False trace ?

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Sunibee

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Hello, I tried making co embeds n soap dough. The embeds are fine though still a bit soft but the batter for soap dough had oil pooling on top . . It was at medium trace when I poured it into my moulds. What other reason can there be .. .
 
Could be many reasons.

Post a picture and full recipe along with anything like temperatures (approximately if you don't measure).

I've not suffered it myself, but false trace usually results in a separation if I remember correctly, which looks more like a porridge than just oil pooling on top of a more solid soap
 
I have started using a simple trifecta for embeds.
Coconut oil 34%
Palm oil 30 %
Olive 36%
With plain distilled water. No FO or EO
The apples are fine but the squares have. Ajit of oil. I am going to leave them for a day or 2 .. to harden
 

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Unless you're working in an air-conditioned room, this recipe cannot give you false trace. What was your room temperature?

False trace looks somewhat like trace, i. e. the batter becomes thick, starts to solidiy. It has no chance for oils to separate/leak/pool, solid oils is the whole point of false trace. Particularly in small seprarate silicone moulds, where the lye-oil reaction has a hard time producing enough heat to melt up semi-solid oils after cooling down.
 
Unless you're working in an air-conditioned room, this recipe cannot give you false trace. What was your room temperature?

False trace looks somewhat like trace, i. e. the batter becomes thick, starts to solidiy. It has no chance for oils to separate/leak/pool, solid oils is the whole point of false trace. Particularly in small seprarate silicone moulds, where the lye-oil reaction has a hard time producing enough heat to melt up semi-solid oils after cooling down.
[/Q
Hummm.. never thought of that .. yes the lye and oils were much cooler than normal and. The temperature also was below the regular temp. Thoug in the low 20ties.. in centigrade
 
If you're unsure if under particular conditions a recipe might give you false trace, you can blend the oils beforehand and just let them stand for an hour. If they solidify, then it's too cold and you should counteract false trace by elevated oil and lye temperatures, larger batch/mould size, and by working quickly. If the oils stay liquid (and only get opaque at most), then false trace is no issue.
 
Great so it's not. I master batched my lye and oils for the first time . And the oils are not solid. Just lightly opaque . Thank you so much ResolvableOwl 🙂
 
If you're unsure if under particular conditions a recipe might give you false trace, you can blend the oils beforehand and just let them stand for an hour. If they solidify, then it's too cold and you should counteract false trace by elevated oil and lye temperatures, larger batch/mould size, and by working quickly. If the oils stay liquid (and only get opaque at most), then false trace is no issue.
Now I notice the white salt sticking to the edges of the bottle. It's 20°C and I am assuming it's cold for the lye solution.. now everytime I use it I have to warm the bottle
 
Oof, that's bad. When you have a 50% lye masterbatch, 20°C should be about the lowest temperature at which NaOH just hasn't started to crystallise out of solution under ideal conditions.

If you don't need 50% (like when you don't care about watery additives like aloe vera juice or goat milk), you can dilute your lye masterbatch to, say, 35%. Then you don't have crystallisation issues, and you don't need to dilute it when it's soapmaking time.
 
Oof, that's bad. When you have a 50% lye masterbatch, 20°C should be about the lowest temperature at which NaOH just hasn't started to crystallise out of solution under ideal conditions.

If you don't need 50% (like when you don't care about watery additives like aloe vera juice or goat milk), you can dilute your lye masterbatch to, say, 35%. Then you don't have crystallisation issues, and you don't need to dilute it when it's soapmaking time.
Thank you.will keep that in mind for future
 

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