Help! Soap Extremely Hard after 12 hours

[minab]

Hi All! This is my first post as I've been a lurker for awhile and can usually find the answer to my questions with a quick search. However, I couldn't find one this time.

I made soap last night using 4.5 ounces of shortening, 15.6 ounces of CO, 11.2 ounces of OO, 5.8 ounces of cocoa butter and 5.4 ounces of shea butter. It accelerated quickly and I had to rush to finish. Now when I went to check on the loaf it was extremely hard so I went ahead and cut it. I used 30 percent water discount with half the water as buttermilk.

I got the recipe from a friend. Is it normal for it to be so hard?

Thanks in advance!

 

[seven]

i think it's normal for the soap to be hard since you were using quite a steep water discount, and the recipe is a hard one itself (with a hardness of 50-ish, which is in the high range).

 

[ocean_soul]

With all the cocoa butter and shea butter it's not too surprising it's already hard. Awhile back I made a soap with a significant amount of palm oil and cocoa butter in it, my soap also got hard pretty darn fast and it was on the brittle side when I cut it too. More recently I made a triple butter soap and yeah, it thickened up uber fast and was a bit brittle when cut.

 

[minab]

Right! It's not so much brittle as hard. Just surprising. I'm glad nothing's wrong. I do wonder how it will lather. But I'll check it out with a small piece in two days. Thanks for all your help!

 

[ocean_soul]

I'm sure the lather will be quite creamy.