HP liquid soap HELP! Please!

[JayPalm]

Hi all! I’ve been making liquid castile for years now and the strangest thing happened and I’m just not sure what. Perhaps someone here will more years of experience can help me.

Yesterday I batched up my usual 10kg of pure olive castile.
Hot processed in the crock pots for the usual amount of time.
Two of the crock pots gelled to paste in the correct time by 2.5 hours. The third crock pot just reached a soft jelly/opaque/milky green consistency which showed me it was close to gel stage.

3 hours went by and it wasn’t getting to the gel consistency.
My partner came in and said ‘hey I think maybe this pot has kicked the bucket’ there isn’t as much heat in it. So we swapped the pot to the working crock base and waited another half hour - still no change.

By now it was super late and I hadn’t left work so I turned it all off and gave up.

Today I hit the hot button and started to process the now hard soap. After about an hour or so it softened to the correct consistency and got to the soft consistency. Another hour goes by and it still isn’t getting to the foamy stage where you would then expect it to start to gel.

I had to leave work and after 4 hours I’d given up.

The three crock pots full were from the one batch. Not separate batches. I can’t work out what has gone wrong.

Did I need to just give it another hour or so?

I have plenty of soap paste, should I mix it all in together with the ‘not quite there’ soap paste and stick it in the crock pots to heat up again?

I’m at a loss.
Can anyone advise?
Cheers!

 

[AliOop]

It is disconcerting when one batch behaves differently than all the others, despite the same ingredients and process. Sometimes that just happens.

Fortunately, visual appearance is mostly an indicator, and not necessarily determinative. At this point, I wouldn't worry about how the paste looks. Between all the cooking time, plus the time it was left to continue saponifying on its own (essentially cold-processing instead of hot processing), it almost certainly is "done." A quick zap-test will confirm whether there is any active lye remaining. If not, then simply proceed as normal to dilute.

You can mix it with the other batches, but I'd keep it separate. That way, you can determine if it behaves any differently during dilution.

 

[JayPalm]

It is disconcerting when one batch behaves differently than all the others, despite the same ingredients and process. Sometimes that just happens.

Fortunately, visual appearance is mostly an indicator, and not necessarily determinative. At this point, I wouldn't worry about how the paste looks. Between all the cooking time, plus the time it was left to continue saponifying on its own (essentially cold-processing instead of hot processing), it almost certainly is "done." A quick zap-test will confirm whether there is any active lye remaining. If not, then simply proceed as normal to dilute.

You can mix it with the other batches, but I'd keep it separate. That way, you can determine if it behaves any differently during dilution.

Hi AliOop!! Oh I forgot to do the zap test, but I’ll give that a go!
Thanks so much for your advise, I have the rest of the batch to dilute today and I’ll do a small bit of the paste and see if it’s all good.

In the past I’ve had soap paste look 100% and when diluted it separated with a layer of white ‘fat’ and clear green liquid soap beneath. I was concerned it would turn out in the same way.

A total loss as body wash but the soap is still good but feels harsher/drying on the skin. I now have a fair number of litres I use as floor and dish cleaner over the last few years! haha

 

[DeeAnna]

...In the past I’ve had soap paste look 100% and when diluted it separated with a layer of white ‘fat’ and clear green liquid soap beneath. I was concerned it would turn out in the same way....

You most likely got that fatty white layer on the diluted soap because the batch contained more superfat than the diluted soap could hold. It's a pretty common problem that liquid soap makers encounter. Some examples have so much excess superfat that there's more of this fatty white layer than there is actual soap.

The most common reason for that top white layer is excess fatty material. It can happen if you assume the KOH is more pure than it really is, or if you set up the recipe with a higher superfat than is reasonable for liquid soap, or if you add an acid to the soap often with the idea of neutralizing any excess KOH in the soap when there is no excess KOH to neutralize.