Powdered additives

[Cactuslily]

I recently started adding silk to my lye water, and have loved the results. I've made goat milk soap, freezing the milk and slowly adding to lye, and coconut soap, adding majority of fluid as the milks directly to my oils. I have some goat milk powder, as well as colloidal oatmeal. How are these best used? Do I need to reconstitute the milk and freeze? Or can I SB it into my oils? If so how much PPO? What about the colloidal oatmeal? I love the idea of using additives, or using juices in lieu of water, anything to watch out for? Also, at what point if ever, do I need to consider using something like phenonip?
As always, thanks for helping!

 

[Obsidian]

Reconstitution the milk first. You can add it however you normally add animal milk. I can't really help with amount, I just dissolve as much powder as I can into half of my water then add at trace.

The colloidal oatmeal can be added dry to the oils and blended in well or add at light trace, it mixes in easily enough. I normally always wet down my dry ingredients but some things like oatmeal and coffee grinds mix in easily without clumping.

Don't bother tasting for PH, its worthless in soap. Stick with using a zap test.

 

[Cactuslily]

Just out of curiosity, why is it not added until trace? Would it be a bad idea to add it to my oils? Not sure if it would blend. What if I took a small amount of oils and added powder to it to make a paste or slurry, then add to my oils? Have no experience with it, so I defer to you who have. Thank you!

 

[Saponista]

I tried adding powdered cows milk powder to my oils and it wouldn't mix at all. It just formed horrible clumps that ended up ruining my soap batch. I can't say the same for goats milk as I have not used it in powdered form, but now I always reconstitute milk powder before adding it to soap.

 

[Obsidian]

I add animal milk at trace so the lye is more diluted before it and the milk is combined. No reason for it really, thats just how I like to do it. You can add it to your oils just make sure to dissolve it in water first. Dry milk and oils just won't mix no matter how much you blend. Only tried it once I ended up with burned browns spots of dry milk.