So I finally got around to making my next batch!
The good news - no soda ash and the color of the bar is uniform (not sure if I fully gelled or didn't gel at all haha)!
The bad news - I used the wrong amount of sodium hydroxide. The original recipe called for 52g of NaOH. I used 54g. I was aiming for a 6% superfat and 33% lye concentration but after tweaking my soapee recipe it appears I actually ended up with a 2.7% superfat and 35% lye concentration.
A few questions from this attempt to my fellow soap makers:
1) Do I need to worry about the sizeable drop in superfat %? It's much less than I wanted to start with.
2) When I mixed the oils I just used a hot water bath to melt the coconut and shea butter before adding to my other oils. I didn't wait for the lye to cool down much. Everything seemed to go okay, but is this something I should avoid in the future? Are there cases where not paying attention to the temperature could cause a problem?
S
The good news - no soda ash and the color of the bar is uniform (not sure if I fully gelled or didn't gel at all haha)!
The bad news - I used the wrong amount of sodium hydroxide. The original recipe called for 52g of NaOH. I used 54g. I was aiming for a 6% superfat and 33% lye concentration but after tweaking my soapee recipe it appears I actually ended up with a 2.7% superfat and 35% lye concentration.
A few questions from this attempt to my fellow soap makers:
1) Do I need to worry about the sizeable drop in superfat %? It's much less than I wanted to start with.
2) When I mixed the oils I just used a hot water bath to melt the coconut and shea butter before adding to my other oils. I didn't wait for the lye to cool down much. Everything seemed to go okay, but is this something I should avoid in the future? Are there cases where not paying attention to the temperature could cause a problem?
S
Last edited: