Silly question from someone who should know better!

[KiwiMoose]

Despite making over 70 batches of soap, there is something still bothering me. Can I, or how can I write a recipe and control BOTH the lye concentration and the amount of water. That is, if I increase the lye concentration, will it automatically ( in a soap calc) decrease the amount of water? I've recently resized a recipe, but also increased the lye concentration from 30% to 33%. It seems that in doing so, I now have a 2:1 lye ratio, which I think is too much for this particular recipe (using oatmilk which goes gluggy). Can I just add in some extra water? The lye concentration is worked out in accordance with the the amount of lye needed to saponify the oils in the recipe right? So if I choose to add an extra , say 50g water, that won't affect the overall recipe (but will take longer to cure out) right?

 

[IrishLass]

In all soap calculators, increasing the lye concentration % automatically decreases the water amount.....and conversely, if you decrease the lye concentration %, the water amount rises. The lye amount remains the same, but the water amount changes. That's the way lye concentration works.

If you happen to also want the lye amount to change, you must change the superfat %.

If you've resized your recipe to be smaller but think it won't do well with a 33% lye concentration, just decrease the lye concentration percent down to something like 30% instead. That's what I would do.

You could blindly add more water if you wanted to (it won't affect anything important such as lye heaviness, for example), but it's better knowing exactly how much more you are adding by using the lye concentration % button, because you might end up blindly adding so much more water as to cause warping in your soap as it cures.


IrishLass

 

[Jennifer Horne]

I accidentally did something like that and added coconut milk , almost a whole 8oz can bc i probably messed up the water and was trying to stop it from becoming soap on a stick the batch ended up great just took longer in the mold to harden (like almost a week) i cut the bars really thin to try to "svae" them but they are fine now just small

 

[KiwiMoose]

Thanks Girlfriends. I don't know how many times I've asked this kind of question - just in different ways. For some reason it always screws with my head. Off to buy some more lye and I'll be back to tackle this puppy.

 

[Kari Howie]

Thanks Girlfriends. I don't know how many times I've asked this kind of question - just in different ways. For some reason it always screws with my head. Off to buy some more lye and I'll be back to tackle this puppy.

Soap Queen has an article that I found very helpful in understanding water/lye discounts:
https://www.brambleberry.com/articles/how-to/art0077-water-discounting-cold-process-soap.html