Hot Process Soap Problems

by Diana
(ILION, NY USA)

I made HP soap base 2% superfatting, solid cotton oil, soybean oil blend, I added 4.51 oz to account for the M&D as palm oil premixed into my recipe. I know I had problems with the batch in the pot, it never looked like vaseline after 3 hours of cooking on low heat like the instructions I was following said and I was so tired I just figured I'd 'missed' seeing that stage and molded it anyway because it was starting to look chalky and hard.


So I stuck it in molds and found all of these oils at the bottom of the pot so I put the oils on top and hoped would absorb and went to bed.

2 days later I unmolded because it looked done, this was my 3rd batch, but not with this recipe. Water, or oil, or lyewater, that's what it smelled like dripped out all over the table and I didn't notice until it was all over my clothes so I ran to change and get those in the wash before ruined. The top of the soap looks brown and properly cured but underneath it's pure white, pasty, waxy, and kind of reminds me of cottage cheese, a little crumbly.

Soap also failed the zap test horribly.

Answer:

When hot processing soap, it is important to cook until your soap reaches a full gel. That is the stage that resembles vaseline mash potatoes. It is impossible to miss.

Recheck your recipe for accuracy and make sure to throw out the failed batch. It doesn't sound safe to use at all.

Cathy

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starstarstarstarstar 		Too much water added to Hot Process Soap p
by: Anonymous

Before I starrt I have to say what a fantastic support this link is. I do however end up only sharing my problems and not my success stories!!

Anyway today I made my first hot process soap. After much research I used a tried and tested recipe however i was advised by a fellow soaper to add half the water at the begining and half after the soap had cooked. Which i was a bit unsure about but I thought id go with a more expereinced hot process soaper.

My mistake was when i came to put my soap batter in the crop pot at trace i had too much mixture. so i took out 300 gms and poured it into a mould as cp soap. What id forgotton is that the water id not added yet would be too much for the hot process soap. I poured it in as adviced after gel
and it stayed in a liquidy form. i was able to pour it into my mould.

The thing is. There has been too much liquid added not. my question is 'will my soap harden up and the water eventually evaporate? or do i need to re-batch?

Thank you for your continued advice and support.
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starstarstarstarstar 		Castile soap flop
by: Karen L. Miller

I never missed a step and mine separated as well . I don't know what happened ! I thought maybe because I used a different oil rather than soybean , or perhaps because I used beaded lye rather than liquid . In any case , I now have a glob of semi lathering foam/slime and a bottle of not so foaming yellowish ( kind of greasy ) liquid . I don't know what to do with either of the products !
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starstarstarstarstar 		HP problem
by: Anonymous

Also sounds like you did not get to the bottom of the pot when stirring to fully incorporate all of the ingredients during the cook.

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