Let's talk about BEER soap

[Galaxy]

I've been making CP soap for a couple years and recently have started making soap with beer.

My basic recipe is:

50% OO
20% Coconut
23% Palm
5% Castor
2% Shea butter

No FO/EO, no color.


I boil the beer to remove as much alcohol as possible and also remove dissolved CO2, then I freeze into cubes or at least refrigerate the beer before using it.

I've made beer soap with light lager (3.2%ABV) and it turns out great, probably because after boiling it's almost completely water.

A couple times I have made beer soap with imperial stout (10%ABV), and here is what happens:

Soaping at 100F. I'm replacing 100% of the water with beer. I mix the lye/beer solution with the oils and begin to stir, the mix almost immediately begins to thicken. Within 30 seconds it resembles thick applesauce. I'm stirring madly trying to get everything incorporated. After a couple minutes of mad stirring, I spoon the thick mixture into my mold and pack it down.

It accelerates so fast, that I think if I soaped cool enough to slow it down, I would get false trace from my coconut oil thickening.

My next move is to cut the beer 50% with distilled water but then I will probably have to add some colorant/FO to make up the difference.

By the way, the stout soap looked a little rough (almost like HP) but after a month of curing, it was one of my favorite soaps.


Thoughts?

 

[lsg]

I don't boil the bear. I let it set out, opened, for a couple of days and then freeze it. I use beer as 100% of the liquid for the lye solution.

 

[Galaxy]

I don't boil the bear. I let it set out, opened, for a couple of days and then freeze it. I use beer as 100% of the liquid for the lye solution.

I was concerned that for a high gravity beer, the alcohol won't react with the lye and I would basically have a water discount...

 

[jcandleattic]

As lsg, I also do not boil my beer. I put salt in it to make it go flat (1/2 tsp per can - so per 12 fl oz) then freeze. Soap with frozen beer as I would if it were frozen milk. Never a problem. It does get thicker, but never too thick to work with, and never seizes (unless I use the wrong FO) I've soaped with 12% abv before, same results, just thicker, but nothing unmanageable.

 

[Obsidian]

I'm the exact opposite. I boil my beer down to 2 oz and add that directly to my oils, use water for the rest of my liquid. This way I don't have to fool around with frozen beer or mixing the lye into the beer, which stinks wy too much for my liking.
I've never had acceleration this way or overheating. Perfectly behaved soap that looks really nice.

I generally use a 16 oz bottle of double chocolate stout for a 2 lb batch. The color comes out a nice caramel.

 

[dibbles]

I do the same as Obsidian. In fact, it may very well be her method I followed the first time I tried making a beer soap. It may speed up a bit, but nowhere near unmanageable. Usually I end up with a nice caramel color. Black Toad Ale made a darker brown.

 

[mx5inpenn]

I also do as obsidian does. Except I use half the water amount.

 

[BrewerGeorge]

Imperial stout is a very broad category. Can you tell me which brand, exactly?

 

[Galaxy]

Imperial stout is a very broad category. Can you tell me which brand, exactly?

It's a local craft brewery, Actual Brewing in Columbus, OH.

 

[BrewerGeorge]

It's a local craft brewery, Actual Brewing in Columbus, OH.

Well that doesn't help. :mrgreen:

Just trying to get a better idea of what might be inside it. Failing that, the only thing I would guess would be that you didn't get all the alcohol out and that caused the seizing.

 

[Galaxy]

Well that doesn't help. :mrgreen:

Just trying to get a better idea of what might be inside it. Failing that, the only thing I would guess would be that you didn't get all the alcohol out and that caused the seizing.

The first time I didn't boil at all, just froze it. Seized up right away.

The second time I boiled for a good 5 minutes, then refrigerated overnight before using. Seized up right away. Since ethanol boils at like 120F, I'm pretty confident I boiled off most of the alcohol (there will always be some that remains).

I did make another batch yesterday with 30% boiled stout and 70% distilled water and it was much better, although it still accelerated a bit, it was much more manageable.

 

[BrewerGeorge]

Ethanol boils at around 173F, give or take depending on how 'clean' the fermentation was.

With a 10% beer, you need to lose at least 10% of the original volume to get the ethanol out.

A good way to do this is by monitoring temperature during the boil. Use a leave-in thermometer like for candy or meat. Apply a medium heat. You'll see temp rise linearly until it gets to around that 173F mark where it should start to boil. The temp will level out and stay right around 173F while all the ethanol boils away. After that, it should stop boiling (or at least drop to nucleate boiling) while temperature rises to the boiling point of the remaining beer - something probably north of 210F. The dissolved CO2 will complicate recognizing the boiling of each stage, so I would let it sit and offgas for a day or two before trying the procedure above.

Finally, while that is a fun bit of science, you can achieve the same end result without all that fuss by just boiling it until it's reduced past 10%