What happened?!

[simoneex]

Yesterday, after researching shampoo bars, I decided to try and make one of my own:

Olive oil 35% (10% comfrey infused oil)
Coconut oil 25%
Castor oil 20%
Sweet almond oil 10%
Jojoba oil 5%
Shea butter 5%
I made an 800g batch and may have put in about 15-20g of lavender EO to be sure I had a scent that stuck this time.
Everything looked amazing, I did have a peak during the saponification process and it was coming along great... Just before, I unmolded and was able to cut two bars before seeing that the entire middle section was jelly! The outside of the soap was very oily as well - could I have put too much EO in my soap or do you think there was another underlying problem?

 

[Lin]

Can you post the exact recipe? I think people might need the amounts of the oils, lye, and liquid to help.

 

[jade-15]

No real ideas... but I see you're in Qld, so am I - and it's been very warm and extremely humid these last few days, so I wonder if that may have affected the process?

 

[seven]

I'm not familiar with shampoo formulations, but just looking at your recipe, that's quite a lot of castor you got there.

The most i had with castor was 15% and it was quite a slimy batch and it took a while to cure/dry. Now the most i used is 6%.

Castor is good for bubbles but it can get slimy when used too much. At least that's what i've read around and experienced myself. Combined with hot/humid weather, i dont think it's a good combo.

I once had a batch a bit similar like yours, but the oil pocket was not as big as yours. I was using banana milk which has sugar in it so that's prolly why it got overheated.

Someone pls cmiiw

 

[Obsidian]

That is a lot of castor and you did use too much EO. My shampoo bars have 10% castor and your max EO should have been around 12g. What did you SF at? Unless you have very oily hair, I think this recipe would have been way too cleansing for shampoo. You have a huge amount of coconut oil, you want gentle cleansing for hair.

I would probably toss this out and try again. This is a really good recipe, maybe try it.

Water as percent of oil weight: 35%
Superfat: 6%

Avocado Oil: 30%
Castor Oil: 10%
Olive Oil: 40%
Shea Butter: 10%
Soybean Oil: 10%

 

[judymoody]

High castor oil soaps can look very translucent and jelly like.

Was your soap completely cool when you cut?

How much water did you use?

BTW, your EO level is fine. This forum recommends a maximum of 3% of EO PPO as a general rule. That would correspond to 24 grams for this recipe.

 

[simoneex]

Thanks for the advice! I wasn't sure about using that much castor oil, at least this means I won't go through so much of it in the future haha The batch was very slimy but I have saved two bars that were... Okay
The exact recipe was

Sweet Almond oil 80g
Castor oil 80g
Coconut oil 200g
Olive oil 280g (10% infused with comfrey root)
Jojoba oil 40g
Shea butter 40g

Water 304g
Lye 108.27g

I watched the soaping101 video on tailoring shampoo bars to specific hair types as my hair is incredibly dry and was hoping this would work! haha The batch was completely cooled and ready when I unmolded and my house is very shady so it's generally quite a bit cooler at home than it would be say, down at the corner shops

Thanks, I'll definitely give that recipe a try, Obsidian haha might have to research a bit more before I venture out and make my own again hehe

 

[judymoody]

That's a lot of water and that may have been a major contributing factor to the softness. You might try a 1:2 ratio (lye to water) next time.