HP Cook Took Forever

[Nate5700]

Hello again all. Friday night I did my "second" HP batch (I use quotes because it was my first batch that was done properly and wasn't a complete disaster, see my previous thread for details).

Everything went pretty much as expected, except that it took 3 hours to reach the "mashed potato" stage. I've read people saying they can HP in 30 minutes or less, but an hour to an hour and a half seems to be "average" from what I've seen.

So why did it take so long? Here are my "best guesses".

1. I stirred too much. Someone told me I should check on the cook every 5 minutes, which I did faithfully. But I stirred almost every time I checked. Could be that I wasn't letting it get up to temperature by stirring so much?

2. Lard. I think I may have read somewhere that lard takes a long time to saponify. Is this true? If so, would you still expect it to take that long?

3. My Crock Pot. Maybe it just cooks pretty low. I'd be somewhat surprised if this is the case since it got pretty hot on high (leading to my previous disaster). But maybe when they say "low" and "high" they mean, well, "low" and "high".

Anyway, let me know if you think I'm on the right track here. Any other ideas?

 

[lsg]

What was your recipe?

 

[Nate5700]

What was your recipe?

Yeah, I guess that would be important information wouldn't it. This is for a shaving soap:

6.5 oz Coconut Oil (41.9%)
6.5 oz Lard (41.9%)
1.7 oz Stearic Acid (11%)
0.8 oz Shea Butter (5.2%)
0.8 oz Powdered Goat Milk
1.3 oz Glycerin
2.6 oz KOH/0.4 oz NaOH (6.9% Discount)
6.4 oz Water

 

[DawninWA]

It's probably the temp of the crock pot. I hot process in a big stainless steel bowl on a hot plate, uncovered and stirring often. It's done in 20 - 30 minutes. The thicker the trace you can get it to, the faster it cooks.

 

[Nate5700]

It's probably the temp of the crock pot. I hot process in a big stainless steel bowl on a hot plate, uncovered and stirring often. It's done in 20 - 30 minutes. The thicker the trace you can get it to, the faster it cooks.

Interesting. I have a stainless steel cooking pot that I've designated as my soaping pot. When I do CP I do my mixing in that. Certainly I could use that on the stove to do HP. What setting do you use on the hot plate? I want to get it done faster but I definitely want to avoid the overheating I had when I tried it in the Crock Pot on "high". Now that I think about it, I wonder if I could use "high" on the Crock Pot but leave it uncovered with frequent checking and stirring. I covered it, both on the first failed attempt on "high" and on the second attempt on "low".

Do you ever notice a difference depending on what oils or ingredients you use?

 

[shunt2011]

@Nate5700 - You do not want to leave your HP uncovered. Your liquid will evaporate and make very dry crumbly soap. Try using your crock pot on low. Heat your oils on high then lower the temp.

 

[Nate5700]

Try using your crock pot on low. Heat your oils on high then lower the temp.

This is precisely what I did that resulted in the 3 hour cook time. If that's normal than I'm fine to do it that way, it just sounds like people have been able to achieve much faster cook times than that, so I'm wondering if I did something "wrong", or at least different than what people typically do.

 

[shunt2011]

It should never take 3 hours. Mind you, I've only done shave soap and liquid soap HP but it never takes that long. I'd give up if it did. Must be something wrong....

 

[Andrew]

the great thing about this being a shaving soap recipe is that your soap will not crack, crumble or be ruined if it were a bar soap. After you pack it in the bowl, it will just take a bit more water to lather. leave covered for a couple hours and it should be done since shaving soaps really don't take long at all to saponify.

 

[Nate5700]

@shunt2011 My working hypothesis is that I opened it up to stir too frequently and that caused it to take longer to heat to the proper temperature. I took some advice in the other thread to check every 5 minutes. And the tutorials I had read all said "stir frequently" but never really said how frequently. So I ended up stirring...well, every 5 minutes, whenever I checked. In retrospect I probably should have checked every 5 minutes but only stirred at 10 or 15 minute intervals.

I guess I said "I'm fine to do it that way" in my previous post, but spending 3 hours stirring something every 5 minutes got pretty old. It's not something I'd do every day...

 

[Andrew]

stir every hour. Everytime you open up the crop pot it takes 15 minutes to get back up to temperature. that should solve the issue. and feel free to shoot me a PM if you got any shaving soap questions. I make the stuff for a living.

 

[DeeAnna]

What criteria are you using to determine when your soap is done? Are you only looking for a visual cue -- the "mashed potato" stage you mention? Do you have other ways of determining whether saponification is complete? If so, what are they?

 

[Nate5700]

@DeeAnna I was planning on doing a "zap test" on the tongue, but once it got to be 11:30 PM I decided that I was going to stop at "mashed potato" since I just wanted to go to bed at that point. Is there a better way you'd recommend?

 

[earlene]

Yeah, I guess that would be important information wouldn't it. This is for a shaving soap:

6.5 oz Coconut Oil (41.9%)
6.5 oz Lard (41.9%)
1.7 oz Stearic Acid (11%)
0.8 oz Shea Butter (5.2%)
0.8 oz Powdered Goat Milk
1.3 oz Glycerin
2.6 oz KOH/0.4 oz NaOH (6.9% Discount)
6.4 oz Water

I have been trying to duplicate your recipe in Soapee to get those same lye amounts and can't seem to manage it. Are you sure that's the correct recipe you listed above?

The closest I can come to it is I set the lye concentration to 28%, the SF to -15 (!) and the KOH purity to 100% and the KOH:NaOH ratio to 10:90. It's close, but for some reason I don't see you as having chosen such a high negative SF (-15), so I am puzzled.

The only reason I even tried to duplicate it in Soapee is because I was wondering if your water + glycerin amount was too high or too low.

The only time I've used too much glycerin in soap, the soap never got hard. It remains pliable to this day (about 2-3 year later, now - I still have some bars I didn't send to the re-batch set.) But it wasn't an HP soap, so not really any help in comparing what could have gone wrong for you.

Some HP soapers have said that they don't always see all the stages, so when they think the soap should be done, they do a zap test and if it passes, then mold the soap. I wonder if your soap was so fluid because of the glycerin, that you didn't visually see when it was at the stage of saponification completion. Just a thought, based on what DeeAnna mentioned above.

 

[Nate5700]

I have been trying to duplicate your recipe in Soapee to get those same lye amounts and can't seem to manage it. Are you sure that's the correct recipe you listed above?

The closest I can come to it is I set the lye concentration to 28%, the SF to -15 (!) and the KOH purity to 100% and the KOH:NaOH ratio to 10:90. It's close, but for some reason I don't see you as having chosen such a high negative SF (-15), so I am puzzled.

Pretty sure that's the right one. I used the SoapMaker program to calculate the lye amounts, never used Soapee. Maybe you have KOH and NaOH backward? You say "KOH:NaOH 10:90" but I'm doing 6.5 to 1 the other way around. More KOH than NaOH.

The only reason I even tried to duplicate it in Soapee is because I was wondering if your water + glycerin amount was too high or too low.

The only time I've used too much glycerin in soap, the soap never got hard. It remains pliable to this day (about 2-3 year later, now - I still have some bars I didn't send to the re-batch set.) But it wasn't an HP soap, so not really any help in comparing what could have gone wrong for you.

It's a shave soap so I wasn't going for a hard bar at all. It's kind of a dough, but sticky, so we'll call it a very thick paste. I put it in jars and just rub the top of it with a damp brush to lather it up.

I wonder if your soap was so fluid because of the glycerin, that you didn't visually see when it was at the stage of saponification completion.

It's possible. It was translucent with a "Vaseline" consistency (what I understand to be the "gel" phase) for a long time. Can saponification be complete and it still be in "gel" status?

 

[DeeAnna]

"...Can saponification be complete and it still be in "gel" status?..."

Yes, it most certainly can be a finished soap and still be in the gel phase.

Gel is merely a physical state (like solid, liquid, gas are physical states) that soap can take. Gel phase merely means is the soap is sufficiently warm and contains sufficient water so the soap becomes a thick but flowable paste. Soap in gel might be translucent, but it might not be, depending on the fatty acids involved.

If you keep cooking the soap in a crock pot, it won't change phase until you do one of two things -- you either stop keeping it hot enough or you cook enough water out of the soap. Or both.

You can't blindly use the visual cue of gel or the lack of gel as an indication of anything if you don't have the experience to properly interpret what you're seeing. Frankly, the vaseline stage, mashed potato stage, and all that are over-rated. People trying to see all these visual changes and stages is a common reason for frustration and for dry overcooked soap.

You don't have to see the soap go through all the "proper" visual cues to have a fully saponified soap. The zap test is the sure sign that the soap is done and it only takes a minute, tops, to do.

 

[Nate5700]

Yes, it most certainly can be a finished soap and still be in the gel phase.

...

If you keep cooking the soap in a crock pot for hours on end, the soap can be fully saponified but remain in the gel state. It won't change phase until you do one of two things -- you either stop heating it or you cook enough water out of the soap.

Reading this made the light bulb appear over my head, complete with the ding sound, just like in cartoons.

SO...it changed state to "mashed potatoes" presumably because I had finally cooked enough water out of the soap. That actually may be a good thing in this case because the soap ended up being the consistency that I wanted. (I was going for "harder than cream" this time since this version has a higher oleic content, if it had come out as more of a liquid we'd be back to our conversation about oleic soap separating from stearic soap...)

The solution, then, would be to back off the water still more and do a zap test to verify completion. Here I was thinking that you couldn't do the zap test until you were at "mashed potatoes". That's why I kept waiting to do it and eventually decided to skip it. I stayed up until midnight and the soap was probably done by 9:30. Argh.

 

[earlene]

Pretty sure that's the right one. I used the SoapMaker program to calculate the lye amounts, never used Soapee. Maybe you have KOH and NaOH backward? You say "KOH:NaOH 10:90" but I'm doing 6.5 to 1 the other way around. More KOH than NaOH.

Okay, I read the KOH & NaOH backwards, now it makes more sense. So it's 85% KOH rather than 10% KOH (which is what the 10:90 koh:NaOH means in percentages.) By reversing it to 82% KOH & 18% NaOH with a SF of 7%, and 28% Lye Concentration I am able to duplicate your recipe in Soapee. So now i get it. A soft soap, which you don't dilute.

And as DeeAnna already explained, you just expected the visual cue because it doesn't always happen as described.

 

[IrishLass]

Ditto all that DeeAnna said^^^.

I make my dual lye HP shave soap in the oven in a covered stainless steel pot @ 180F. It normally takes about 1 hour to saponify to tongue-neutralness in the oven for me.

Once I've put it in the oven, I check on it in 30 minutes by stirring it and taking a small sample out to test for lather under running water. If it lathers, I zap test it. If it doesn't lather, I cook for about 20 to 30 minutes more and check again, repeating if necessary until it does (for me, it hasn't been necessary to repeat beyond an hour of cooking for it to lather). Once it tests tongue neutral, I pour/glop.


IrishLass

 

[Nate5700]

Once I've put it in the oven, I check on it in 30 minutes by stirring it and taking a small sample out to test for lather under running water. If it lathers, I zap test it. If it doesn't lather, I cook for about 20 to 30 minutes more and check again, repeating if necessary until it does (for me, it hasn't been necessary to repeat beyond an hour of cooking for it to lather). Once it tests tongue neutral, I pour/glop.

This sounds like a more reasonable and thorough process than what I was doing...("Does it look like mashed potatoes yet? I'm not sure, give it another 5 minutes..."). I'll definitely follow this next time, whenever that may be. My soap turned out fine as far as I can tell, I've shaved 3 times with it and my face has not melted off, so it looks like I've got plenty of shave soap for the time being unless I start giving some away.

I think we've solved this one, thanks all for your help.