My first bar soap gone wrong

[Alycia H]

Hi everyone! Merry Christmas Eve! I've been making liquid soap for awhile and yesterday I decided to try my first bar soap. Unfortunately, something has gone wrong. I used a recipe from Anne-Marie Faiolas Pure Soap Making. I made a few changes to the recipe. Her recipe calls for infusing the olive oil with chamomile tea. I did not do that. I also did half coconut milk and half water.

13.8 ounces olive oil
.8 ounces shea
.5 ounces castor
4.3 ounces of water (half coconut milk half water)
1.9 ounces lye
5% superfat

Additives
2 tsp bentonite clay mixed with 4 tbls water
2 tbls finely ground oats

The soap has little beads of liquid on top. I touched it and put it on my tongue and it is very zappy. It's only slightly oily. Hopefully you can see it in the picture. Maybe my oils were too cool? I melted them in the microwave but was unable to temp them because I do not have a working thermometer at the moment. I did freeze the coconut milk before mixing it with the lye. But maybe I didn't need to do that. It did take a lot of stick blending to reach a thin trace. Please let me know if you need any more information to help me out with this! Thank you!

 

[steffamarie]

The high amount of olive is what caused your long trace time. It tends to do that. As far as the droplets, if they don't evaporate on their own, you can absorb the liquid with paper towels and see if it comes back.

How long did you wait before zap-testing? It's possible your soap is actually just fine but weeped or sweated a little. If you wait until it's 5 days old or so and then zap test it again, on an area that's not damp, I'm thinking it should probably be ok. I've had bar soaps that got weird drops like that, but I let it absorb/evaporate for a couple days and the soap turned out ok.

As far as freezing the coconut milk, I would recommend the split method where you use 1.9oz of water to mix with your 1.9oz of lye (or a 1:1 ratio) and then the remainder of the liquid (i.e. coconut milk) you can just add directly to your oils. It's a little less hassle than freezing and mixing and making sure it doesn't heat up and stuff.

 

[Alycia H]

Great thank you! It has only been about 24 hours since I made it. So I will be patient and wait a few more days and zap test again.

 

[penelopejane]

I never zap test. If you really want to do it wait at least 3 days after making it.

The soap looks good other than the droplets which as Steffamarie says should reabsorb. Follow her advice on the split method next time.

How are you measuring rose tiny amounts on oz? It might be a good idea to convert the recipe to grams if you have a scale that does grams and oz.

 

[Alycia H]

I usually do weigh in grams but since this recipe was written the way it was and I have scale that measures ounces that way too, I just chose not to. But to be more precise, I will convert to grams in the future.

 

[penelopejane]

Particularly with small batches a few grams here and there do make a difference.