Room temperature lye and oils

Hi all!
I wanted to share something that i made couple of days ago.
I melted 4+4 kg of oils (8 oils,standard recipe of mine)
Then made soap with the first 4 kg.

Also made 2 batches of lye to each batch of oils.

so 1 batch of oils and lye was left to the next day,
(next day)I was a little bored and mixed the room tempered lye and oils
and started mixing, tracing was so nice.
Perfect trace, just how I would like to have it every time.
I didn't add any scent(because of the test)

Today, 4 days later, I try one of the soaps, and they are great.
And lathers great,more than the other soaps.
Later is sustained, thick. I'm really satisfied of this method.

What do you think about it. Isn't it much easier than doing the standard way.
Bringing lye and oils to 100F and so on...
Is it something wrong with this method?

A lot of people do soap at room temperature, mainly for a slower trace which gives them time to play with swirls and so on.

Would be interesting to see if anyone else has experienced this performance difference with the temperature difference - it's a jolly interesting idea.

I've used this method for years and love it. I was a little nervous at first, because I had learned by taking temps of the ingredients, but as for you, things went smoothly. If I know I want to soap the next day, I make my lye solution the day before so it will be at room temp when I'm ready. You say you also left your oils to sit from the day before, so I'm guessing you live in a warm climate, and weren't using a lot of hard oils, because that would not work for me, where I live, as the hard oils would solidify. I melt the hard oils, and then add the olive. I feel the outside of the pot with the palm of my hand, and when it's just barely warm, I add the lye solution.

As for making better soap than the other method, I'm not sure about that, but it sure does make things easier!

I forgot to mention, some people use the hot lye solution to melt their hard oils and then add the liquid ones in afterwards, but I think that might be too hot to replicate this. Again, would be interested in feedback on the soap itself made this way, to.

I use
palm oil, coconut, olive,sunflower, canola, cocoa butter, shea butter and castor oil.
the hard oils make about 60-65 % of the total oils.
I live in Sweden and it is maximum of 5-10C these days.
I've noticed under couple of years that when I melt oils and let them sit it takes long time for the oils to get hard, palm,coconut and so on(mixed with soft oils), the oil mixture I used couple days ago became little crumbly but not that much.
I will try doing this in the future, its soooo much easier and time saving.
And also you could make bigger master batches and just mix when you want to make soap. I hope this will work, and I never have to wait for temperatures and point that gun 100 times...

I have been RT soaping for several years now. It's so much easier. However, when it's cooler out I do put my oils in the micro for a minute to loosen them up a bit as they can get pretty cloudy when it's cold. As I masterbatch my oils in a 5 gallon bucket.

I have always done room temp oils and lye. Because I am still learning I only make 500 gram batches, and it is much easier to make 2 or 3 kilos of my base oils in a bucket, and master batch some 50% lye solution.

I am in the same state as shunt2011, and my soap room can get pretty chilly. My base choice right now is palm, olive, coconut, avocado, shea butter and castor. Almost 60% hard oils so it gets really thick. I set my 2 gallon bucket on a heating pad to bring everything back up close to 70F so I can make sure the palm oil has not separated in my master batch. This is pretty important in preventing stearic spots. Once simmer hits I won't have to worry about that, just hit the oils with a whisk to make sure they are blended and pour off what I need.

As for RT soaping making the bar itself better than if you had soaped at a higher temp, or usable sooner - I doubt it affects that. If you are happy with the bar now, wait til it has a full cure and see how much better it is, and how much longer it lasts.

ditto on all, I cant add more. I can say that when I started using RT, it was by total accident......I forgot to make my soap. I just couldnt get to it that day and I was so disappointed, went on this forum and posted my RT question. Was I so surprise. Been doing RT ever since.

In an effort to slow trace, I started making my lye solution with ice or frozen liquids. Once my lye is dissolved, the solution is at 60-65 degrees with no waiting. My hard oils have to stay above 75 or they are too thick when I add the cold lye. In essence, the whole mix ends up at room temperature when I add the lye solution, and with no waiting. I kind of prefer the no-waiting way of doing it.

I soap cool as well...I used to do the 'check the temp with thermometer' thing, but after a few years I have moved on to 'touch temps'

I use frozen coconut milks in all my soaps, and my oils will be just RT- slightly warm to touch...never have quick trace issues unless its some wild new FO that gives me issues.

Nothing wrong at all with soaping at RT

i have done most of of soaps cold

using warm lye water to melt the CO works great when making 100% CO laundry soap.
or any oil combo that only has CO as a hard oil...i wouldn't attempt to melt cocoa butter with warm lye only
i do have a warm house tho, and my CO is usually very soft.


but i have noticed that if you soap cold it can be harder to bring the soap to gel and you can get partial gel. so if you want to avoid gel, soaping cold could be a good idea - it will help keep the temperatures lower
if you want gel, i would heat up the oils and then put in a warm oven (oven light on) to be sure to get full gel.

i also found that when making soap with very slow tracing oils, heat makes it trace faster. so if you are making 100% OO soap, you might want to heat it a bit to get it to trace faster.
if you make a soap with 100% camelina oil it takes forever to get to trace, so heat is a must. it seems to take camelina oil twice as long to set in a mold as castile does, and castile takes a long time!!! i am very interested to see how my 100% camelina bar turns out....someone told me it takes a long time to get hard, but then it gets super rock hard.

I was researching how "big batch" soap was made and seems RT is the standard procedure. A long time ago I came across a soap making book that talked about temperature and trace saying neither is as critical as what we have been taught. I like the idea of RT and plan to give it a try, so much easier. I have separated some of the soap mixture out to color after thickened but before a true trace and it's worked fine. I wonder if having the batter thoroughly mixed - as a stick blender would do - is adequate whether there's a trace or not. Maybe trace was important back in the day when you had to stir by hand??

"... I wonder if having the batter thoroughly mixed - as a stick blender would do - is adequate whether there's a trace or not...."

It is important that the batter gets to a stable emulsion before pouring into a mold. What I mean by "stable emulsion" is the point where there is enough newly formed soap to act as a chemical emulsifier that will keep the water and fats mixed together reliably if you stop the mechanical mixing. This is different than just "thoroughly mixed" because the chemistry of saponification has to be going on before you stop the mechanical mixing. This is true whether you use a stick blender or a wooden spoon.

If you only get the soap batter "thoroughly mixed" but saponification isn't creating much new soap, the batter may look fine to pour into a mold, but will separate in the mold, especially if the soap heats up after saponification does get going strongly. If you've seen people's pictures of a soap that is separated in the mold into oily and watery layers, they may well have "thoroughly mixed" but didn't go far enough to correctly emulsify the batter. Just a wee bit more patience and mixing would prevent this type of problem.

Trace is a reliable visual indicator of a stable emulsion, although I have to say what beginners think is trace is usually thicker (sometimes MUCH thicker) than what more experienced soapers consider to be trace. It all comes with experience.