# Soap making question



## brolibring (May 4, 2009)

I am about to make my first round of soap ever. I have read thousands of recipes but can't seem to get the courage to do it! Well, I am about to chance it. Before I start I have a couple of questions....1. does my goat milk have to be pasteurized?? I freeze my milk and do not pasteurize it. 

2. I was going to use the walmart recipe I got from this site. The first step says to wiegh out liquid in ss pot then your lye. Later it says you can add goats milk. Do I use water or gm to begin the process? If I use water, how much and then how much goats milk later?? Is this really this difficult or am I making it seem harder than what it is :help

I think these are my only two questions :sigh

Thanks!!


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

No you don't have to pasteurise your milk. 2. Liquid is liquid be it water or milk or fruit juice, aloe juice, cucumber juice etc... Although I started out soaping with 100% goat milk as all my liquid, freezing it and slowly adding lye and stirring it over ice water so I didn't have all beige soap, I now melt my lye with equal parts of water cooling it, added it to my just melted butters and oils, and then after stirring it together very well (emulsion) then I add my milk (this way it doesn't have to be frozen, in fact if it's not from the morning milking so it's room temp, I microwave mine to warm if it comes from the fridge.

It's not that you are making it more difficult, it's a scientific process, and you should understand how it works and how to protect yourself from the lye before you start. But once you have the process down, it is very addictive. vicki


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## brolibring (May 4, 2009)

Thank you so much!


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## Sondra (Oct 25, 2007)

I suggest you try at least one batch with water just to get the feel of it befor trying 100% goat milk


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## Twillingate Farm (Oct 26, 2007)

Hi folks, this is Janice... Allan's DW. I have a question since I just tried Vicki's solution to avoid caramel colored GM soap.I followed your directions and added to room temperature GM the already mixed oil/lye solution and used my hand-held blender to mix it in; almost immediately it turned to a very thick, pudding like mixture......so thick I couldn't pour it out of the SS pan. I'm certain something caused this, but since I'm very new to using GM can't figure out what I did wrong.....any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. ( I have made several very good batches using water.)


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## Kalne (Oct 25, 2007)

That's called exceleration. It could be your temps were too warm in your oils or lye water. Or, if you used a fragrance that can sometimes cause exceleration too. And for some recipes, just using the stick blender can do it too. I don't use mine on most batches at all. I just use a plastic spoon and stir very well.


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

The other possibility is that the oils were pretty cool and the milk even colder and it caused the oils to begin to solidify. How warm is room temperature in your house? If the ONLY thing that you added was the milk and everything was fine before that (and especially if you were using the Wal-Mart recipe) I would lean towards that. Now, if there was any kind of fragrance involved, then acceleration because of the fragrance would be my guess.


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## Twillingate Farm (Oct 26, 2007)

Thanks for the information on this issue... the temps of everything (but the milk) were monitored and the problem happened immediately upon adding the milk (but before the fragrance). I guess I'd better monitor the milk temperature more closely since as you suspected hsmomof4, my room temperature is quite different in the winter than in the summer. We wear sweaters indoors!
Thanks again all!!!


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

Usually, if that happens, if you just work through it and keep trying to stir (if it's too thick for the stick blender) you can get it warmed up again as the lye interacts with the milk. If not, try to find a way to warm it up so that you can get everything well mixed.


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## Anita Martin (Dec 26, 2007)

If it does accelerate, I usually stop using the stick blender immediately and just use my spatula. In fact, I've been using the stick blender less since I've started adding colors because I want to do swirls...In this cooler weather my soap still thickens up too soon...It's tricky.


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