Weird Experience with Salt Bar

[Clarice]

I have been on a salt "tear" lately and last night I made another batch with the attached recipe from The Spruce Crafts.

Because I had recently received indigo crystals (Jacard from Dharma Trading) and in The Nerdy Housewife (?) book she showed Indigo morphing into a beautiful purplely color, I decided to add indigo infused in aloe juice to to my additional liquid, which in this case was also aloe juice (I MB my lye, so I added aloe juice to reach the correct lye concentration). In the book she listed using 1 teaspoon indigo powder PPO, since this was already infused in aloe, I added 2t to the lye mixture before adding to the oils. It did turn a beautiful "marine blue" color.

I used 75% salt per oil weight added at light trace. The salt I used was a coarse sea salt that I had pulsed with a SB until it was fine and soft. As with my other salt bars, I was expecting that it would move very rapidly to medium trace once the salt was added. Boy was I wrong!

This puppy took FOREVER to trace, and even this AM when I cut it was still really really soft - hard enough to stay in a loaf and slide out of my mold, but soft enough to deform with a prodding finger.

Was this an adverse reaction to Indigo? Prior to making this I made a non-salt (regular) batch with the same indigo and it hardened beautifully.

I will put this away on the "at least six month" shelf

Any thoughts as to what went amiss?

 

[earlene]

Sorry no one has responded. I am catching up on posts since my travels, which is why I am now responding.

Is it possible you mis-measured your lye? That's the only reason off the top of my head as to why a high salt bar would not harden up normally. I doubt the indigo has anything to do with slowing down the hardening time.

How is this soap now, Clarice?

 

[Clarice]

Thank you @earlene

I hid it from myself LOL

I have not checked! I put my trust in the soap gods.

I DID find out that the indigo I ordered was synthetic, NOT the true powder (doggone it!) and once place I read said that it will stain the user. So who knows, when I uncover it again in some months time and give it a rub, I may end up blue!

I had a similar experiences with a couple of salt bars I have made since. Relatively slow to trace and still soft (but cuttable) at the 2 hour mark.

Both were 80% CO and 20% other (cannot remember off hand, would have to go look at my notes, and they are in the basement (color me lazy!)

Have you ever made a salt bar with salt brine - so like a soleseife, but added salt?

Thanks much!

 

[earlene]

Yes, I have made soleseife bars alone as well as used salt brine and added extra solid salt at least once. I did not notice any real difference between the latter and a regular salt bar, so not sure it is worth the effort to do salt brine plus solid salt, though. Plus there is a maximum load of salt in water, so one could potentially add too much salt and I believe what you can end up with is a soap that crumbles.

 

[Amy78130]

Maybe the aloe, what form of aloe juice did you use? I haven’t used it much in soap making, but it sometimes gives me trouble when formulating gels and lotion due to the high electrolyte content. The indigo sounds beautiful, did they list the INCI ingredient list on the packaging? I’m not thinking it’s the indigo, just helps to know exactly what type of dye to help rule out the trouble maker in your formula! So sorry this happened love, I know how disappointing this feels! I’d love to see a picture if you have time.