Deanna, I have a question...

I see that the lye crystals are gone and just soda ash is left (I always get this with castile).

Here's another picture of the soap

While I was taking a picture I saw another batch of castile I made recently that I remembered was lye heavy, but not as heavy as this recipe, but it got the goo-factor after use.

Wow. How interesting. LOL, I see everyone got there before me, but yeah, first thing I did when I read the first post was run it through soapcalc and see the -43% SF. lol. And the 6.35:1 Water:Lye ratio. Lots of water.

DeeAnna, I am learning soooo much chemistry listening to you.
You mention that it eventually turns into sodium carbonate, which is washing soda -- seems like it would be a good soap for using in hard water?

Wikipedia says sodium carbonate is also good for taking out wine stains... and blood stains... and ummm for cleaning stuff off of bones... not that I actually have any use for that last bit of info....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_carbonate#Uses

grayceworks said:

Wikipedia says sodium carbonate is also good for taking out wine stains... and blood stains... and ummm for cleaning stuff off of bones... not that I actually have any use for that last bit of info....

Click to expand...

Sounds like a great product for murder and mayhem! And no goo afterward, either!

Pretty much all of the sodium carbonate on the soap made with this recipe will be on the surface of the bar, so you'd need to use a fresh bar when you want to clean bones, Grayce.

Observation 1. AnnaMarie mentioned the need to wait for true trace: "...This one becomes a vanilla pudding when it traces- right away. You have to be careful because it seems like it might have traced before this, but it hasn't.... The soap mixture starts to rice heavily and then all of a sudden you have this thick, rich looking soap batter...."

Observation 2. "...I came back to [this lye-heavy recipe] and decided to experiment using varied water and oil levels, but always with the appropriate lye amount- a big fat nothing. I REALLY hate gooey castile and even my 3 or 4 year old castile still got gooey (yes, I kept it out of water and on a draining dish, etc). It never made sense to me how great this soap was..."

These clues make me suspect the abundance of lye and water is driving saponification of fats and reacting with other chemical components in the olive oil that do not react easily in a recipe with less water and/or lye. An excess of specific reactants (the lye and water, in this case) will drive a chemical reaction toward the desired end point (non-gooey Castile).

Observation 3. Look at AnnaMarie's pics, especially the one in Post 24. The soap is clearly ashy on all surfaces including the cut faces. Coupled with the first two clues, I suspect adding sodium carbonate to a lye-balanced recipe might not end up with the same kind of soap as she gets with her lye-heavy recipe.

Once the initial reaction is over, there's that secondary reaction required to convert the excess lye into washing soda (aka soda ash). Remember I mentioned the CO2 needs water to turn into carbonic acid first? An abundance of water would drive the conversion of CO2 into carbonic acid. The excess water would also promote the migration of the NaOH from the interior of the bars to the surface where it can be neutralized into washing soda.

If you just mixed washing soda into a lye-balanced or superfatted soap, the washing soda would remain in the soap as a more-or-less inert ingredient. With AnnaMarie's soap, the washing soda ends up on the surface of the soap where it quickly washes away, leaving a bar of non-gooey Castile behind.

I'm starting to feel like Sherlock.

Please don't take my ramblings as gospel truth. I have no way to prove these ideas, so take 'em with a grain of salt, err, soap.

I'm not a scientist, but after enough experimenting it is clear that a lot of water and a lot of lye create the desired product. The only problem with this recipe is putting it in the hands of newbies or irresponsible and impatient soapers. I would definitely NOT use this soap after only a few weeks, nor would I necessarily use this same formula for other soaps, but then I don't need to. This recipe is my perfect castile, and now with learning that the excess lye will get eaten up I'm excited to see the results of my ph testing and possible opportunities to sell this down the road. Thank you DeeAnna for weighing in on this. I appreciate you!
Cheers!
Anna Marie
PS- Grayceworks, I'm thinking you have the same love of murder mysteries I do . Read Edgar Allen Poe by any chance or better yet Wilkie Collins (his Woman in White is the best!)

Now I'm pondering variations! Could some of the water be replaced with another liquid to get the same effect? What about heaters? FOs? Colorants?

And just what is the weight value of 1 qt of OO anyways?

FlybyStardancer said:

Now I'm pondering variations! Could some of the water be replaced with another liquid to get the same effect? What about heaters? FOs? Colorants?

And just what is the weight value of 1 qt of OO anyways?

Click to expand...

Nothing like experimenting to find out....

lol I don't have enough time or materials to test all of my ideas! :crazy:

Just wondering again on the time scales involved - a 3 month cure for a castile is not unheard of, but how long does it take for this process to finish? Clearly, not two weeks!

Well I had to go for it after stating even I would not go so lye heavy. To horrors of a lot of people I do not superfat my soaps using soap calc or with manual configuring. I simply do not like superfatted soap, and neither does my plumbing, and I am sure using soap calc at 0 there are still some unsaponified fats. I did tweak the recipe a tad and only did a -30 superfat and used a 38% lye concentation using pomace. Sorry I did not go with my normal 40% lye concentration with Olive Oil soap. I am planning on aging this for a min of 6 months.

I like your spirit!

I am going to test mine at intervals using the ph liquid stuff (I don't know the name) just to test the excess lye being "eaten up". I pretty much planned on aging it a year, but I'm going to see how it goes. You'll have to fill me in on your batch.
Cheers!
Anna Marie

Thanks AnnaMarie. Always so much to try and so little time! Phenolphthalein is what is used for testing

I'm getting ready to make some tonight. What I plan to do is cut my usual size soap bars and let them age. I don't do pH testing, but I will test for zap and moisture loss. I also want to cut some of the bars apart and test the center. My guess is the center will stay more zappy than the surface, but I'm curious if my guess is true or if the center becomes less zappy at about the same rate as the outside.

If you're going to test for pH, be sure to wash off the ash first -- it will skew your results.

I've been reading yet another of the old soapmaking manuals; this one is from 1884. I was wondering if I might glean some tidbits that might be useful with AnnaMarie's recipe. Didn't really find anything, but the author has some interesting comments on olive oil and Castile soap:

"...Olive-oil is frequently adulterated with poppy and other oils. These are distinguished by not congealing at the same temperature as olive-oil, and also by retaining air, when shaken up, more readily than pure olive-oil. If 5 percent of any other oil be present, the consolidation is slower and less firm, but if 12 percent of foreign oil be mixed with it, this floats on the surface for several days. Oils of poppy, sesame, rapeseed, or cocoa-nut may be thus recognised when mixed with olive-oil....

"...Castile or Olive-oil Soap is considered the type of all hard soaps, and when made from pure materials is white, emollient (from emollier, to soften), and is almost entirely free from odour. It is unquestionably the best known soap.... As formerly made, this soap was exceedingly hard and brittle, but the introduction of other ingredients, as the oils of hempseed, linseed, and poppy, for example, render the soap less disagreeably hard, while at the same time reducing the cost of manufacture...."

This author doesn't appear to make much distinction between a pure olive oil soap and a mostly olive oil soap. Reading between the lines, there has been a lot of "bastile" sold as Castile for well over 100 years and perhaps for as long as olive oil soap has been around.

Also, the bolded passage is especially interesting. A fair number of people report their Castile soap as being very soft and difficult to unmold, while others report freshly made Castile as being very firm to hard. I suspect the difference is the soft gooey soaps are made from adulterated "olive" oil.

I am curious to see if the water discount is going to make a large difference. It just might. It can always be rebatched with more water if this plan fails. I might make one more batch with the full quart of water and see what happens. Never know if you don't try...

Huh! Interesting that in 1884 they had the same problem we are STILL having today with olive oil adulteration.

And.... I waited 4 weeks to test my first ever soap. I did test some lather with gloved hands using scraps after cutting the bars though.

I did the zap test the day after and there was no zap, but a REALLY bad kind of burning taste. A recent zap test resulted similar, but lessened sensation. I planned on cutting in half myself down the road to test the middle. Thanks for the info on the soda ash as I did not know it would impact results. This is fun! - a group experiment!
Cheers!
Anna Marie

Btw- I should have added that I really insulate this one to get a full gel- like several towels insulate. It also seems to sweat out some of the water. I know the original recipe doesn't necessarily do that, but I think the full gel is good for this soap (IMO).
Cheers!
Anna Marie

or maybe

That is AWESOME!

*pictures provided by google*

Well, that was an interesting experience. AnnaMarie, your recipe takes the cake for the oddest soap I've ever made so far. I tweaked the numbers a bit to make the ingredients easier to weigh out in grams. Here are my notes and observations:

Recipe (using my personal soap recipe calculator, so the numbers are going to be slightly different than SoapCalc):
1000 g extra virgin olive oil (supposedly)
195 g NaOH
1195 g water split into 195 g (equal to the NaOH weight) and 1000 g (equal to the total oil weight)

approximate lye excess: 40% more NaOH than required for a zero lye discount
approximate NaOH solution concentration: 16% overall
scented with wild mint EO (basically a milder version of peppermint), based on AnnaMarie's suggestion

Mixed the NaOH with an equal weight of water to make a 50% NaOH base solution. Added the rest of the water to the oil. When the lye solution was completely dissolved but still hot, added it to the oil-water mix and briefly stick blended to mix. Initial temperature of the batter was 110 deg F. Temperature dropped slowly throughout the mixing period to 93 deg F. (There was no temp rise as I normally see in my regular soap recipes.) I mixed the batter with a stick blender (SB) and spatula -- about 30 seconds of SB and about 5 minutes of gentle hand stirring, etc.

10 minutes: Slightly thickened and smooth with a shiny surface texture.
20 minutes: Thin gravy with a slightly grainy texture. Surface sheen was satiny.
30 minutes: Gravy consistency with a grainy texture -- a bit like curdled custard. This is starting to get boring, but I'm seeing progress. Just slow.
40 minutes: Batter continuing to thicken. Grainy texture is increasing. Seems slightly gelatinous. There is a layer of watery liquid on the bottom.* This has definitely gotten boring.
41 minutes: Started to SB as usual, but the batter changed in seconds from grainy, dull, and curdled looking to dollops of gelatinous, shiny soap separated by and floating on a watery liquid. I'm suddenly wide awake and not remotely bored anymore.
43 minutes: Stick blended some more and ended up with a smooth, thick, shiny soap layer floating on a watery liquid layer. I'm starting to worry about that watery layer -- will it eventually mix into the soap? Definitely a hint of anxiety floating in the back of my mind.
47 minutes: Continued to stir and SB as best as I can. The soap and watery layers are beginning to blend together into a thick, shiny pudding-y mass. Whew!! I decide to keep mixing until I'm sure the batter is well mixed, because it's staying surprisingly pourable and loose.
51 minutes: Poured nicely into a loaf mold. I CPOP'ed the soap -- put it into the oven preheated to 170 deg F. The soap looked like thick, shiny, lemon-yellow pudding. I did not see any hint of separation when I poured the batter.
2 hours: Temp has risen a bit after an hour in the oven from about 93 to 94.5 deg F. Left the oven on for a bit longer. The texture of the soap is soft but more like cold mashed potatoes now. If the soap is poked with a toothpick, the hole doesn't fill in.

* I couldn't see or feel this water layer; I just wondered if it was there because this recipe has so very much water in it. To find out, I pushed a small disposable pipette down to the bottom of my soap pot and sucked up some of the liquid. Pulled the pipette up, wiped off the outside, and compared the liquid in the pipette with the soap layer on top of the pot. Yep, there was a watery layer there. I did this several times after my first check at 40 minutes. All checks showed a watery layer until the last check I did right before the pour.