So I attempted to make a brine soap

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Sep 29, 2015
Messages
3,684
Reaction score
2,985
Recipe used was:

14oz coconut oil
1oz avocado oil
1oz castor oil

4.52oz distilled water (I split it)
2.26 oz lye (gave me a 20% superfat)

FO- Jasmine Romance (SOS sniffie)

I'm noticing that it's a leaky mess and I spilled some oil substance all over the lid of one of my containers while moving the mold. Is this normal?
 
I'll leave it alone and try again then. I'll just let the lye water cool down more than I did. Admittedly, it was a bit warm.
I will also tweak things a bit to make it closer to a classic recipe.
 
Last edited:
What temp were your oils and lye when you mixed them? I have only made salt bars twice. I use 100% salt. Since it's coconut oil I soap at about 90 degrees - the lye water is room temp. Because of the low temp mine seems slow to trace so I usually end up putting it back on the stove. I think with the salt in the mix it is harder for us to see what is going on, so I try to err on the side of extra mixing.
 
Both times the oils were around 80 degrees or so. I tweaked the recipe to 8oz coconut, 5.50oz of olive oil, 2oz rice bran and .5oz castor oil. I also mixed in the salt before the lye but did not split the water 50/50 as I did in the other soap. I got a little curious and may have possibly set myself up a bit. This second batch is still liquidy. The first batch is hardening up nicely. The only difference with the lye water is that I cooled it to 145 because not all of my coconut oil was melted and I generally have an issue with tracing fast. Should I add that at neither times did I use a SB but I stirred with a spatula?
 
I must say, after both attempts, one a miserable fail I threw out and the other curing rather nicely, I'm going to keep trying till I get something I really like. The only difference is: my next attempt will use 25% of my water's weight, which I feel is what I should have been doing. Other recipes have said to use a percentage of the total oil weight and that did not sound right to me unless I wanted to make a salt bar. The only question left is how much to SF. My skin sucks in the winter.
 
When making brine soap, you want use salt at 25% water weight, I use full water so I can get a bit more salt into the soap. Your SF depends on how much coconut you use, for the first recipe you posted I would use 20% SF.

I must do my salt soaps a bit different from everyone else, I soap it hot or else it takes forever to trace when I use a lot of coconut. For brine soap, I treat it like normal CP, SB until thin/medium trace then pour. I do like to add my colorant/FO to the oils before the lye.
 
Back
Top