room temp/acceleration questions

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Guspuppy

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I want to make a soap with lily of the valley FO from BB and can't see anything in the reviews about acceleration. Has anyone used it and what was your experience?

I figured I ought to soap cooler anyway just to be on the safe side and have been reading that some people soap at room temp, or at least leave their lye out overnight so it at least is room temp. My house is very cold, I turn the thermostat down to 61F at night. If I use cold lye water in warm (say, 90-100F) soap batter, is that going to be a problem? I know CO won't re-harden until 76F but what about butters? I haven't decided on a recipe yet, but thought I'd ask before trying to figure one up.

Also for cooler soap/less acceleration do I want a higher or lower lye concentration? I've been using soapcalc's standard 38% water, (in my whole 3 batches of experience, lol) but after reading much on here I think I want to switch to lye% instead and my head is so full of reading I'm not sure what to do! :-?

Thanks for ANY help!!
 
Most florals will accelerate. It's the nature of the beast. My Lily of the Valley does but its not from BB. I soap cooler (cold lye/ warm oils is fine). As long as you don't have a lot of hard oils it should work fine. If you plan on coloring more than 1 color I would blend to emulsion, separate and color then stir in your FO. I do use 33% lye concentration but if it's a really fussy FO I upp it a bit. It's been trial and error for me with florals.
 
^^^ yup.
"Room temperature" can be misleading. When I am using a high lard recipe 100-110 is as low as I go and that's just a bit too warm for a room to me.

FO's and acceleration can be tricky. sometimes I add everything but the lye water ( split for colors) and then add in the lye and pour at emulsion. Some florals don't give much time to work.
 
If the scent is more important than looks, you could try your first hot process batch and add the FO at the end.

Not that hot process is ugly soap, of course, just in case any hp fans are reading this [emoji5]

You haven't seen my HP soap. Ugly is a very kind word for it. Apparently it's not my strong suit so it's shredded and ready to mix into a CP batch. :twisted:
 
I want to make a soap with lily of the valley FO from BB and can't see anything in the reviews about acceleration. Has anyone used it and what was your experience?

I was able to find 2 reviews here:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...Rf1M/edit?authkey=CMTEtswL&pref=2&pli=1#gid=6 One soaper said it accelerates 'some', and another said it accelerates 'a little', but unfortunately, neither mention how much water they used or how hot they soaped their batches, which are very helpful things to know.

I figured I ought to soap cooler anyway just to be on the safe side and have been reading that some people soap at room temp, or at least leave their lye out overnight so it at least is room temp. My house is very cold, I turn the thermostat down to 61F at night. If I use cold lye water in warm (say, 90-100F) soap batter, is that going to be a problem? I know CO won't re-harden until 76F but what about butters? I haven't decided on a recipe yet, but thought I'd ask before trying to figure one up

I agree with Steve, soaping cooler or at room temp can have its drawbacks, depending on your formula. For example, I cannot soap my two favorite formulas anywhere below 110F. If I do, I get pseudo-trace and stearic spots. I have a goodly amount of butters, as well as hydrogenated PKO in those particular two.

For what it's worth, if you make your lye solution and let it cool overnight, you can always warm it back up to your preferred temp by placing the solution container in a hot water bath. That's what I do. I master-batch my lye solution in large quantities- enough to last me for several weeks or sometimes even months- so it's always cold or room temp (depending on the time of year). I just fill a bowl with good heat retention up with very hot water, then I place my lye solution container in the bowl to warm the solution up to the temp I need. (usually takes 20 minutes- about the same amount of time it takes to melt my solid fats). Whatever you do, don't heat the solution on the stove- just let it gently warm up in a hot water bath. Change the hot water out as needed until your solution is warm enough to your liking.


Also for cooler soap/less acceleration do I want a higher or lower lye concentration? I've been using soapcalc's standard 38% water, (in my whole 3 batches of experience, lol) but after reading much on here I think I want to switch to lye% instead and my head is so full of reading I'm not sure what to do! :-?

Thanks for ANY help!!

I personally would get used to using the 'lye concentration' box no matter how much or little water you want to add. It's more accurate and consistent than basing your water amount on the % of the oils.

A 'full water' amount in 'lye concentration' terms is pretty much anything from a 25% to a 28% lye concentration. Whether 25, 26, 27, or 28% will depend on each individual soaper and/or whether they are making CP or HP, but for what it's worth, whenever I want to use a 'full water' amount in my CP or HP batches, I type 28% in the lye concentration box, which is the most water I ever like to use in any of my CP or HP formulas. Any more than that, then it takes forever and a day for my soap to harden and the bars tend to warp something awful during cure.

Whenever I make liquid soap, though, I use a 25% lye concentration because that particular amount gives me smooth sailing in my liquid soap.

As for what particular concentration works best for cooler batches/less acceleration, the best thing to remember is that the higher the lye concentration, the faster things will move/accelerate.

For what it's worth, a 33% lye concentration is considered somewhat of a baseline concentration in that many soapers use it more than any other concentration because of how nicely things proceed with it. I call it my 'Goldilocks' concentration because it's not too fast and it's not too slow.....it's just right. It works quite well with all of my formulas and for the vast amount of my FOs............... but I do have to adjust it every so often to account for the occasional ornery FO. If I know I'll be working with a troublesome FO, I'll just use more water, which means I'll lower my lye concentration from 33% down to a 'full water' amount (28%), or maybe I'll lower it just to a 31% concentration instead if I know I can get away with it.

On the other end of the spectrum, you can increase your concentration from 33% to about 40% or 45% if your fats/FO allow it, such as with 100% OO Castiles.

For what it's worth, I never adjust how hot I normally soap in my 2 favorite formulas. I need to keep the temp up because of the hard fats in them, so I only ever mess with the water amount/concentration, which happily does the trick at keeping most of my troublesome FOs in line. The rare ones that are still troublesome no matter how much water I add get their stubborn selves HP'd.


IrishLass :)
 
For what it's worth, if you make your lye solution and let it cool overnight, you can always warm it back up to your preferred temp by placing the solution container in a hot water bath. That's what I do. I master-batch my lye solution in large quantities- enough to last me for several weeks or sometimes even months- so it's always cold or room temp (depending on the time of year). I just fill a bowl with good heat retention up with very hot water, then I place my lye solution container in the bowl to warm the solution up to the temp I need. (usually takes 20 minutes- about the same amount of time it takes to melt my solid fats). Whatever you do, don't heat the solution on the stove- just let it gently warm up in a hot water bath. Change the hot water out as needed until your solution is warm enough to your liking.

As for what particular concentration works best for cooler batches/less acceleration, the best thing to remember is that the higher the lye concentration, the faster things will move/accelerate.

IrishLass :)

Thank you IrishLass, especially for that last bit, it is exactly what I wanted to know!

Many thanks to everyone else as well!!
 
I have used BB Lilly of the valley. At the time I last soaped with it I was using a full water recipe (38% on SoapCalc). My notes indicated that it had a slight acceleration but not bad enough that I couldn't do a 2 colour hanger swirl. I cant tell you at what temp I soaped at as I dont tend to measure the oil/lye temps at all. Usually I soap when the outside of my bowls (SS) are just warm to the touch rather than hot. The lye would be around room temp as I master-batch that. HTH
 
I use lily of the Valley from BB and haven't had a problem.
It accelerates slightly but there is plenty of time to do color work. I soap at 85 degrees when I use it and separate the batter and color each portion before adding fragrance oil to each part. I follow the fragrance calculator for "strong" scent.
 
Here are some tips that I use for accelerates.

take 1 oz. (basically equal amounts of fragrance oil to fixed oil) liquid oil out of your recipe and heat it up to 100 degrees. Then, add your fragrance into this oil. This simply dilutes the fragrance oil’s initial acceleration.

You can also add the oil/fragrance mixture earlier than usual. Rather than adding the fragrance at a thick trace, you can add it at the first sign of thin trace.

Always hand stir the fragrance/oil mixture in with a fork/ladle and never, ever use a hand blender for problem oils.

Lastly, raise your temperatures to about 110 to 115 degrees. This will help to keep your mixture more liquid than at a lower temperature. If it does start to rice you can try using your stick blender to help smooth the soap out.

Robert
 
I add my FOs and EOs to my oils before my NaOH/Water. That way, if they accelerate, you are not getting a surprise. I had a batch today (Lemon Drop Cookies from WSP) that took exactly 18 seconds from adding the lye to medium trace. I had heavy trace before I could take the shaft off of my stickblender.
 
I too add my FO to my oils before the lye. Doing this has given me so much more control. If it's a really nasty one I will add it after its divided and colored at emulsion then hand stir it in as I need it.
 
Yeah, this has vanilla, so it is going to be brown. No getting fancy on colors on this one. It is even too dark for a cocoa line. Both of the WSP FOs I have tried thus far have accelerated like nobody's business.
 
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