What happened?

I tried HP today ... didn't go in blind, I read everything I could find on HP, seemed simple enough ... "seemed" and "is" are obviously two different things! :?

I was looking to make a very basic soap, recipe I used is
32oz Lard (from a bucket, does not say hydrogenated)
11.1oz Water
4.5oz Lye crystals
all ingedients were by mass on a known good balance.

First thing that went wrong is I couldn't get trace. When I checked things out, I think my temps were too high when I combined, 125°F on both the fat & lye water mix. When it didn't trace after 10 minutes of power mixing, I figured I'd let it cool down some and mix again. It went down to 95°F and still didn't trace, looked like a too-thin white pudding mix. Not about to give up, I put the heat to it, "low" setting on my crock pot wasn't doing anything so I kicked it to "high". About 20 minutes, it started puffing up, I stirred by hand, it went down and got thick but I never got the oily stage I see so many pictures, I got some small white lumps as shown in the pic below.

I left it cook, mixing occasionally, then all of a sudden it got hard so I cut the heat off and tried getting it in the molds. I got one bar molded and then the mix was dry and crumbly. I couldn't do anything with it and still determined not to give up, I put the water to it, about 28oz (by that point I was beyond measuring, I just poured it into the pot and kept mixing with the heat set on "high".

What I ended up with was a somewhat sticky and stringy mess. Oh, I didn't add the extra water all at once, I kept putting a little in at a time while mixing trying to get the flakes and lumps into something I could use. The harder lumps turned somewhat clear, I had some suds going on too and when the free water was gone, I was left with a white paste along with the fairly clear lumps. The paste was sticky and stringy, if squashed, the lumps were very sticky. The mixture did turn loose from the crock easily but stuck pretty good to the stainless steel knife I was using to pack it into the molds. The lumps didn't pack well but I managed to get it all into molds.

It's been in the molds for about three hours now, not covered and it seems to be setting up slowly, however, there is a greasy film on top ... not much, just enough to transfer to my skin when I touch it. Before I added the additional water, it didn't "zap" my tounge but after handling it for about fifteen minutes with bare hands, it did give a little tingle on the skin, after the additional water and heat, still no "zap" and no more tingle on the hands.

Anyone have a clue as to what went wrong and why?

This is what it looked like before it went to the crumble stage before adding the additional water. The hard white chunks at the top are what the whole thing looked like about 15 minutes after that pic was taken.

Lard can take a while to trace so it's not surprising that you had trouble getting a trace.


I CPHP all the time and never get an "oily" stage. I bring my batch to a very thick trace and cook on low until the entire thing is like mashed potatoes. I think you may have dried out your batch by cooking too long. Next time, try removing a bit to cool and zap test. Do this just after the entire batch gets soft and no hard bits remain even if you never got to an oil phase. If you get a zap, let it cook 10 more minutes and try again...and so on. Over cooking will cause you to have a more bumpy texture. Don't give up!

P.S. I ran your recipe through soap. It looks like there is a bit of a water discount. Next time don't take any water discount with HP. Also, I'd lye discount if this is for personal use. If this is for cleaning then this is fine, but you might find it will sting your hands even after a cure.

First off, that was a 0% superfat/lye discount, so I wouldn't recommend that much lye if you are planning to use it on skin. I do recommend about a 5-6% lye discount at least. or were you planning to add oil at the end as a superfat?

anyway, lard is VERY slow to trace and 10 minutes of mixing is not long for it. This said, your "too thin pudding" look is thin trace so you could have poured it into the mold at that point if you were doing CP (tho with lard you often get "false trace" which means it doesn't stay thick and emulsified if you wait a minute - so with 100% lard I always let it set in the bowl for a minute to see if it separates).

during the cook - well sometimes you don't see all the stages, and it sounds like you ended up overcooking it. 28 oz was a LOT of water to add to the mix (at that point you were pretty much rebatching).

Thanks for the quick replies!

I never got a "mashed potatoes" stage until it cooked for a while and puffed-up but there was no separation, it stayed emulsified the entire time. Prior to puffing, it was fairly thin, too-thin pudding or melted milkshake would be the two descriptive terms I could use. I didn't see any changes in texture or color until after it puffed, when I stirred it back down is when the white hard lumps started forming on top of what looked like lard jelly, that's where I'd say had the mashed potatoes consistency.

I used four on-line calculators and they all had a little different results for water & lye content so I took the happy medium for both. This is what it looks like now, about 14 hours after going into the molds. The square bar was made before I added all the additional water. It's getting hard but has more smell to it than the others (octagon) molded after the additional water. The octagon shape is also hardening up, still somewhat squishy, the rest are still in the molds and clearly shrinking a little as I expected.

I wasn't about to give up on it, after putting all that time into it, it was going to come out as something ... not sure what but it's something! LOL

I went with 0% on this batch for use in my shop, Ive seen 0% suggested for cutting the petroleum oils & paints I work with all the time which don't help with my naturally oily skin. Next try I plan on going 5% discount.

Should I have zap-checked it when it got to the mashed potatoes stage after puffing up? Would it be better to PH test as opposed to "zap" because I'm not sure my tongue is sensitive enough to tell for sure?

Would adding some canola or veggie oil help or hinder? How much?

One calc gave me a water content of only 10.2oz, on the high-end was 12.1oz, how much water should I be using for CPHP?

I don't work with lard but I'd like to comment.

I believe that the resources available online that illustrate HP are mostly veggie soap bases. Therefore, you're trying to use the stages of a vegetable soap process (and they vary depending upon the veggie oil) to apply it to an animal fat soap. For instance, the olive oil blend bases that I HP can take up to 3 hours to go through the stages. The Crisco/coconut oil blend that I did yesterday was at the mashed potato stage in 15 minutes and was ready to mold (with the addition of a few things) at half an hour. Cooking pots, stirring/not stirring, and peeking will also affect the time frame because of heat loss or direct vs indirect heat. I use crock pots. I have two different slow cookers and the timing is a little different for each one because of the heat, shape of pot, and one has a vent in the cover.

I don't know how much experience you have with soaping, in general, but if this was your first HP experience, I would make your next batch with veggie oils so you can learn the stages.

HTH!

Just an update. The bars are curing up nicely although slowly and they're ugly looking. Soap works great too, far better than anything store-bought.

Evergreen,

I haven't made soap since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, had a neighbor who made his own in a big cast iron caldron over a low fire. That was a lot of years ago, he got his lye from wood ash and best I can remember it was hours of stirring a rather soupy mixture then skimming the soap curds off the top.

What you said makes sense now, I should have stopped at the mashed potatoes stage, I was looking for the separation stage that never came. Going to try another batch in a couple days and see what happens.