Everything seemed to go wrong

[WillZ]

Guys. I spent all day yesterday making my very first liquid soap - well at least I tried.

185 g KOH
907 g Olive oil
327 g demineralised Water
227 g Glycerine

I don't have a slow crock, so I used my induction plate on low heat (2) instead. After stick-blending it for more than an hour, I decided to take a coffey brake (about 10 minutes) and turned the heat off. When I got back to my pot, my liquid soap had turned solid, but with the help of a knife and the a blender with dough hooks + heat, I managed to get it back to a creamy state. After some hours of blending with the stick I decided to turn the heat up + leaving it alone for a while. Coming back after about 20 minutes, I had some small white vulcanoes bobling +air trapped under. I kept stiring every 20-30 minutes for some hours, but having spent some 11 hours on the project, I turned off the heat and went to bed. This morning I have a rather hard deep amber looking substance in my pot. Taking a wee bit and putting disolving it in water, makes the water all mirky.
HELP please
William

 

[DeeAnna]

Your recipe looks fine.

I hate to tell you this, but your soap was most likely finished in less than an hour of cooking. Spending 11 hours to cook this soap was not necessary. The firm paste you saw after your coffee break was the finished soap.

Did you check it with a zap test? If not, do so. Here are instructions: https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/how-to-properly-safely-conduct-the-zap-tongue-test.63199/ If soap doesn't zap, then there is no point in cooking it longer. There's no more KOH left to react, so the saponification is finished.

And you don't really even need to cook liquid soap at all if you do not want to -- see these resources:

Irish Lass: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?p=428988 see posts 8 and 9
and: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=57974
Susie: http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=49852
https://milesawayfarm.wordpress.com/2015/04/22/liquid-soapmaking-where-to-start/

Not every liquid soap will be perfectly transparent, even if it was made properly. Post a photo of the cloudy soap if you want more feedback on this issue.

This will probably be a soap that will be difficult to dilute. The oleic acid content is very high, so the soap may either want to remain a non-pourable jelly or a water thin liquid.

 

[WillZ]

THANK YOU DeeAnna.
Your eply has been most helpful, and I really do appeciate it.
A wee question: When using BrambleBerry Lye Calculator, I am informed how much liquid to use. Is Water interchangable with Glycerin??

 

[DeeAnna]

Glycerin can theoretically be used for part or all of the water in a liquid soap recipe.

As a practical matter, there are safety problems with using all glycerin. Also it's my experience that using mostly or all glycerin for the liquid will reduce the lather.

For safety's sake, I STRONGLY recommend you dissolve the KOH in water alone. Just water. You must use water equal to or greater than the weight of KOH, so the KOH can dissolve properly.

The additional liquid required for the recipe can be water, glycerin, or any combination of the two as you desire.

I'm not overly fond of the BB soap calculator. It makes assumptions for you when it calculates recipes and that gets people in trouble sometimes. I agree this calc is beginner friendly due to the simplifications, but I think a lot of people outgrow this calc fairly soon and then have to adjust to using a different, full featured calc. Try http://soapee.com instead and see what you think.

 

[WillZ]

How about using Glycerine in cold process bar soap? I've been lookig for cold process glycerin bar soap, but there doesn't seem to be any?
I tried to look at soapee.com, but I think their server is down. I'll try again later.
If I substitute part of the water with glycerin, do I just mix in the glycerin with the other oils?
Again: Thank you so much for taking the time to try to fill my old brain with new info.

 

[DeeAnna]

"Glycerin" soap is one name for transparent soap. You'll get more info on this type of soap if you look for "transparent soap" instead. It's called glycerin soap because one solvent used to make the soap transparent can be glycerin. It's usually made with a hot process method due to having to add solvents to the soap after it is saponified.

Normal not-transparent bar soap already has 7-9% glycerin due to the saponification of the fats. I don't think it would be a particularly good idea to add even more because glycerin will soften bar soap, reduce the lather, and cause sweating in humid weather. But there's no harm to try it -- make a test batch and see what you think.

 

[IDA]

Hello
Then i have i recipe for liquid soap, how much water can i put i in the recipe in the end?
For ex, castoroil 200
Olivoil 200
Coconut Oil 200
Is it 1/3 water?

 

[shunt2011]

Hello
Then i have i recipe for liquid soap, how much water can i put i in the recipe in the end?
For ex, castoroil 200
Olivoil 200
Coconut Oil 200
Is it 1/3 water?

You’ve asked the same question in two posts.