why that worked so well before now, but perhaps the recipe was calculated based on weights in the first place. Now, however, I wanted to make larger batches (hence I went out and got the stick blender) but I simply tried to change my recipe into weight, as I said earlier, using online calculators and doubtful estimates (like weight of solids from ml, weight of the oil vs. weight of water, from ml to kg) and then supersize that to make my larger batch.

So many inconsistencies (where is that emoticon)!

Earlier I got a digital scale as well and I'm seeing where my mistake was. Also against the lye calculator, more issues are popping up. I'm now going to try a very wee batch with the properly weighted ingredients based on the Brambleberry soap calculator.

I'm sure I'm going to have good things to report soon!

DeeAnna, totally makes sense about the water causing it not to emulsify, and probably the stick blender trying to force it just whipped it into a stiff batter floating in water, and so made it worse. And, I used the exact same recipe without the stick blender and it came out okay, although I am yet to actually use the soap, but you know, it didn't separate at least---that was why this was so puzzling.

Toxikon, I was wondering about what concentration of lye to go with based on the 0% SF so thanks for the suggestion.

Dixiedragon, BrewerGeorge, everyone else, thanks a lot!

MissE said:

DeeAnna, totally makes sense about the water causing it not to emulsify, and probably the stick blender trying to force it just whipped it into a stiff batter floating in water, and so made it worse. And, I used the exact same recipe without the stick blender and it came out okay, although I am yet to actually use the soap, but you know, it didn't separate at least---that was why this was so puzzling.

Toxikon, I was wondering about what concentration of lye to go with based on the 0% SF so thanks for the suggestion.

Dixiedragon, BrewerGeorge, everyone else, thanks a lot!

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When you say "exact same" do you mean this one?
NaOH 1040g
Water 3405g
PKO 4110g

Because if you do, I don't think that is going to be safe to use whether it separated or not. I'd rebatch it.

If you've got 17 kg of this stuff, that's an awful lot to waste

I absolutely plan to, BrewerGeorge. I just want to get that wee batch under my belt so I can see how I like it (with the extra 25% lye) and then I can use that as a reference point for recalculating and rebatching my lye-heavy soap.

There's an easy way to convert recipes from percentages to actual weight measures, and scale them up and down without introducing math errors. Starting from volume, the only conversion you need to do yourself is figure out what percent of the recipe a particular oil is. In this case, it's easy. PKO is 100% of your oils. Completely ignore water and lye measures for this, the calculator will work those out for you.

If you know how much your oil weight is, start by entering that as your batch size in your unit of measurement (I always use grams, it's just more accurate). If you're using mixed oils, or have a particular batch size in mind, then just enter the total weight you want to reach. This is for the oils only. If you're working purely with percentages, just select your weight unit and leave the total weight empty. We're ignoring lye and water for the moment.

Enter your oils by percentage.

Set your superfat (0% or maybe -1 or -2% for a laundry soap). Set your water ratio. I like to use 2:1 which gives a 33% lye concentration. 3:1 will give you a 25% lye concentration. Probably don't want to go much below that. If you don't know or care, it's ok to leave the default setting.

And now calculate. There are the measures you need to use for that batch of soap. If your 'recipe' says use different amounts of water or lye, trust the calculator and use the amounts it gave you instead.

25% extra lye.... oy. I certainly don't think I'd recommend using it as laundry soap, it'll tear your clothes up with that much excess lye and burn anyone who handles it.

I'd be hesitant to even zap test this recipe, and I'm a big advocate of zap testing. Wear gloves when handling, and use caution when testing! Or.. you could just go straight for the rebatch. Grate what you've got up as fine as you can and dump it into a big lye-safe pot that can be heated somehow. Add water to moisten and help the soap start melting. Then start adding oil in, a bit at a time and let it cook for a while. Test, and add more oil if it still zaps. Repeat until the soap doesn't zap when you test it.

Kittish said:

Set your superfat (0% or maybe -1 or -2% for a laundry soap).

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This is where the Bramble Berry calculator falls down, if you're using it through your browser. It won't go below 0% superfat (or, it didn't used to). If you paid for the app, that one will. If you are going to regularly play will lower SF, I recommend playing around with the soapee lye calculator where you will have a greater control over everything.