I am just wondering if there is anything like super-geling your soap? I can only think of one con and that is soap drying out. However, if you cover it well with Saran wrap to avoid water evaporation, should you worry about anything else? Thanks
Hp soap and geling
- Thread starter allane
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What would be the purpose? Once the soap goes through gel, and is not zappy it's done.
How do you mean, or what exactly do you mean by 'super-gelling'? Do you mean cooking at higher than normal heat for longer?
OldHippie
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Gel is liquid-crystalline phase that, once achieved, does not get any "better" with time. Once the soap is fully saponified, the game is over. Time to go home.
Saran wrap may not play nice at oven temperatures. The water would still evaporate, but it might condense on the wrap, run down, an make your soap wet. I just lay a sheet of parchment over the mold to minimize air movement which takes away moisture and encourages soda ash.
If this batch came out differently, is was likely for a another reason.
By "silky" do you mean the feel of the surface of the soap bar? Or do you mean that the lather is silky?
Like the others, I'm a bit skeptical that the long cook is the reason for the difference. Many people cook their HP for hours and hours, and I've not heard that the soap is any more silky (in any given sense of the word) than soap that's been cooked for a shorter time. You may want to try this again to see if you can repeat the results, and then you may be able to draw some good conclusions about why it's happening.
Thanks -- your updates are helpful to me.
The added fluidity of the hot soap was probably because you cooked enough water out of the soap to slightly change the properties of the gel. Soap in the gel stage can be more or less viscous depending on water content, fatty acid content, and temperature. It may seem counter-intuitive, but if soap is in full gel, it can be more fluid if it contains somewhat less water, all other things being equal.
People who make soap with a boiled method (or those of us who use the salting-out method of cleaning up soap) can observe this viscosity change, but I don't think people who make HP or CP soap have many opportunities to learn how the properties of gelled soap change with water content (again, all other things being equal.)
You can add fluidity if you make HP soap starting with less water and being scrupulous to prevent water evaporation around the edges of the soap while cooking it (the big downside to using less water). You don't need to cook for hours. The SMF "sous vide" soap challenge a few months back might be worth a try if you want to make a lower-water HP soap without cooking it to death or getting lots of crusty bits.
Also a finished room-temperature soap with a lower water content feels harder and denser than the same soap with more water. Do you only use a hot process method to make soap? If so, you're probably used to having a fair bit of water in your finished soap, which makes it soft and spongy. You might want to try some cold process batches with higher lye concentration (33% to 40%) to see the difference in texture that less water makes. Or make some sous vide HP batches using the same 33% to 40% lye concentration.
The added fluidity of the hot soap was probably because you cooked enough water out of the soap to slightly change the properties of the gel. Soap in the gel stage can be more or less viscous depending on water content, fatty acid content, and temperature. It may seem counter-intuitive, but if soap is in full gel, it can be more fluid if it contains somewhat less water, all other things being equal.
People who make soap with a boiled method (or those of us who use the salting-out method of cleaning up soap) can observe this viscosity change, but I don't think people who make HP or CP soap have many opportunities to learn how the properties of gelled soap change with water content (again, all other things being equal.)
You can add fluidity if you make HP soap starting with less water and being scrupulous to prevent water evaporation around the edges of the soap while cooking it (the big downside to using less water). You don't need to cook for hours. The SMF "sous vide" soap challenge a few months back might be worth a try if you want to make a lower-water HP soap without cooking it to death or getting lots of crusty bits.
Also a finished room-temperature soap with a lower water content feels harder and denser than the same soap with more water. Do you only use a hot process method to make soap? If so, you're probably used to having a fair bit of water in your finished soap, which makes it soft and spongy. You might want to try some cold process batches with higher lye concentration (33% to 40%) to see the difference in texture that less water makes. Or make some sous vide HP batches using the same 33% to 40% lye concentration.
