Freeze-Dry soap?

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Bladesmith

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Hello all,

I'm just getting started on my soapmaking journey. I've been reading and reading. I feel like I'm at the point where I know just enough to be dangerous. Planning to try my first HP batch this weekend. I read a comment about freeze-drying and it got me thinking a little (even though I don't think the comment was serious). I understand there is more happening during the cure process than just water evaporation but I'm wondering if anyone has tried to freeze-dry a freshly made soap (mostly talking about hot process here) and how that affects the curing process.

The reason I'm wondering is because I do have a freeze-dryer for other reasons and I thought it might be a cool experiment to throw a bar in and see what happens. I'll probably throw in a bar from this weekend's batch just for fun. Anyone try this before?

Cody
 
The freeze-dryer removes all the water from anything you put in it.

I made 2 batches of hot process soap this past weekend. My first soap! I've taken 2 of the bars and put them in the dryer. I weighed them ahead of time and going to weigh them when they get out. I'll have more results in a few hours when I can pull them out.

Should be interesting to see how the soap behaves.

20190415_150327-2016x1134.jpg


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I am amazed that you have a freeze-dryer. But, then you'd probably be amazed I have an Ozone machine.

So I was curious about a Freeze Drying machine for home use and found this video. It's really quite interesting. But not inexpensive.



I am really looking forward to your reports on the freeze drying process with soap. I hope you used a liner to prevent the soap touching the metal surface of the tray while inside the machine. (Or perhaps the trays are Stainless Steel?)
 
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I did put them on the parchment. The picture above is how I put them in the machine. I do own one of the harvest rights. I have some dietary restrictions and it makes it easier if I can have some ready-made meals if I travel or whatever. But the trays are stainless.

Even though it was about -40F in the machine, the soap felt room temp which (at least when dealing with food) usually means there's no water left in it. The bars I put in developed some odd stuff that looks sort of like some cracks? Both of the bars lost right at 5% total weight. They don't seem noticeably harder than the others though. I am interested to see how they it ages compared to the others.

Below, you can see the 2 bars that I pulled out of the dryer on the left, and a regular 2-day old bar on the right.

soap1.jpg


And here's a more close-up of the "cracks" that developed. The surface is almost a little wavy now
soap2.jpg
 
I am not surprised it developed those cracks. In the videos I watched where the guy was dehydrating eggs, it looked like those kinds of cracks developed, too. What I was wondering about this process was if it would make the soap brittle or easily turned into powder like it did with some of the foods I saw being dehydrated on those videos.

It's cool that you have this machine for food dehydration. It sounds like a great thing to have in your kitchen. I'd sure love to be able to dehydrate food for travel and snacks, etc. But boy, it's not cheap, is it?
 
Nope, Freeze Dryers are not cheap. I had a bug to get one several years ago and changed my mind at the cost. Go figure I could have afforded it before retirement, but still would not pay the price.
 
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