Favourite soaping temperature

[Soaper987]

What is your favourite temperature to soap at? What differences do you notice the temperature makes?

 

[Rsapienza]

I soap at room temp for the most part. My hard oils, at times, may be a little warmer. I try to just heat until clear.
Soaping at lower temps does not cause the acceleration you tend to see when soaping warmer, IMO.

 

[shunt2011]

I don't take temps, haven't since shortly after starting years ago. I just heat my hard oils/butters until almost melted then stir until fully melted. I then add my liquid oils and my room temp lye mixture.

 

[Obsidian]

I don't take temps, haven't since shortly after starting years ago. I just heat my hard oils/butters until almost melted then stir until fully melted. I then add my liquid oils and my room temp lye mixture.

That also how I do it. Sometimes if I'm doing a single color or no color I'll use hot lye so I get trace faster since my high lard recipe is slow to trace.

 

[CatahoulaBubble]

Depends on what I'm doing with the soap. If it's a more complicated design I soap at around 80-90*F. If it's just a pour and mold then I soap at around 105-108*F. Once I soaped at 118*F because I heated my oils too hot and got impatient and I was just pouring a single color soap.

 

[jcandleattic]

Room temp soaper here.

 

[Mistrael]

I want to soap at room temp, but impatience gets me every time. So far, the best I can usually manage is to use the heat transfer method. I need to try masterbatching my lye & see if that works for me.

 

[IrishLass]

It depends on what formula I'm soaping. If it's a formula with only liquid-at room-temp oils, either with or without 76 degree coconut oil, I'll either soap at room temp without heating anything up, or just heat the coconut oil up until liquid, which doesn't take much heat at all.

If I'm soaping my 2 main formulas that contain a goodly amount of butters along with hydrogenated PKO, I soap anywhere from 110 to 120 degreesF to prevent my batter from going into pseudo-trace before the lye reaction can kick in (which it goes into like clockwork when I soap them cooler than 110F).

If I'm soaping with beeswax, I soap even warmer: I heat my beeswax along with my hard fats until the beeswax is completely melted, which it turns out gets as hot as 200 degrees F before completely melting, then I add my liquid oils and let the mixture cool down to about 122 degrees (which is just above the point where the beeswax start to cloud up again) before I begin soaping.

For what it's worth, I soap with a 33% lye concentration and prefer my soaps to go through fell gel, and I also prefer they don't finish out with stearic spots. I've found it's hard for my 2 main formulas to go through full gel with a 33% lye concentration and finish out with no stearic spots, without soaping on the warm side.


IrishLass

 

[Kcryss]

I do hot process - so 170 to 200

 

[Rsapienza]

I want to soap at room temp, but impatience gets me every time. So far, the best I can usually manage is to use the heat transfer method. I need to try masterbatching my lye & see if that works for me.

MB lye makes all the difference. All you have to do is heat hard oils until just about clear. Usually I still have a couple clumps of lard that I just stir a little after heating to get them to melt, add my liquid oils, and that brings the temp down to right where I need it to be. I have been very surprised at the difference in performance of some FOs as far as acceleration.

 

[Relle]

RT.

 

[Deadgroovy]

Room temp here too, unless I'm using beeswax, then use lye and oils warm.