agriffin said:
Beautiful swirls!!
We had a talk from Kevin Dunn at the soap conference this week about ash.
A couple of things:
Ash is highly soluble in water but not easily soluble with alcohol. I suspect it wasn't actually the alcohol removing the ash but the water content in the alcohol removing the ash.
If you have ash, I think rinsing it with water (instead of alcohol) would be more effective.
Thanks for the info (and swirl compliment - coming from you, I'm blushing
). Sounds like the conference was terrific. Wish I could have gone!
Here's the thing with this one, though...Rinsing it with water didn't budge it. Would have had to scrub it off under the running water. I think if it's not actually the alcohol, then what ever small amount of water is in the alcohol along with a rag got rid of the ash without also getting rid of some of the soap at the same time and changing the surface appearance too much. I didn't want to dull the texture. I personally don't like the way the soap looks after it's been rinsed for what ever reason, or even rubbed with a water-wet rag. Can't sell it...it looks, well, USED! Alcohol and a rag is a much gentler way of getting rid of the ash IMHO.
As far as ash being sodium carbonate...
Two of the sources that I have give their opinions on what ash is differently and in quite a bit of detail.
On page 139 of
Soap Maker's Workshop by Dr. Robert S. and Katherine J. McDaniel, they state (in a much more detailed manner than I am paraphrasing here!) that the white surface layer commonly referred to as "ash" that sometimes occurs on soap is most likely soap (not sodium carbonate) in one of four interchangeable crystalline forms. Which type of crystal forms is dependent on a variety of factors, and that the term "ash" rightly refers to sodium carbonate, which forms when EXCESS LYE in the soap is exposed to air. Therefore, most so-called "ash" is not sodium carbonate, but plain old soap in a crystaline form resulting from the unique conditions under which the soap was produced.
Susan Miller Cavitch claims to have had "ash" on her soap tested by a chemist, and the result was not sodium carbonate, but simply soap crystals.
I'm concluding that for a soap that is definitely not lye heavy, ash is plain old soap crystals. As to what environmental factors caused this particular ash -- your guess is as good as mine. It gelled completely, was nicely superfatted and definitely not lye heavy, was saturated with alcohol during the entire process many times, and still had soap crystals form. To top it all off, the "ash" was the worst in the depressions of the texture where the alcohol would even have stayed longer before evaporating between sprayings.
I'm just giving a nod to the soap gods for not "blessing" me with ash of any kind very often!!
