Hot Process and Bees Wax

golden_seal · Oct 29, 2015

Yesterday I made some goats milk soap and added some beeswax to it and it came out almost swirled. Is that from the beeswax? I also noticed I had more air bubbles in the soap due to the fact that it thickened so fast with the bees wax.I slammed the mild down quite a few times in an attempted to get all air bubbles out but apparently it didn't completely work.

Here is a picture of one of the bars. Ignore the line, it's from the knife use to cut the bars. It's peppermint goats milk soap.

IrishLass · Oct 29, 2015

How much beeswax did you use and how did you incorporate it? Beeswax is one of those additives that can be troublesome if certain protocols are not followed (i.e., it needs the right amount of heat to stay incorporated and not precipitate out).

For what it's worth, I recently made a soap with 3% beeswax that came out great. I heated it along with my hard fats to 200F, then I took the pot off the heat and added in my liquid oils and FO, and then let things slowly cool down to the point that it started clouding up (which means the beeswax was precipitating out of melted suspension). My temp at this point was between 117F-119F. I put the pot back on the heat until the cloudiness went way (i.e., beeswax back in melted suspension), which happened to be 122F. It was at that point that I removed the pot from the heat and added my lye solution (which was at 114F), and soaped away. It soaped great- everything stayed in suspension and the soap came out beautiful with everything evenly distributed.

I highly suspect that your temps may have been too low for the beeswax to remain in melted suspension long enough for the heat reaction of the lye solution to kick in and do its thing.

IrishLass

golden_seal · Oct 29, 2015

I use my oven for making soap and it's at around 180. I know I used WAY too much beeswax, haha. I just kind of did it and I actually put 13% and for my next recipe it's sitting at 3%. I had been making soaps for several years but haven't really strayed from my original recipe. I didn't realize it might be too much until I came on here and started reading.

Admittedly I haven't made soap in about 2 years this came out way darker than usual. I feel like I'm starting from scratch again.

IrishLass · Oct 29, 2015

Silly me- I overlooked that you were HPing it. lol

In that case, the temp should've been hot enough, but wow- 13% is a lot of beeswax! Did you melt it with your hard fats or did you melt it separately and try to add it in after the cook?

IrishLass

golden_seal · Oct 29, 2015

I melted everything except the shea butter together (I add that just before pouring into molds). Then just popped it into the oven in my pot and stirred every 10-20 minutes.

I found that it made the soap thicker before it was even close to being ready. It was definitely different and I worried through the whole process, lol. Apart from the swirling it seems to be okay. I need to wait a little bit longer to find out how it performs as a soap. I'm not selling so it's not a massive issue that it didn't turn out perfect. As long as it's usable.

I got my husband to drop by the soap supply store close to me on his lunch break to pick up titanium dioxide to lighten the soap some and I will be making another batch this evening with the 3% bees wax. I guess I will find out then if it was the bees wax or something else I did.

penelopejane · Oct 31, 2015

I actually really like the golden colour.

golden_seal · Nov 3, 2015

So I made two different soaps, one with 3% and one with the 14%. I found the one with 14% quite slimy.. I did also have a high amount of castor oil (as did the second recipe) but I had distributed the extra % evenly throughout the oils for the 3% and it's not slimy at all. It's a much better soap IMO. Another interesting thing is the one with higher bees wax is actually softer somehow... Anyways that was my experience between the two. I have another recipe I'm going to try with a smaller amount of castor too. See how that turns out.