Lye Masterbatch: Storage/Dosage Ideas

[AliOop]

Yup, definitely not enough lye then. If you use soapmakingfriend, and you mark YES for the masterbatched lye option, the final printout will tell you how much MB solution to use, and how much additional liquid to add (based on the lye concentration you choose).

 

[DianaMoon]

@DianaMoon if you mean that you saw how much water your recipe needed, and you took that exact amount from your master batch, then yes, you used less lye than the recipe called for and that would explain the soaps being soft the next day.
To calculate how much less lye you added, you could play with the recipe in a soap calculator, adusting the superfat % amount, to see at what percentage you get the same total weight of lye and water. Not sure if I am explaining this right…

LOL, that's a bit too complicated for me. I'll just chalk it up to experience and learn my lesson. I added only the water amount of this recipe:

When I should have added the water AND the lye, right? I'm not sure what I was thinking. (I probably wasn't thinking)

In effect, I did an experiment in super-superfatting. And it proves that a water discount by itself won't result in a harder bar if there isn't enough lye to saponify the oils.

 

[TheGecko]

This is nagging at me. I added only the amount of water to the oils, not the lye and the water. I think I ended up with something that had less lye than it should have. What do you think?

Yeah...think massive SuperFat...what you have is a little bit of soap with a lot of unsaponified oil. I'd just toss it as lesson learned.

 

[cmzaha]

With my brain I always found 50/50 masterbatch so much easier to work with. I just knew I had 50% water and 50% lye so my solution was then doubled when using my recipe from soapcalc and I added in the remainder liquid. I just never could wrap my brain around using a 33% masterbatch solution plus the 50/50 worked for any lye concentration I wanted to use in a recipe.

 

[DianaMoon]

With my brain I always found 50/50 masterbatch so much easier to work with. I just knew I had 50% water and 50% lye so my solution was then doubled when using my recipe from soapcalc and I added in the remainder liquid. I just never could wrap my brain around using a 33% masterbatch solution plus the 50/50 worked for any lye concentration I wanted to use in a recipe.

The 50/50 masterbatch confuses me. It's one of those things that I will have to work through bit by bit.

Yes, this was a learning experience. Just hope some noob sees it and gains from my mistake.

 

[The_Phoenix]

The 50/50 masterbatch confuses me. It's one of those things that I will have to work through bit by bit.

Yes, this was a learning experience. Just hope some noob sees it and gains from my mistake.

If your goal is to make a 100 gram lye solution using 50/50, then you would have 50 grams of water and 50 grams of lye. I make a large batch of lye solution, starting with 2,000 grams of water. I then weigh out the same weight of lye (2,000 grams) and add that to the water. While I understand 50/50, some people better understand it in ratios: 1:1. Basically, 50/50 = 1:1