Botch first batch

[stationdragon]

Hey people, I'm new to soap making and been looking forward to it for a few weeks now. I decided the time was right to get a feel for CP soap making and had a couple of attempts this week but I've hit some obstacles. Could you please have a look at this and see what you think, I'd really really appreciate that as it's getting me down a bit.

I made my first batch 3 days ago using 30% olive oil, 10% sunflower oil and 60% tallow. I entered the information into soapcalc and took down the measurements down to the gram. I measured everything out accurately, added everything in the right order, blended until there was a light embossed imprint of the stick blender on the surface of the batter when I raised it out. I then added a 5% sweet almond oil superfat, some food grade strawberry fragrance (water based) and cosmetic grade vanilla pearl fragrance and mixed thoroughly again with the blender before separating into different jugs to colour. I used food grade pink colouring which turned the batter a dirty cream colour (disappointingly) and orange food colouring to another jug and left the 3rd jug plain (the orange took very nicely).
I then poured in consecutively and swirled with a bamboo skewer. I did this into a 3.5 inch tall cat litter tray (brand new and unused), put it to one side and covered and wrapped it with towels.
In an hour it had started to gel and was producing much heat but it never reached the sides, unfortunately the top cracked when I checked it at one point but that was through my own heavyhandedness and not a result of the process.
Now after 3 days it's sticky, waxy and greasy and I had to break the mould to release it, I've cut it up to see if it will harden but I'm not confident this batch has worked.
I also made a pure olive oil soap yesterday in a 6lb tub. Again I entered the values into soap calc and used the exact measurements, the only mistake I made which I know will be an issue is that I put 0% superfat and when I poured my oil I forgot to scrape out the last 5 or so grams of residue which I noticed gathered in the bottom of the bowl after the soap began setting. But this may not matter anyway as I'm feeling there may be some problems with this batch too.
This soap didn't produce much heat at all and there was very little sign of gel, there seemed to be a darker area in the centre below the surface but not what I saw with my first batch.
With this soap I added tea tree essential oil and lemon food grade flavour (water based) at trace (or what I took to be trace, the same raised ring when I removed the stick blender) and separated into 2 jugs. One I left plain and the other I added food grade green colouring to which took nicely at first before fading to the original colour in seconds and performed the consecutive pour again.
I forgot to swirl this time so went back to do this after 5 minutes but just cut up the surface by doing so. As I said, no gel and very little heat.
Today the surface is covered in the lemon flavouring and when I lifted up the tub to look underneath (as the tub is transparent plastic) there is a dark green ring of what could be separated and unsaponified oils.
I've been looking forward to making soap for weeks now and spent a lot of money (or a lot to me anyway) buying the equipment, tools and ingredients and now I'm feeling that money slipping between my fingers and I'm feeling very disheartened by the outcome. With no-one here to tell me what I've done wrong I don't know what to do and I don't want this to fail, I don't want to give up because this is my business idea and I need this in life. Please anyone help me, and in as much detail as possible

 

[stationdragon]

Developments

Ok so curiosity and impatience got the better of me and I unmoulded my olive oil soap and I was surprised to see that the dark green in the centre at the bottom was the green food colouring coming back. It's quite oddly not in the concentric circles like I poured it so I find that a bit strange.
But I'm still very confused. I removed the fragrance from the top before unmoulding and when I did unmould I discovered that the whole block is very wet. When I cut it into bars it kinda felt like very soft cheese but the clear/green parts are firmer than the cream coloured outer layer. This layer is very odd to me, it's kinda like cream cheese, very spongy, layer that seems to sit over the top of the inner, translucent layer. I took one bar and tried to separate the two layers just to see what was going on and to learn a bit more about it and there's a definite difference between these two layers (the inner being more believable as the beginnings of soap, the outer being more believable as philadelphia soft cheese spread).

What is this situation I'm faced with and what are my options please?
I'm very confused and need to learn more about what this is and how it happened in order to be more knowledgable about soap making in the future. Did I do something wrong? If so, (with both batches) what?

Thank you so much for you help in advance

 

[Fragola]

Food colors/fragrances can have impredictable results.

Water based fragrances may contain alcohol which may cause soap to overheat. Some colors are damaged by lye.

I see two possible approaches:

- if you are using an untested additive, try it on very small batches and see if you like the result
- avoid weird additives, where there is a chance that something may go wrong

If you manage to obtain green, I would be curious to know exactly what substance you have used.

Try to post some pictures. You give a lot of visual descriptions. Without pictures, it is difficult to understand what's actually happening. For me - at least.

Probably one of your batches has overheated, not sure about the other one.

Additives put aside, achieving or preventing gel requires some experience and babysitting of your soap. Or a method to precisely control heat (for example I never have these problems with small individual molds).

 

[stationdragon]

Thanks for your reply to this. I will try to get some pictures posted later for reference.
Thanks for the information on colours and flavours, I'll try to stick to tested cosmetic grade additives in the future, I was just very eager to get started and had few available so I cut a corner.
There is a definite green with the olive soap attempt, like a translucent green but as I mentioned, it is encased in this soft cheese like jacket. I'm guessing green is a difficult one to pull off due to your comments. It was just a cheap water based food colouring we get here in the UK. It didn't take at first but seems to have come back through some kind of half assed gel phase or something.
Would you recommend that I make batches without any additives for now so I can see how it's supposed to go and then as I include additives in the future I will be able to better gauge what happened based on my experience with basic soap batter?
Seems like that makes sense, and I suppose if I wanted to add fragrance later I could always rebatch it to get more out of it.
I'm very, very new to this though so please be patient with my many questions and lack of understanding.
Again though, thanks for the advice

 

[Genny]

As it was already said, I'd get my first plain batches under my belt before doing colors or fragrance.
Also, I'd get smaller containers for molds. If you mess up, 6 lbs is a lot of wasted ingredients. I'd start out at 1lb or less.

 

[honor435]

I wouldnt use food vanilla, it wont smell from that, go to natures garden.com and buy some vanilla frag oil, they have a ton to chose from and they arent spendy, if you buy 10- 1 ouncers you get a deal. Also, dont use food coloring, just try natural til you get the basics down. I dont use lard, but people do, I like oo, co, po, shea butter and castor. Better luck next time, try a samller batch so you dont waste too much product.

 

[stationdragon]

Hi,

unfortunately I would have tried smaller batches, it was originally the plan but the hand blander I bought is a million times too fast and powerful (despite being cheap) and would just suck in air and whip the soap if I used a smaller recipe. I'm broke at the moment owing to the amount of money I've put into this lately so I won't be able to afford a more suitable blender for a while yet.
Now I've got the blues! =(

 

[Fragola]

You can still do a main batch, and put aside few spoons of soap batter to test different colors and ingredients simultaneously, making small soap balls or something ...

Except for the overheating risk (which is affected by the batch size), you will be able to get an idea of how the additives behave. Personally, I'm reasonably happy using certain food colors for lighter, pastel nuances.

Money is overrated, you can find a lot of good stuff cheap or free. I believe you can work around the stick blender issue.

All you need is a narrow and tall container (maybe 2-3 inches wider than your blender). I regularly make 3 oz batches. Mine is stainless, but if your budget is that tight, you probably can find somewhere one made out of HDPE plastic, for free (various products are packaged like that).

 

[stationdragon]

Photo's

Thank you everyone for the advice, I think the worry about what went wrong clouded my thinking a little and got in the way of some common sense. I'll be sure to get around the stick blender issue with your ideas.

Anyway, just so everyone know's what I'm talking about, here are the pictures (though I feel a tad embarrassed putting them up, being a perfectionist and loathing showing any failures).

As you can see with the olive oil soap (the green/cream coloured one) the inside part is quite soap-like and the cream coloured outer layer is very, as I said before, cream cheese-like. I hope the two pictures of this batch are enough to get an idea of what we're looking at here.
The other picture of the brightly coloured soap is the first batch I made. You can see the chunk missing from the bottom and the general unevenness of the soap due to it's really sticky, taffy like consistency before I could remove it from the tray (or more like remove the tray from it). It's not as sticky as it was after being sat out for about 12 hours since being cut but it feels like a very, very dense bar of soap. It's much darker than I expected it to be and I don't think it's a very pretty looking soap at all, but I suspect after a few weeks of curing it will still be functional. The other one not so much.
As I've already said about the olive oil soap, it was sopping wet when I got it out of the mould, any ideas as to why this was? I used 38% water as I was recommended.

Any general advice anybody wants to give me, I will welcome it all. I mean things like "I ALWAYS pour my lye water into my oils, never the other way around" or "I always mix my lye water and oils at exactly 100 degrees farenheit" or "I only ever use essential oils" That kind of stuff as a general rule.
Again, much appreciate the help I've been offered with this. I'm very curious to find out what happened with my olive oil soap though and what the inner and outer layers are.
Shame, it smells so lovely too (tea tree and lemon)

Thanks guys

Travis

 

[stationdragon]

Oh the pictures didn't upload. I don't know how to do this[/img]

 

[stationdragon]

Can I just ask, if you're using a lye calculator and you're given the option to superfat, am I right in thinking that if you just want to superfat the base oils that get mixed in with your lye water, you just enter a percentage and this will be adjusted for you, but if you want to superfat with an additional oil such as castor, sweet almond or canola, that you would just put a 0% superfat and add the oils at trace?
This is how it seems to work logically but just want to be sure I'm not missing something here. It's like when you start your first day at a job, you're always told to ask questions about things you're unsure of, then you're gathering as much information as you can to better educate yourself to the position. I just want to make sure that anything I'm not 100% on that I have all the information I need to be sure I have gotten my head around it.

Also, if it is the case that you choose 0% superfat and add the chosen oils at trace, if you were wanting a 5% superfat for example would you literally just calculate 5% of the weight of the TOTAL batch, including water, lye and oils (and maybe fragrance and colour? I don't know).
I know what I'm asking might seem REALLY obvious but I just want to make sure I understand such a vital part of soap making.

Thanks everyone

ps. I'm going to have another shot at uploading the images tomorrow, I just read the FAQ page on uploading them

 

[Padamae]

I also want to say that it is easier to use a spoon at times and you may want tl start with a 20oz of olive oil get the feel of it.

 

[Stinkydancer]

As it was already said, I'd get my first plain batches under my belt before doing colors or fragrance.
Also, I'd get smaller containers for molds. If you mess up, 6 lbs is a lot of wasted ingredients. I'd start out at 1lb or less.

I totally agree here except for the 1lb- yes you are wasting less but at 1 pound you better hope your scale is right- I would go 2 pounds and see- that seems like a good beginner size.

1 pound for testing fragrances or recipes- definitely works when you have quite a few batches under your belt.

Remember- smaller batches are harder to gel.
I'm also not sure what color you used- but it doesn't sound like it works in high PH, definitely go with cosmetic grade soaping colors when you get a feel for plain batches.

These next statements are not to deter you from a soap business but I'm keeping it real:

Keep in mind that many of us with soap businesses have spent years learning the craft, formulating our recipes, knocked on doors to cater to the wholesale masses, learned about running a business, insurance, websites, etc...nobody I know has gotten rich of off soap. Heck most soapers I know can't pay the bills soaping and their hearts and souls are in the business.
I have only become remotely profitable in the last few years and I have been making soap for most of my life- selling for only about 7 or so.
This is an expensive hobby with lots to learn but as soon as you find your niche in your market- you could make money.
So my point is: Don't rush this process, take the time to learn all that you can (basically think soap 24/7 if you want a business), you will have much heart break and frustration with soap but you will also have your triumphs.
In the end, not making money is worth it if you love this craft. But making money is more fun.

Just take it slow and you will get there....