Using Honey in CP Soapmaking

I decided to post here as this may be a topic of interest to beginners, or soap making veterans who've never tried using honey.

First, let me just say I've made many, many batches of CP soap so feel fairly confident in my skills (some days more than others, lol!). I've used various additives that contain sugar such as fruit & vegetable purees, coconut milk, beer, wine, etc. But I've never used plain honey or sugar. I have no idea why, I just haven't. I started reading various threads that mention using sugar and honey to increase bubbles, researched a bit more, so decided to try it today.

In my research I read that many people like to add 1 Tbsp of honey per pound of oils, some use less. I also read they add it to their cooled lye water as sugars can cause overheating of the molded soap creating cracks that can advance to volcanos.

My soaping agenda today was to take a step back and make plain, unscented, uncolored soap. I have a tendency to get caught up in scenting, coloring & swirling, and forget some people prefer soap without those things. My husband reminded me of that last night. :wink:

So I mixed my lye water, then my oils and allowed them to cool. When my lye water was 93 degrees F I added the honey. As I was stirring it became a muddy brown which cleared to warm brown. The usual icky odor was there too. Neither of those things surprised me because that's exactly what happened when I used the other sugar-containing ingredients as my lye liquid. What did surprise me was how much the lye heated back up. It went from 93 degrees to 120 degrees in just a few minutes. I know, I didn't think it all the way through to the end, lol. It maintained 120 for about 15 min before it started to slowly drop. In the meantime I had to cover and insulate my oils so they didn't cool too quickly. I could have put the lye in an ice bath but I decided to wait it out. It was almost 2 hours before it came back down enough for me to mix.

So here's the outcome of todays batch. You can see the freshly poured soap and my white batch next to it. The recipe is exactly the same but the white has no honey. The new batch turned a lovely, honey color. I'll see how the color evolves as it cures and how well the bubbles compare between the two.

This was an interesting soaping day for me. It reminded me to occasionally return to the basics of soap making, stop obsessing over making my next batch prettier and better smelling, and consider other ingredients in soaping than just oil combinations, color and scent. :grin:

Nice contrast! They both look great. Looking forward to hearing about how they compare. Don't forget to update us!

interesting! i never put the honey into the cooled lye water. do you think it makes a difference in the temp of the soap during saponification, compared to adding the honey at trace?

CaraBou said:

Nice contrast! They both look great. Looking forward to hearing about how they compare. Don't forget to update us!

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I definitely will! Already the color has mellowed a bit. I'm sure it won't be white but it'll be interesting to see how it compares to the white batch.

seven said:

interesting! i never put the honey into the cooled lye water. do you think it makes a difference in the temp of the soap during saponification, compared to adding the honey at trace?

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Without a doubt. I didn't insulate this mold, just put a couple pieces of cardboard over the top of the mold, left it on the counter and it never got hot, just warm. I kept thinking maybe it would really heat up but it didn't. I looked at just now and it still looks fine - no signs of cracking. It's only been molded about 4 hours but I would have expected something to change by now if it was going to.

I'll take pics again once it's unmolded. Stay tuned!

Edit: I forgot to mention the recipe is basic trifecta of OO, CO and PO with a bit of castor. Trace wasn't affected at all. In fact, it was a bit slower to trace. I stirred and stick blended about 15 min before I poured at light/med trace.

It's now been approx. 6 hours since pour. Amazing how much lighter it's become. The outside of the wood mold is cool to the touch.

I expected a bit of color only because of heating the sugar. I know it wasn't anywhere near "soft ball stage" of candy making but I expected even a slight carmelization. When I tested for firmness I left a really nice fingerprint so it's still very soft. I'll see how it looks when I cut it tomorrow afternoon.

Very cool experiment. It will be really interesting to see how the color progesses.


You reminded me sometimes just plain soap without color or fragrance is still so special. I seem to have forgotten that lately as I am always trying some new fragrance or starting to learn swirling, thank you for the reminder.

KristaY said:

I didn't insulate this mold, just put a couple pieces of cardboard over the top of the mold, left it on the counter and it never got hot, just warm. I kept thinking maybe it would really heat up but it didn't. I looked at just now and it still looks fine - no signs of cracking. It's only been molded about 4 hours but I would have expected something to change by now if it was going to.

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This has been my experience, too, when I mix the honey with the cooled lye water. It seems like the naked lye solution takes the all the fire right out of the honey so that it doesn't cause any trouble later. No weeping honey spots in my finished soap, no cracking, and no overheating, etc.... In fact, I have to stick mine in the oven just to encourage gel! lol

IrishLass

I always add honey at trace. I mix it with a little water. If everything is cool there's very little colour change. If I want a colour change I soap warmer. I'm a beekeeper so honey goes in almost every batch I make.

karenbeth said:

I always add honey at trace. I mix it with a little water. If everything is cool there's very little colour change. If I want a colour change I soap warmer. I'm a beekeeper so honey goes in almost every batch I make.

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I love that you're able to put your own honey in your soap, karenbeth! That makes it extra special :smile: When you mix it with a little water and add at trace, do you get overheating and cracking? By soaping warmer for a color change, how warm? I used 1 Tbsp per pound of oils so maybe any difference in ratio would affect the amount of heat produced and any resulting color? I'm just pondering aloud now....fascinating....

wow, IrishLass thank you for sharing yer experience. most of my honey soaps got a bit too hot. i def will try this honey to lye method.

Good experiment! I have been adding honey to hot water, then letting it cool a bit before adding it to the lye water. You just saved me a step. I use the heat transfer method, so I will just add the honey to the lye water, then the lye water to the solid oils to melt them, then add the liquid oils. Super easy! Thanks!

KristaY most of my soaps go into the freezer to prevent gel - never had a honey soap over heat or crack. The only one that has cracked is a vegan soap with activated charcoal. No honey or beeswax but I like it to gel to get a better black. It was 40C here in Oz and really was too hot to soap. I like to soap at room temp and really don't measure temp any more, but to get a colour change the bowl feels warm. Sorry not at all scientific, but you have me thinking I should take notes as to how much change occurs at what temp. Frightened the beejeesus out of me once when I added honey at trace and my batter turned bright orange.

When I use honey, I add it to the hot lye solution. I read somewhere that the heat would help it to dissolve completely. Because I add it to the hot solution, I've never noticed the lye heating up like you did....that's wild! I always soap at room temp, so I let it cool after adding. I've never had a problem with the soap overheating.

I think I'm coming full circle in my soapmaking. I started out making "plain" soaps, tried all the various techniques, and now I'm loving the "plain" ones again. I put "plain" in quotes, because I think they're anything but. My new saying is....Plain is the new beautiful! I love your bars.

This is so fascinating! IrishLass adds honey to cooled lye, Susie adds it to hot water then lye, Seven & karenbeth at trace and Navigator9 to hot lye. On my next batch I think I'll add the honey to the lye water right after I mix in the lye to see what happens. My lye mixture usually heats to about 180 so I had a concern this temp might scorch the honey. Now that I know how much the honey heats up in lye, I'll be checking the temps to see how this may affect the usual heat. Who knows, with 2 exothermic reactions going on at the same time, it may not change the lye temp much. Or it may add to it. I'll find out either way. Thanks everyone for their input and personal experiences!

I would not advise adding the honey to lye at 180 degrees. It will erupt like a volcano. I know from experience. Wait until the lye has cooled to warm or try one of the other methods you've listed. Very dangerous to add sugars to lye that hot.

Update On My Experiment

My 1st batch of honey soap is now 5 days old and the 2nd one is 4 days old. I used the exact same recipe of oils (50% OO, 25% CO, 20% PO & 5% Castor) and added honey at 1 Tbsp per lb of oils. The only differences are: 1) I split my batch in half, scented and colored half, left the other half unscented and uncolored.
2) I added the honey to the hot lye instead of cooled lye.

Because I wanted to see what the final result would be when adding honey to hot v/s cooled lye, I took Coffeetime's advice about the danger of adding any sugar to hot lye. So I took everything outside to mix the water, lye and honey. I mixed my lye as usual then put that container into a large plastic bucket and made sure it had a lot of room to spare. I had on all proper safety equipment - gloves, goggles, mask, long sleeves, long pants and closed toed shoes. I even turned on my garden hose and put it into a tree well about 8 ft away just in case.

The temp of my lye water at the start was 193 degrees F. I SLOWLY added the honey over 5 minutes just trickling in small amounts at a time. The lye temp increased to 211 degrees which is only up 18 degrees. In my cooled lye experiment it increased 27 degrees going from 93 to 120. I didn't even come close to a volcano, thankfully. The most interesting thing is how quickly the temp started to drop. 9 minutes after I finished adding the honey, it was down to 193 again, 13 minutes later it was 179, and 30 minutes later it was 150. From there it slowed significantly and took another 2 hours before it was 95 degrees and I could make soap.

Again, the batter turned a lovely honey gold color. I split the batch, colored, scented and poured. I used bright green and bright blue micas which muted and my scent was a mixture of lemongrass, tea tree and peppermint.

I tried to unmold both at 24 hours but they were still too soft. I was able to unmold at 48 hours but they were too soft to cut. I ended up cutting both at 3 days but the 2nd batch could have even used another day. They also have a somewhat "tacky" texture as compared to my honey-less soaps.

In the first pic, you can see the tops of the first batch (left side), they're very white. It looks like soda ash but it came out of the mold with all sides that color and it doesn't wipe off. The very white bars in the center are the same recipe, without honey, and are 10 weeks old. On the right is the 2nd batch. This was taken when they were 3 & 4 days old.

The 2nd pic was taken at 4 & 5 days old. They're already a bit lighter in color.

I'm going to wait for the 2 week mark then compare the lather between the bars with honey and without. I'm also going to keep taking photos to track the color changes as they occur.