Is this rice-ing?

[simplymcghie]

I've been making soap a pretty long time and I've been lucky enough never to have experienced this before now. Is this what is called rice-ing? Is it caused by the fragrance oil not being mixed in enough? I tried out both a new recipe and a new fragrance (luckily in a small batch). Oh, and nothing is seeping or leaking. It also smells really nice, just looks bad.

Shea Butter 25%
Coconut Oil 25%
Olive Oil 31.25%
Palm Oil 18.75%

fragrance was .5 oz./lb. (Jasmine Dream by Bramble Berry)

P.S. Sorry about the low picture quality. It's getting dark where I'm at.

 

[VanessaP]

Ricing is when your FO hits your oils/batter and starts to look like specs of rice floating around. It happened to me 2 weeks ago when I used Frostbite from BC. Instant ricing. Luckily my stick blender was ready because the only review I could find on that FO was 7 years old, and yep, it riced back then too.

What kind of trace did you pour at? Could you have reached a false trace? Not sure what temp you soaped at with the shea butter in there. I'm thinking the shea, CO and PO got to more of a false trace and that those are streaks of the OO? I'm new so I'm just taking a stab in the dark Do the streaks zap?

 

[Shar]

I've had the same problem happen from soaping too cool when using a high percentage of hard oils in recipes. Looks like stearic streaks imo. were you soaping at cooler temps? your soap should be fine as long as there is no zap..

 

[simplymcghie]

I soaped in the 100-110 F range but it was a small test batch (1 lb.) so it could have cooled too quickly. I insulated it and even had it in the oven (not turned on, but warm) but I don't think it ever went through jell phase, at least I never observed it happening.

 

[vans]

My Almond-Peppermint soap looks like that as well. I soaped around 115, used titanium dioxide as colorant and milk carton as soap mold. I remember it was not warming up for a few hours but eventually it overheated. It got so hot that I had to place it beside the window to cool it down (made this in January).
I read somewhere (forgot where, maybe in this forum?) that titanium dioxide can cause it. I'm thinking both titanium dioxide and overheating might be the culprits.

 

[simplymcghie]

My Almond-Peppermint soap looks like that as well. I soaped around 115, used titanium dioxide as colorant and milk carton as soap mold. I remember it was not warming up for a few hours but eventually it overheated. It got so hot that I had to place it beside the window to cool it down (made this in January).
I read somewhere (forgot where, maybe in this forum?) that titanium dioxide can cause it. I'm thinking both titanium dioxide and overheating might be the culprits.

Hu. . . that's interesting because I did use titanium dioxide. I never considered that that could have been the culprit. . .