white residue on top?

[beckylinley]

Hi!

A couple of my batches of soap have ended up with a thin white residue on top. I attached a photo. Does anyone know what causes this? Is it bad?

Thanks for your help!

Becky

 

[Ruthie]

Most likely it is soda ash. Purely cosmetic.

 

[Nightlilly]

That is a really nice green, did you color that naturally? I've read that the soda ash can just be washed off. Nice soaps!

 

[Candybee]

Yup. Ash. Doesn't hurt the soap. I find I have to keep my soap covered until it has completely finished saponifying. I usually don't uncover my soap until the next day after I make it. Reduces ash to nothing. I know oxidation can cause soda ash. But there are other factors that can contribute; certain FOs, oils, etc.

I got my worst case of ash with my first castile soap cause I kept uncovering it and looking at it.

 

[theath2010]

You could try preventing the ash by spraying your soaps with alcohol after pouring into the molds.

 

[Ancel]

Looks like soda ash. It's a very nice picture, lovely setting for soaps.

 

[MaitriBB]

You could try preventing the ash by spraying your soaps with alcohol after pouring into the molds.

Make sure it's 90% or higher alcohol too - the 70% alcohol won't work.

If you do get ash, you can hold the bars over a pot of gently boiling water, in the steam, and it should steam them clean.

 

[DeeAnna]

Or you can remove ash by dipping about half of the the soap briefly in hot water, pat dry, repeat with the other half.

 

[roseb]

A few squirts of alcohol has worked for me.

 

[Cemetery]

I recently made a batch using a tested recipe. I changed only two things. I didn't mix to as heavy of a trace because I was doing a complex swirl and I used titanium dioxide, 1tsp for 1/4 of a 5.5lb batch.

I got a great deal of ash on top of the slab of soap after saponification. I molded the same, insulated the same, placed in the same location in house. Usually the ash is really removed like on my past batches. This layer of ash sends to be trapped under a thin layer of soap odds something because the steam won't remove it.

Is this because I only mixed to emulsification? Had anyone noticed a correlation between ash and the amount of trace when molding? Is it possible that it is the titanium dioxide? I mixed it thoroughly in small amount of base oils.

I have read the advice on using alcohol and plastic wrap to insulate from air but I have never had to use these techniques and the ash had been very minimal.

Thank you in advance.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Soap Making mobile app

 

[savonierre]

It is ash, sometimes I embrace it, other times I steam it off and dry the soap with a lightly dampened cotton tea towel.

 

[beckylinley]

That is a really nice green, did you color that naturally? I've read that the soda ash can just be washed off. Nice soaps!

Thanks Nightlilly! I colored it with spirulina powder. I like the way it came out too. I'd read that the spirulina can change to brown with curing, but mine still looks nice and green!
Sorry for the delayed reply.

 

[Cemetery]

So I tried the plastic wrap on top of the soap when I poured, and it worked great. Just started at one end and let the plastic wrap cling to the soap and slowly moved from one end to the next. It eliminated all signs of ash.

I wanted to attach this photo to show what I was getting before. You can see In the corners where the plastic wrap wasn't quite sealed against the soap that the white residue formed there.

I just thought others new to soaping could benefit from my errors.


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