My first batch of soap (by myself)

I made soap once before with an expert friend showing me. It was super easy.

This was my first time doing it alone, and my own recipe creation.

I dont know why but it was so much more messy this time.


Its a goats milk with oatmeal and honey CP. Base oils of coconut, olive, cocoa butter and avocado. Camellina oil added at trace (with the goats milk, oatmeal and honey).

about 20 minutes after i finished pouring it and messing with the top i noticed there was a spot that looked dark just under the top. a little while later it was way bigger and i realized it was gelling....like crazy....super crazy fast. so i decided to put it in the fridge cause i think its wayyy too soon for it to be totally gelled. and its already cracked a bunch. and i just poured it like an hour ago!!

is that normal? should i keep it in the fridge? or stick it in the freezer?
its not covered, just in a wooden box lined with freezer paper.

it totally smells like peanut butter. thats from the camelina oil (smells like fresh peas/asparagus) plus the cocoa butter and goats milk. the color looks like peanut butter too.

argh! the power went out.

i put the soap in the deep freeze because the fridge would lose its cool very quickly.

should i be doing that or should i just leave it on the counter and let it gel as much as it wants to? i dont want crazy cracking tho.

Milk and honey can both cause overheating

Just my opinion but I would have started out without any additives that are gonna cause issues

The best advice I got from here was start simple with a basic recipe, no additives etc until you're comfortable - I've made 9 batches in 2 months, still haven't used milk/honey/sugar etc

Regarding the gel, if the power is out your freezer will still retain its temp for a while so I'd leave in there

Camellina oil at trace? Why at trace? The crack is from overheating... good call on the freezer! Freeze honey and or milk soaps (if experienced I'd say allow full gel if desired, but freeze immediately for 24 hours, which is better than refrgerating...in the fridge and it can still gel partially).

Any soap with sugar in it, that includes honey, will super heat. Also coconut oil will heat up very hot and quick if you use a lot of it (thinking of laundry soap here).

Milk also contains sugar and you really don't want it to overheat, it can change the color.

Your soap will probably be fine, you got it to the freezer so you will probably see a partial gel, or perhaps it will fully gel since it was so far along in the process. Either way that is just aesthetics.

One thing that will help for next time is to freeze your mold. Take it out when your ready to pour then fix your top and back in the freezer. When I use the freezer to prevent gel I also leave the soap in the mold a bit longer than usual. Since the temperature, I believe impedes the saponification process I leave the soap for 36-48 hours instead of the normal 24.

I second what other have said and wanted to add my congratulations on a quick save for your first solo batch!

it was already in full gel by the time i got it to the fridge. the only part that wasnt was like 1/8" at the very top. the whole inside looked like liquid honey.

i pulled it out of the freezer and put it back into the fridge after a couple hours because it seemed much cooler and less dark by then. does freezing soap prevent it from setting fully?

this morning (after 12 hours from pour) i pulled it out of the fridge. gel phase looks over. top still looks very light in color. no major cracking! yet....im sure its still possible

how do you know when its hard enough to cut? i know i still have at least 10 more hours before i would even attempt to take it out of the mold. but at this point even I cant tell that its still probably super soft inside.

the small molds i tried out did not seem to go into gel phase...at least i could never see any darkness beneath the surface. and they never got very hot. that is probably because they are so small.

because a number of people say that it reduces the saponification a little because its been in the lye less. camelina oil is full of omega 3 and other good nutrients. its equivalent to flax but has a very long shelf life. whether that is true or not, it doesnt hurt. i mixed it with the milk (evaporated 2x strength goats milk), ground oats and honey, and then just dumped all that in right before I poured.

lionprincess00 said:

Camellina oil at trace? Why at trace? The crack is from overheating... good call on the freezer! Freeze honey and or milk soaps (if experienced I'd say allow full gel if desired, but freeze immediately for 24 hours, which is better than refrgerating...in the fridge and it can still gel partially).

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I see. I asked because a lot of old school soapers taught us new soapers that adding an oil at trace superfats, it allows more to remain and such. These lovely veterans here taught me that if it zaps, it's active lye. Lye is so active you wouldn't dare licking it for a zap test at trace. thus whatever you add will saponify just as much as all the other oils (per your superfat amount). You can't choose nor guarantee anything you pick and choose remains.

Also, I find those special oils that are really good for the skin and health do much better as a leave on like lotions and body butters than wash off products like soaps. the chemical process turns the oils into salts and alters them, so making an awesome lotion that absorbs into the skin would benefit a little more from the expensive nice oils and butters more than something you wash off and is saponified. It's just something I've read here multiple times from many soapers that have been doing this way longer than me (only been soaping since last August so I'm really new too), so I thought I'd share the information with you.

It was a great save btw. I was terrified of overheating when I started, but you handled it like a pro and fixed it before a serious crack or worse occurred....congrats!

You can add an oil at trace to try to preserve it if it makes you happy, but the percentage you've saved was minuscule. Soaponification in CP takes a long time. You just spared your oil from maybe three minutes with the lye. CP isn't a sprint; it's a marathon. Three minutes head start isn't going to guarantee who crosses the finish line most intact.

I personally wouldn't do it for a bunch of reasons... primarily, I'd forget about it and end up with a lye heavy soap or have an FO speed things up and not be able to get it properly blended in. In CP, we call it "superfatting", but in reality it is just "lye discounting". The lye will eat everything it wants to. If you want to truly superfat with a particular oil, you'll need to hot process it and add it after zap test is cleared. That's the only way to say for certain what was preserved.

Nice first batch though.

Yes, in the future i will probably do mostly HP. But I wanted to get at least one solo CP in before I attempt HP.

I measure out all my ingredients before I start, and had all my "At trace" ingredients in one container, so i could not have forgotten it. I was going to just add it at the start, but then figured since I was already adding stuff at trace I might as well try that.

having to wait weeks to try my soap really sucks!!!

how long should I wait minimum before I try one of my small triangle sample sizes? do i have to wait a week or can i try it sooner? i am curious to test in the shower to see how it changes over time.

snappyllama said:

You can add an oil at trace to try to preserve it if it makes you happy, but the percentage you've saved was minuscule. Soaponification in CP takes a long time. You just spared your oil from maybe three minutes with the lye. CP isn't a sprint; it's a marathon. Three minutes head start isn't going to guarantee who crosses the finish line most intact.

I personally wouldn't do it for a bunch of reasons... primarily, I'd forget about it and end up with a lye heavy soap or have an FO speed things up and not be able to get it properly blended in. In CP, we call it "superfatting", but in reality it is just "lye discounting". The lye will eat everything it wants to. If you want to truly superfat with a particular oil, you'll need to hot process it and add it after zap test is cleared. That's the only way to say for certain what was preserved.

Nice first batch though.

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I start testing bits of mine a few days after its made. Then I test a small piece once a week. The waiting is the hardest part.

I would test any soap for zap before using, especially any soaps that did not gel (such as your small soaps), because un-gelled soap takes longer to reach tongue-neutrality than their gelled counterparts.

If it doesn't zap, begin testing it out as soon as you'd like. Just remember to take notes of the changes as the day/weeks go by!


IrishLass

Just another way of looking at 'at trace' oils -

Saponification takes between 24 to 48 hours (we're talking cp here). Trace can take a while, but 30 minutes is a good example number.

So at trace oils are out of the mix for 30 minutes of a 24 hour process - 1/48th of the time. That's no time at all. Adding oils at trace does not mean more of it is left over after saponification.

So i took all my soaps out of their mold
have not cut the loaf yet because i want to use my friends wire slicer to make perfect slices.

the triangles were in a silicone mold, and they came out fairly easy but left a little residue on the bottom and are not totally smooth. freezing made it much harder to get out and still left a residue. the flower one was a hard ice cube tray i found at a thrift shop for a buck. figured it try it and see if i could get the soaps out. froze that and tapped it a bunch of times on the counter and eventually it fell out.

the log looks fairly nice, tho almost all of it gelled except the top centimeter and the corners. no big deal.

but the flower has this white spot on it that worries me. what is that?! is it lye?!?! its not oatmeal because the oatmeal was not white and not powder. is it soda ash? isn't that just on the surface where the soap reacts with air? this was in the bottom of the mold.


i did lick the side of the flower (not the white part) and no zap
but now my tongue feels weird......

i really don't want to lick the white part. if that's lye, i will get a major zap!!

i don't know how it could be lye....the lye was dissolved in water then blended with a stick blender for awhile....and then blended more after my additives were added.

Don't worry, that is just a bit of soda ash not lye. Your soap came out lovely! Now is the hard part- the waiting!

If you want you can wash the white off the top but it will come off when you try it anyway.

So I FINALLY cut my soap (used my friends wire cutter), and it STINKS LIKE A FART!!!

Does that mean the milk went bad?
Is it because I let it sit in the mold for so long before cutting it?
Is it ruined, or will it be fine once it dries?

Also, the middle is still quite wet. Oozing a little almost. Is that bad? Normal?
My friend said it might be lye heavy
tho its 5% superfat, so it shouldnt be
she has never made milk soap before so shes not sure.
I touched the wet part then touched my finger to my tongue and no zap, tho that might not be accurate at all. I dont want to lick the slimy soap.

There is a faint white halo around the bigger specs of oatmeal, even on the outside of the block that was not so wet. Is that normal?

If the fart smell goes away, I would say it was quite a success for a first try, especially for a milk/sugar loaf.

the pieces are quite large....
4" wide by 3.25" tall and 1" thick.

should i cut them in half to 2" x 3.25" x 1"? that seems a little small, tho these are a bit big for my hands, and i have large man-lengthed hands.

The smell will eventually go away, yes it is the milk, no it didn't go bad, it is normal. After cure there shouldn't be that smell.

I don't think it is lye heavy, just soft. Again curing will solve that.

The halo is caused by gel. The soap got hotter than the oatmeal so it makes a halo ring. Normal and nothing to worry about.

Patience will solve all the problems, congratulations, I'm sure it will be wonderful in 2 months time.

Oh and cut them however you want! It's your soap!

the fart smell seems to be gone
now they smell of camelina oil

most of the camelina oil must have survived the saponification (added 5% at medium trace, in a 5% superfatted recipe) because the smell is so strong
smells half way between fresh peas and peanut butter

Dr Kevin Dunn did experiments on the subject and proved that superfatting at trace in cp does not work.

I made a batch of soap with lard and it smelled a little piggy, even though it was a mixed oil superfat. Some oil scents may will linger, especially if the middle is still soft