My First Beer Soap - Eek what happened?!

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AnnaO

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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
 
I believe your soap is lye heavy.

I always recommend batches of about 2 lbs of oils, and this is part of the reason. Your recipe is so small, at 5% superfat it calls for 34.6 grams of lye, and at 0% sf it calls for 36.5 grams. Not a very large margin! SAP values are an average and a 240g batch is just not big enough to cover the margin for variations in oils and inaccuracies in home scales.

If I were you I would open another beer and boil off the alcohol and the carbonation, use that plus enough water to make up the liquid needed for a 750 gram batch of soap (same recipe, superfat at maybe 6%), add this soap to that batch once it comes to trace, and hot process the whole thing.

Good luck, let us know what you decide to do and how it turns out.
 
Thanks, I did wonder if that could be the case, although the re-batched soap was not zappy in the slightest once it was finished cooking. I have made small batches before, I usually do these days, and I have small lye scales that weigh to .00 of a g. But yes I could have made an error whilst weighing, and that batch was a tad too small.

To update on the rebatching - I have just checked on the soap - and it has completely separated out again - but this time into a creamy frothy whipped 'top' and beneath it, a layer of 'beer'. Neither is zappy.. but all of it is getting binned!

I'll try again at some stage, with a different beer. We usually brew our own from malt extract and hops, but this particular batch was using a beer kit that was passed to us from a friend-of-a-friend, perhaps there was some preservative in it that did not agree to soaping, I don't know and we didn't keep the label so I can't check.

I will make another batch in the future though! Hopefully that will turn out OK.

Also, I shall stick to larger batches, for the reasons stated above - thanks!
Anna x
 
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I don't think it was lye heavy, I think it overheated or perhaps you had false trace. Beer soap can gel in the refrigerator, so just because it was in a cool place, doesn't mean it wasn't trying to gel. If you get this result again, do not rinse off the soap or pour off the excess liquid - rebatch everything!

Thankfully, it was a small batch. You can try again. What I do, for what it's worth, is I add the lye to the beer, wait for it to cool down to room temperature and then blend with my oils. Generally it doesn't overheat.
 
I have no answers, but I do find your experience very interesting and am looking to learn from it. I always feel lucky when things don't go wrong, especially when working with temperamental ingredients like beer and anything with sugar. Good luck with your next batch!
 
I can't offer any advice on what went wrong...but I make quite a few beer soaps and never boil and freeze the beer first (I know a lot of people do, though). I, generally, flatten the beer in an open container of some sort in the fridge. I make sure it doesn't make any lasting bubbles when I stir it vigorously. Then I just add the lye to the cold, flat beer.
I wonder if (as you mentioned) in boiling the beer too long, it changed the structure somehow by reducing it too much? That's the only thing I can think of.
 
This is an update regarding my beer soap.

It turned out that I didn't have the heart to chuck it out, I felt kind of sorry for it just sat there all frothy and gone wrong-looking, and anyway I have a stubborn streak several miles wide.

Never being one to give up hope I rebatched the whole lot again the next day.
This time I heated the chopped-up chunks of 'frothy' soap and separated-out beery liquid in the microwave. It turned into the consistency of thick custard and I then poured it into the muffin tray. I left it in a cool place and kept my fingers crossed.
And now, the good news is, I now have soap!



I don't know why the soap at first insisted on separating.
I will try again in a few days - we have gallons of this beer! - and see if it happens again. And I will double-and-triple check everything I do, and post my results on this thread as and when.

In the meantime though, I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to all for sharing your invaluable advice and help and kindness.
Anna x
 
I don't think it was lye heavy, I think it overheated or perhaps you had false trace. Beer soap can gel in the refrigerator, so just because it was in a cool place, doesn't mean it wasn't trying to gel. If you get this result again, do not rinse off the soap or pour off the excess liquid - rebatch everything!

Thankfully, it was a small batch. You can try again. What I do, for what it's worth, is I add the lye to the beer, wait for it to cool down to room temperature and then blend with my oils. Generally it doesn't overheat.

I would 100 percent agree with Judy that it overheated. Beer is a great one for overheating due to all the sugar in beer, but may not be the only reason it overheats. All my beer soaps are put in the freezer. I put frozen beer cubes in my tall pitcher (tall in case of volcanos) and gradually sprinkle the lye over the frozen beer
 
I can't offer any advice on what went wrong...but I make quite a few beer soaps and never boil and freeze the beer first (I know a lot of people do, though). I, generally, flatten the beer in an open container of some sort in the fridge. I make sure it doesn't make any lasting bubbles when I stir it vigorously. Then I just add the lye to the cold, flat beer.
I wonder if (as you mentioned) in boiling the beer too long, it changed the structure somehow by reducing it too much? That's the only thing I can think of.

You are fortunate you never have volcanos. I have two beers I make soap with from a brewery (the soap is made for them) and not matter what I do it will volcano. Simmer, leave open in fridge for a week, freeze no matter what it stays naughty. Do not trust all beer. This is why I use a tall pitcher that can handle the volcano and have it in the sink in case it does not contain it.
 
cmzaha, what styles of beer repeatedly give you trouble? My DH makes a lot of different kinds of beer but I have only soaped his American stout and robust porter. I expect to make a lot more beer soaps over the years, though, so if there are some styles out there that are more prone to volcano, I'd appreciate the head's up! I so always use a tall pitcher for more lye water, but still...
 
You are fortunate you never have volcanos. I have two beers I make soap with from a brewery (the soap is made for them) and not matter what I do it will volcano. Simmer, leave open in fridge for a week, freeze no matter what it stays naughty. Do not trust all beer. This is why I use a tall pitcher that can handle the volcano and have it in the sink in case it does not contain it.


I'll have to keep that in mind. I've used several different beers and several different kinds and am fortunate to have never had a volcano. Fingers crossed :)
 
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