AnnaO
Well-Known Member
I had my first try at making beer soap yesterday, and it did not go too well.
Thankfully I made just a teeny weeny amount, as this was my first try at this recipe, and we are drowning in soap in our house at the moment anyway. (And to think I started making soap to save money!)
These were my ingredients, courtesy of soapcalc.net:
I had used some home-brewed bitter to make this soap. No water was added, just the beer. I had left the beer covered in the fridge for 24 hrs, then it was simmered in a pan, allowed to cool, then placed in the freezer until starting to turn to slush. To this I added my lye. The beer-lye mixture was passed through a sieve on adding it to the melted oils, so I know that all the lye was fully dissolved. I used no colourings, or FOs, or EOs. I stick blended until I got to a medium trace and then slopped it into the mould. The soap batter was about 1 inch deep.
2 hours after pouring, the soap surface was covered in drops of beery lye solution. The liquid in the photos is not oil, it is caustic beer!
The soap was in a cool place and did not gel.
4 hours after pouring, the caustic beer liquid had increased in amount, to form pools like this:
After 24 hours I checked the soap again. The soap itself was reasonably hard, but still swimming in a puddle of the separated out lye-beer solution. So I grated it up into a pyrex casserole dish, used some water to rinse out the remaining caustic beer from the mould, and put the lot into my oven on low, stirring every 15 minutes.
Even then the brown liquid kept trying to separate from the batch. I had to beat it with a spoon into submission several times, until it finally gave up trying! When it was no longer zappy I put it in some silicone muffin moulds to set up. (I'm not sure how long it will take to harden though, I think I may have added a little too much water, and the soap is really quite soft.)
Has anyone else had this happen with beer soap?
I know that when I simmered the beer to drive off the alcohol I left it a little longer than I planned, so what I got - and this is quite freaky :shock: - was the exact 93 g of beer liquid I needed for the recipe from the 240 g of beer I began with.
So I wonder if using this super-concentrated-essence-of-beer was the culprit??
Any advice here would be greatly appreciated, thank you!
Anna x
Thankfully I made just a teeny weeny amount, as this was my first try at this recipe, and we are drowning in soap in our house at the moment anyway. (And to think I started making soap to save money!)
These were my ingredients, courtesy of soapcalc.net:
I had used some home-brewed bitter to make this soap. No water was added, just the beer. I had left the beer covered in the fridge for 24 hrs, then it was simmered in a pan, allowed to cool, then placed in the freezer until starting to turn to slush. To this I added my lye. The beer-lye mixture was passed through a sieve on adding it to the melted oils, so I know that all the lye was fully dissolved. I used no colourings, or FOs, or EOs. I stick blended until I got to a medium trace and then slopped it into the mould. The soap batter was about 1 inch deep.
2 hours after pouring, the soap surface was covered in drops of beery lye solution. The liquid in the photos is not oil, it is caustic beer!
The soap was in a cool place and did not gel.
4 hours after pouring, the caustic beer liquid had increased in amount, to form pools like this:
After 24 hours I checked the soap again. The soap itself was reasonably hard, but still swimming in a puddle of the separated out lye-beer solution. So I grated it up into a pyrex casserole dish, used some water to rinse out the remaining caustic beer from the mould, and put the lot into my oven on low, stirring every 15 minutes.
Even then the brown liquid kept trying to separate from the batch. I had to beat it with a spoon into submission several times, until it finally gave up trying! When it was no longer zappy I put it in some silicone muffin moulds to set up. (I'm not sure how long it will take to harden though, I think I may have added a little too much water, and the soap is really quite soft.)
Has anyone else had this happen with beer soap?
I know that when I simmered the beer to drive off the alcohol I left it a little longer than I planned, so what I got - and this is quite freaky :shock: - was the exact 93 g of beer liquid I needed for the recipe from the 240 g of beer I began with.
So I wonder if using this super-concentrated-essence-of-beer was the culprit??
Any advice here would be greatly appreciated, thank you!
Anna x
