First up in the soap dough single fat experiments is a hard one, the infamous Stearic Acid. For anyone following along, @ResolvableOwl has pointed out my SA is not pure stearic acid, but actually a combo of stearic, palmitic, and small amount of myristic acid. This is apparently common, though not widely known so double check your sources if you're using SA.
250 g SA
57.36 g 90% KOH (33% lye concentration)
116.46 g water
37.5 g glycerine (15% of SA weight)
Procedure:
Heat SA on high in crock till fully melted, mix lye into water, combine lye into fat. Add glycerine. Using hot process as apparently this is the only route when using stearic acid.
Results:
Instantly solidified where lye was poured. No point in stick blending, used stiff spatula to fully incorporate SA and lye. In hindsight it might have been a better idea to add the glycerin into the melted SA and then add the lye water. Perhaps having the stick blender ready might have better been able to fully blend. 5 minutes in the consistency was that of regular old coconut oil. 20 minutes in, soap has expanded and feels slightly "airy," or foamy, the expansion phase-roughly twice the volume but no danger of volcano. Knocked down and folded back in. 10 minutes later repeat. 10 minute later repeat. I've never had this happen with other SA heavy recipe so this is kind of new. No separation, however, not a consistency I'm comfortable with.
A break to describe a few errors:
I had mixed my lye first and then took forever to heat up my SA. The lye had likely significantly cooled, which DeeAnna advises against. Oops. In addition I probably should have set my crock on low after mixing everything. I'll try to correct the process next time.
Back to procedure:
After over an hour worth of beating the heck out of potassium stearate I decided to call it. Scooped 72.8 g into a small plastic pot and 331 grams into a gallon Ziploc which was later vacuum sealed using the immersion method. At this point the mixture was creamy, about the consistency of hair gel maybe thinner. In the bag I noticed some hard lumps. Argh.
Zap test: zero zap across multiple points. Tested at first stirring and at the end.
Tomorrow: initial results on consistency, comparison between pot and bag storage.
Feel free to point out errors in process, ratios, or suggestions. I would greatly appreciate it. This isn't a total disaster and hopefully can be something interesting to build off of. I've learned a fair bit here, and have come to some conclusions I might not have if I had simply weighed pros and cons. I'm sure some may see this as a convoluted or unnecessary thing to do, but I think sometimes experience is louder and more convincing lol. Regardless I think I can safely say I've picked a fat that nobody else has thought to go 100% in on. :+)
250 g SA
57.36 g 90% KOH (33% lye concentration)
116.46 g water
37.5 g glycerine (15% of SA weight)
Procedure:
Heat SA on high in crock till fully melted, mix lye into water, combine lye into fat. Add glycerine. Using hot process as apparently this is the only route when using stearic acid.
Results:
Instantly solidified where lye was poured. No point in stick blending, used stiff spatula to fully incorporate SA and lye. In hindsight it might have been a better idea to add the glycerin into the melted SA and then add the lye water. Perhaps having the stick blender ready might have better been able to fully blend. 5 minutes in the consistency was that of regular old coconut oil. 20 minutes in, soap has expanded and feels slightly "airy," or foamy, the expansion phase-roughly twice the volume but no danger of volcano. Knocked down and folded back in. 10 minutes later repeat. 10 minute later repeat. I've never had this happen with other SA heavy recipe so this is kind of new. No separation, however, not a consistency I'm comfortable with.
A break to describe a few errors:
I had mixed my lye first and then took forever to heat up my SA. The lye had likely significantly cooled, which DeeAnna advises against. Oops. In addition I probably should have set my crock on low after mixing everything. I'll try to correct the process next time.
Back to procedure:
After over an hour worth of beating the heck out of potassium stearate I decided to call it. Scooped 72.8 g into a small plastic pot and 331 grams into a gallon Ziploc which was later vacuum sealed using the immersion method. At this point the mixture was creamy, about the consistency of hair gel maybe thinner. In the bag I noticed some hard lumps. Argh.
Zap test: zero zap across multiple points. Tested at first stirring and at the end.
Tomorrow: initial results on consistency, comparison between pot and bag storage.
Feel free to point out errors in process, ratios, or suggestions. I would greatly appreciate it. This isn't a total disaster and hopefully can be something interesting to build off of. I've learned a fair bit here, and have come to some conclusions I might not have if I had simply weighed pros and cons. I'm sure some may see this as a convoluted or unnecessary thing to do, but I think sometimes experience is louder and more convincing lol. Regardless I think I can safely say I've picked a fat that nobody else has thought to go 100% in on. :+)
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