Liquid oozing out of wine soap

[Anstarx]

I made a batch of wine soap 2 nights ago. It was made with cooked wine, full water (1:2.3). It has lots of soft oil but traced pretty fast, literally 3 bursts and some stirring after it's already a thin trace. I have my sodium lactate, FOs, red clay mixed with water in one beaker and stir it in right after it reached thin trace, mixed using a spatuala and it already reached medium trace when I poured into a single cavity mold.

I checked it yesterday and noticed beads of liquid oozing out of my soap cubes. That never happened to be me before so even though I think I know the cause, I'm not entirely sure. The internet isn't working in my house today so I can't upload a photo, but imagine burgundy soaps cubes with droplets of burgundy liquid where the soaps touch the mold. I let it sit for another but none was absorbed back in. Wiped the liquid with paper and it's brown color, similiar to the lye water. I touched it with my finger, no zap, very faint FO smell, and I was able to wash it off with just water.

The FOs are tested with a test batch before without any problem. The recipe is new but I basically swapped avocado oil with apricot kernel oil with a recipe I used before. All I can think is that the extra water I used to soak the clay in was too much for the full water and therefore oozed out. Any thoughts?

 

[Louise Taylor]

Did you find what this was in the end? I too have oozing wine soap. I had thought that maybe I hadn't boiled the wine for long enough and this was the alcohol that was not saponified.

 

[Anstarx]

Did you find what this was in the end? I too have oozing wine soap. I had thought that maybe I hadn't boiled the wine for long enough and this was the alcohol that was not saponified.

Alcohol is not a fat so it won't saponify. Having alcohol in your soap batter will also seize the batch. I figured it's just I used too much liquid as my soap shrank a little during curing. The soaps didn't ooze once I wiped the surface clean.

 

[Todd Ziegler]

Alcohol is not a fat so it won't saponify. Having alcohol in your soap batter will also seize the batch. I figured it's just I used too much liquid as my soap shrank a little during curing. The soaps didn't ooze once I wiped the surface clean.

It probably is your FO sweating out. If it's the FO it will absorb back in as the soap cures. I've had this happen before and it is no big deal. If it doesn't absorb back in after a few days, then just dab it off with some paper towels.

 

[Louise Taylor]

It probably is your FO sweating out.

It is not FO in my case as I don't use any but good to know for if/when I do

Alcohol is not a fat so it won't saponify

This is why I tried to boil out all the alcohol. I thought maybe I hadn't boiled it enough. Glad you figured it out though.

Today I bought some dealcoholized wine. I am going to try a test batch using that and see if it makes a difference.

 

[Anstarx]

It probably is your FO sweating out. If it's the FO it will absorb back in as the soap cures. I've had this happen before and it is no big deal. If it doesn't absorb back in after a few days, then just dab it off with some paper towels.

Oh indeed! I forgot to include this possibility. I recently had a batch of FO oozing that got absorbed back after one day of air drying. It was fine but left some brown spot on the surface. Darn you blueberry FO