lye water cooling super fast

[kathleen]

I made a batch of orange/mocha CP yesterday, and followed instructions to make as 2 batches. You use room temp 2x coffee in place of water for the mocha portion. When I added my lye to it, it didn't get as hot as the water portion, and when I added it to the oils was very slow to come to trace. It was a stressful batch all around...I did the "orange" lye portion first and all was normal, then the mocha...The mocha lye cooled faster than the oils and when I added the EO to the "orange" portion it immediately went to heavy trace, and I had to spoon it out. When I add the "mocha" to the top in the mold there was no way I could incorporate the 2...What did I do wrong ??? I'm on my 10th batch so still new at this...thanks

 

[DeeAnna]

You need to give us the whole story -- ALL ingredients in the WEIGHTS you actually used. Method. Everything that you did to make this soap.

You've made an assumption of what went wrong and based your explanation on that assumption, but this may or may not be the correct interpretation.

 

[Arimara]

When Asking for help, you have to give us the recipe in weights that you used (I hope you are in the habit of writing everything down as you're making your soap it will really help you in the long run) as well as the process of how you made the soap. If you took temps, give that as well as it can help us help you.

Question- did you run this recipe through a soap calculator BEFORE making this soap?

 

[kathleen]

I did run through a calculator, and both batches were 6% superfat. After adding the lye to coffee the temp only went to 145..and then quickly cooled.

Sorry did not record other temps. I am keeping a print out of all lye (MMS) calculator "recipes" and make notes on each batch. Thanks for feedback, I'll pull out the sheet and scan.

 

[shunt2011]

Again, your entire recipe as well as your procedure will help to troubleshoot. Without more information we can't help. It doesn't matter what your lye temp is when making soap. However, your recipe can affect everything as well as how hot/cold you soaped, any additives etc.

 

[dixiedragon]

I'm a bit confused about your description of what happened. The mocha portion - did your lye completely dissolve? Was there a cake of un-dissolved lye stuck to the bottom of your pitcher? You said when you added the mocha soap to the top you couldn't incorporate the 2 - why not?

In my experience, orange EO can slow down, even reverse trace, and the soap takes much longer to be firm enough to cut. Could that be what happened?