Wow, thank you! That makes perfect sense. Especially because the one batch in which they formed almost instantly had a low (1.25:1) water:lye ratio, as I had planned to add goat's milk at trace.
It seems like the simplest solution would be to exclude the salt from my recipe, I could live with...
Thank you for your input! It's killing me because I don't have the chemistry background, but I do have some common sense lol. I wouldn't think there is too little water to dissolve the solutes, but it is a possibility.
My lye calc does factor in extra NaOH for what is neutralized by the Citric...
I'm occasionally having issues with the recipe I've been using for the last year or so. I've made this same recipe (with different FOs, sometimes no FO) about a dozen times, but I've had issues with it 3 of those 12 times.
My process with the lyewater is:
Dissolve non-iodized salt and citric...