Oops!

[Steven]

So I finally got around to making my next batch!

The good news - no soda ash and the color of the bar is uniform (not sure if I fully gelled or didn't gel at all haha)!

The bad news - I used the wrong amount of sodium hydroxide. The original recipe called for 52g of NaOH. I used 54g. I was aiming for a 6% superfat and 33% lye concentration but after tweaking my soapee recipe it appears I actually ended up with a 2.7% superfat and 35% lye concentration.

A few questions from this attempt to my fellow soap makers:

1) Do I need to worry about the sizeable drop in superfat %? It's much less than I wanted to start with.
2) When I mixed the oils I just used a hot water bath to melt the coconut and shea butter before adding to my other oils. I didn't wait for the lye to cool down much. Everything seemed to go okay, but is this something I should avoid in the future? Are there cases where not paying attention to the temperature could cause a problem?

S

 

[BattleGnome]

In order:

1) you shouldn’t have to worry as long as your measurements are (otherwise) correct. There are people who routinely use a 2% or even 0% super fat. If you’re worried let the soap cure extra long to let the excess react with the air. The only issue would be your recipe and the reason you would want a 6% super fat. Are you trying to offset coconut or another cleansing oil? Test it after a standard cure and see how you feel

2) what you did is called the heat transfer method. In a recipe low in hard oils you dont need to heat anything and the lye water will do it all for you. People have varying success with heat transfer but that usually depends on the amount of hard oils in your recipe.

 

[Steven]

Battlegnome,
Appreciate the feedback!

1) The recipe only has a small amount of coconut oil so it's not too cleansing (a 7 for cleansing on soapcalc). I've read that using a higher lye concentration for oil that is high in unsaturated fat (soft oils) is good, I just didn't plan on going as high as 35%. I was also hoping to start my recipe at 6% and then go up or down from there. Doesn't matter too much I suppose. I've found that even with a 40 OO, 20 CO, 20 PO bar my skin is a bit dry/itchy after using it so just trying to find out what works best for me.

2) My recipe is low in hard oils so I suppose I got lucky. I've read here about people soaping at room temp. I don't quite understand how you can do that with hard oils in your recipe - are folks using this heat transfer method to make it work? It took a lot to get my palm oil to liquify? I imagine they use a lye solution they've already made and the soft oils both at room temp but how are hard oils managed?

3) My soap set up pretty quickly and was ready to cut the next day. I understand that soaps low in hard oils (one recipe has only 10 CO and 10 Shea the rest are soft oils) require a longer cure but this thing was fairly solid out of the gate. Any calculations for determining cure time out there?

S

 

[cmzaha]

I think you will be glad you actually used a 2.7% superfat instead of 6%, with such low CO. I always found a low cleansing number with a 5% or higher just did not rinse of clean. I hate feeling oil after showering. I always use low superfat from 2-3% depending on the cleansing number with the only exception salt bars with I superfat at 16%. I do like my bars to cure 2-3 months min.

As for room temp, you used room temp lye and heat hard oils only until clear. It works very well

 

[BattleGnome]

There are no cure time calculators that I know of, I think it would take more science than most people are willing to do to have an accurate one.

The absolute minimum cure time I’ve ever heard someone suggest is 3 weeks. 4 weeks is much more standard with many people advocating longer. I recently started using some soap that was “meh” at best when it was “freshly cured” but 2 years later is now very nice and the skin feel I was going for. You’ll have to test your recipes to find what works for you

 

[earlene]

Battlegnome,
Appreciate the feedback!

1) The recipe only has a small amount of coconut oil so it's not too cleansing (a 7 for cleansing on soapcalc). I've read that using a higher lye concentration for oil that is high in unsaturated fat (soft oils) is good, I just didn't plan on going as high as 35%. I was also hoping to start my recipe at 6% and then go up or down from there. Doesn't matter too much I suppose. I've found that even with a 40 OO, 20 CO, 20 PO bar my skin is a bit dry/itchy after using it so just trying to find out what works best for me.

2) My recipe is low in hard oils so I suppose I got lucky. I've read here about people soaping at room temp. I don't quite understand how you can do that with hard oils in your recipe - are folks using this heat transfer method to make it work? It took a lot to get my palm oil to liquify? I imagine they use a lye solution they've already made and the soft oils both at room temp but how are hard oils managed?

3) My soap set up pretty quickly and was ready to cut the next day. I understand that soaps low in hard oils (one recipe has only 10 CO and 10 Shea the rest are soft oils) require a longer cure but this thing was fairly solid out of the gate. Any calculations for determining cure time out there?

S

It might help to read this so you have a more technical understanding of what cure entails: https://classicbells.com/soap/cure.html

Particularly notice the part about developing the crystalline structure, not the graph that looks at water weight loss.

Also in regards to using young soap (I don't know for sure that you did, but gather as much), I find that new soap or soap that is still quite young to be too harsh, but that same soap after a good cure can be quite nice, mild and often feel pretty wonderful to my skin. So I have learned I cannot know if a recipe will be a great feeling soap for my skin until it cures sufficiently. Soap I have thought I should toss out at 3 weeks can be pretty nice. But it still depends on the actual recipe, as some recipes just don't improve enough over time to feel so great on my skin.

Also without knowing your actual recipe for the soap that you feel was so hard out of the gate, it's hard for folks to respond to the specifics of that particular soap.

 

[Steven]

@cmzaha & @BattleGnome your comments about cure time have resonated with me. The first recipe I made was 40 OO, 20 CO, and 20 PO. Four weeks into the cure it wasn't great, but now it is pretty nice! I'm going to see if my 30/30/30/10 ends up being milder too. Interesting how much a bar can change!

@earlene thank you for the link. That was a very interesting read! I'm also learning that my idea of what hard soap means and feels like maybe slightly different now that it was a few months ago. The more I make the more I understand. I would say that it was really hard out of the gate, but it was harder than I expected based on what I've read. I was originally going to add salt to the water for this bar but decided to try it without the frills first. I'm glad I did.