Coconut Milk, Honey, Colloidal Oats Soap Never Traced!! Help!!

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

nreynolds

New Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2014
Messages
4
Reaction score
0
Hello all,

So, I am a newbie to the whole CP soap making. I have made 4 pretty great batches, so I tried to challenge myself by making a batch which involved coconut milk, honey, and layering. I did run into problems though. One layer never came to trace, and I ended up burning out the motor of my stick blender because it over heated after using it for 40 minutes straight! Lol. I am going to list my recipe and the method I used, and if anyone has any thoughts on what I did wrong, please let me know!!

Recipe/procedure:
Avocado Oil- 3.37oz (9.76%)
Coconut Oil- 6.73oz (19.51%)
Jojoba Oil- 0.84oz (2.44%)
Olive Oil- 13.46oz (39.02%)
Palm Oil- 6.73oz (19.51%)
Shea Butter- 3.37oz (9.76%)
Lye-4.7 oz.
Distilled H20/liquids 11.4oz

Substituted 5.70 oz of water with Coconut milk (at trace).

2 tablespoons of honey, dissolved into 2 tablespoons of the distilled water I already gathered for my lye water.

Soaped at 75 degrees

After adding and incorporating my lye water into my oils I divided my mixture in half; one half I added the coconut milk, and colloidal oatmeal at trace (this half came out perfect). The second I added my honey mixture and the FO, and it literally never traced. I went at it with the stick blender for a good 40 minutes until it just never turned back on. *Here I panicked* I added about a half a teaspoon of lye to a measuring cup with a teeny bit of water, and added it. It thickened it a little but not much. The consistency was about pancake batter when I finally just put it in the mold, covered it with cardboard and wrapped it in a blanket. Today when I checked it, the bottom layer (coconut milk) still looks really good, and it pulls away from the mold in most places, but the top is really wet still (almost gel like). I’m sure it’s a total loss at this point (and most likely lye heavy).

I used this same recipe w/out the honey and soaped at 85 today, and it came out flawlessly…

Any thoughts or suggestions? Sorry for the SUPER long post!!

Thanks,

Nicole
 
I would guess you seperated your batter to soon before a good emulsion, you need to have the lye and oils mixed well before seperating. If you are going to layer it is best to add all ingredients in the beginning get your batter to an emulsion state or a very thin trace then seperate and add in what you want in the seperated batter. It is best to add all liquids in the beginning instead of waiting for trace. Also keep in mind your honey will cause heating so I would also add the honey to the full batch of batter instead of risking overheating just a layer. I put all milk and honey soaps in the freezer to deter overheating and volcanos. If you batter was lye heavy it would trace very fast and remember never run a stick blender for long periods of time. I keep two in case I need to switch. I never run a sb over 10 min without switching.
 
When I am splitting up my batter to add things, I try to keep them balanced as far as oils and liquids. So if I added coconut milk to only half the batter, the other half would get the same amount of water or other liquid.

On this one you added 5 oz of coconut milk to one half and 2 Tbsp of honey with 2 Tbsp of water to the other? That sounds unbalanced to my tiny mind as far as water goes. Plus 2 Tbsp honey sounds like a lot for half that batch (around 34 oz oil total?) - I only add a tsp of sugar ppo, but better minds than mine would know better about that.
 
cmzaha- Thanks for your reply! Yes, that makes total sense. I didn't incorporate it well- just until it look mixed really. I was also unsure of how the ingredients would behave together, so I tried to move quickly. In my mind I wanted to add the honey and the FO to just one layer because I thought they would discolor to a similar light brown, and wanted to keep the milk-ish layer its own color. Now I am just unsure how to achieve that. Lesson learned about the emulsion blender :( I was fond of that one too… oh well, another experience under my belt I guess.
 
When I am splitting up my batter to add things, I try to keep them balanced as far as oils and liquids. So if I added coconut milk to only half the batter, the other half would get the same amount of water or other liquid.

On this one you added 5 oz of coconut milk to one half and 2 Tbsp of honey with 2 Tbsp of water to the other? That sounds unbalanced to my tiny mind as far as water goes. Plus 2 Tbsp honey sounds like a lot for half that batch (around 34 oz oil total?) - I only add a tsp of sugar ppo, but better minds than mine would know better about that.


Seawolf- thank you for your thoughts on this. I am not sure why, but I thought for some reason that if the lye calculator told me to use 11.4 ounces of liquid that I would just subtract from that amount if I was using another liquid to substitute. Yes, the honey was a lot wasn't it?! Whoops.

Thanks!
 
Oh sure, you can hold back your water allotment and substitute coconut milk or whatever for your liquid. That's what I do.

But it sounds like you added the amount held back (as coconut milk) to only half of the batter. If that's right, half the batter had more than it's share (1/4 of the liquid + coconut milk as half = 3/4) and half had less (1/4 of the total liquid plus the 2 tbsp honey water). If so, I'm not sure what that does with lye at close to a 1:1 ratio with water for that half, and a lot of sugar.
 
Oh sure, you can hold back your water allotment and substitute coconut milk or whatever for your liquid. That's what I do.

But it sounds like you added the amount held back (as coconut milk) to only half of the batter. If that's right, half the batter had more than it's share (1/4 of the liquid + coconut milk as half = 3/4) and half had less (1/4 of the total liquid plus the 2 tbsp honey water). If so, I'm not sure what that does with lye at close to a 1:1 ratio with water for that half, and a lot of sugar.
Seawolf, this makes total sense. How would this work with fragrance oils? For example, I was using a FO that discolors and only wanted to to scent half the batch. If my recipe recommended 1 oz of FO, would I use .5oz instead? Thanks again for all the clarification, it really helps!
 
Yep yep split fragrances accordingly as well. Though I don't think there would be great harm if half was unscented and half got all the scent, unless you worry about seizing, morphing or discoloring with a certain FO or EO.
 
In this case, the OP wants the FO in just one part so that it does discolour.

I did worry before about 1 part of the soap being heavily scented, technically half is over scented - and I worried that it would cause issues. From reading on here, it seems that in normal use the FO is then spread out in the water etc so it isn't too bad
 

Latest posts

Back
Top