Tap Water/Early Setting of Soap

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

SoapHappyNYC

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 8, 2013
Messages
47
Reaction score
4
Hello. I just made a batch of goat milk soap (coconut, olive, palm) and am so tired I didn't realize I used tap water instead of distilled water. Could this have led to the soap starting to thicken too much while I was still mixing. Or could this be related to over mixing? I mixed to trace but found soft soap lumps in the pan. I hope the soap can still be used.
 
I always use tap water and have never experienced issues with weird trace like you describe. Did you add the lye to the GM? If so, could the soft soap globs you found maybe be from the lye starting to react with the fats in the goat's milk before you added the lye mixture to the oils?
 
I added lye to goat milk and this time I let the goat milk overheat a little bit to try to achieve a caramel-ish color. There were small bits of something floating to the top of the lye mixture, but not much. I mixed the lye and oils at 90 degrees and 105 degrees. When I started blending the lye and oils, the bits of stuff disappeared. Maybe I just over mixed at traced.
 
What do you mean by soft soap lumps? Is this in your mold? Have you cut your soap already?

It may be that you got partial gel and the ungelled soap is softer than the gelled portion.

Tap water does not make your soap trace faster.
 
It's in the freezer now as I was trying to experiment with preventing gel. Partial gel seems to describe it best and actually makes sense since I allowed the lye mixture to heat up more this time around. At least now I know that nothing in tap water will accelerate trace - you never know what's in NYC water lol. I'll cut the soap tomorrow and with any luck it will all be one color and still useable.
 
This is how the soap turned out: it has a nice creamy texture but looks like it may crack when it dries. Can this be saved?

IMG_2063.jpg
 

Latest posts

Back
Top