# First Batch of Soap! Update: Separation Question



## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

Just made it tonight. I'll let you know how it turns out...it's in the oven right now and I'm waiting for it to gel. I did a really basic recipe: lard, GM, lye, and a little bit of sweet orange and pink grapefruit essential oils. Probably not enough of the essential oils but it traced REALLY fast and I was surprised, so I rushed from there on out. 

I think that my milk/lye mixture was a bit on the cool side. Rather than having ice cube sized chunks of frozen milk, I had one big blob of it. Apart from starting with my milk not in one big chunk, any suggestions on what to do if you find yourself at that point and your lye/liquid mixture is too cold? What is the best way to warm it up a little...or can you even do that?


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2009)

*Re: First Batch of Soap!*

Congrats on your first batch Stacey!

It doesn't matter if you lye/GM is cold, you just want your lye dissolved. Most of us pour the lye/GM through a strainer to catch any undissolved lye. I take my pre measured frozen bag of GM microwave it for a minute or two, break it apart into slush, add the lye, then stir like crazy.

Sweet orange and pink grapefruit essential oils are faders (the scent fades away in soap). They need to be seated with a base note like clove, patchouli or litsia. I use citrus eo's at a rate of .7oz/ppo.

Christy


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

*Re: First Batch of Soap!*

Ok. So when I unmolded the soap this am to cut it, there was a crack in the center and some liquid in there. The liquid was clear to start, but once it got onto my baking sheet, it firmed up some and became white. What happened? Did some of the fat not get saponified?


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

And if it's the case that it didn't all get saponified, what now? I put the recipe into a lye calculator and measured everything by weight, etc. Could it be that the GM was so high in fat that it caused this issue because the lye calculator doesn't account for what the liquid in the soap is? I used milk from my kinders (high fat to begin with) and it was from early freshening (so possibly higher fat than otherwise anyway??) :help


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2009)

> it traced REALLY fast


This caught my attention when I first read your post. In my experience lard based soaps don't usually trace that fast. If your lard was cool you may have gotten a _false_ trace. In that case you have incomplete saponification because you did not mix it long enough. Also, what did you use to stir and how long did you stir? If you want to post your recipe and temps that would help us troubleshoot with you.

Christy


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

I used a stick blender to stir. I didn't time it, but it was less than 5 minutes. The lard was 125 when I poured it into the bucket to add the lye/GM to it, so it was probably a bit cooler than that by the time I got the lye/GM in there. The lye/GM was cool...probably about 75. I added the essential oils (not very much at all) at what I thought was trace and when I was pouring it into the mold, it was getting really thick on me. 

Recipe was 52 oz lard, 6.64-6.85 oz lye (that was the range of lye they had for their "green zone"...the 5%-8% excess fat range...I used 6.75), 13-20 oz liquid (I used about 18.25 oz). I used the lye calculator at thesage.com 

Thanks!


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

Oh, and after putting in the mold, I stuck it in my oven at "warm," which is 170, and it took about 90 minutes to get to what I thought was gel (having not seen that in person before, I had to go off of pictures, so I could have been wrong). Then I turned off the oven and cracked the door until it was mostly cooled off in there. Closed the door and left it over night.


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2009)

Hi Stacey,
You said that your lye was very cool and your lard really hot, now I am not one when I soap to pay attention to temps, but it does sound like you might have had a false trace.. or you actually got it too hot... 
YOu can shred all this up in a pot and rebatch.. with your next batch try to get your temps closer,,, and not have such a wide range of temp between the lye and oils.. until you get use to making soap and can recognize a true trace.. That was the hardest part for me when i started (trace)
When I had problems it was with the oatmeal milk and honey and the honey made my soap too hot and of course I had bad separation, so I think that is what happened to you if your oils were as hot as you say... I soap room temp now and never take my soaps to gel stage
The milk will not do it, I have Nigerians and it is also high in fat.. 
don't give up on soaping, this happens to all of us... and more
Barb


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

So was the 120-125 temp I was looking for for the oils too warm? What temp should I be shooting for? I knew that the oils and lye/GM were supposed to be close to the same temp, but when I checked the temp of the lye/GM and it was so low, I wasn't sure how to fix that. Or was it the oven temp that was the problem? (I can always do CP if I need to!)


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2009)

hsmomof4 said:


> Or was it the oven temp that was the problem? *(I can always do CP if I need to!)*


You _are_ making CP soap. 

I no longer find it necessary to OP my soap. I do stick my molds in the oven with the pilot light on. My soap gels just fine without turning the oven on.

Sounds like to me you had a false trace.

Sara


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

I meant without the oven process. :blush With an electric oven, no pilot light, so that's not an option. 

Ok, so what now? Shred it and remelt in a pot to rebatch...do I add more lye or is the part that solidified well going to by lye-heavy so it should all balance out? Is there anything else that I would need to do? If I melt it in a pot, is that pot now useless for anything but soap? And since I didn't add enough EO before, could I add more when rebatching? Is there anything else I should be asking but am not? :LOL


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2009)

Shred it all up, Put in large double boiler or roaster, (crock pot) and melt down.. Do not add more lye or your soap will be lye heavy.. when all melted down you can add more fragrance, this is usually like vaseline and has to be squished into molds.. 
Barbara


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## hsmomof4 (Oct 31, 2008)

Thank you SOOOO much!


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2009)

The soap will be ugly but it will be soap. 

You will want to anchor your citrus EO's like Christy mentioned.

Sara


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## NubianSoaps.com (Oct 26, 2007)

I think you will have more failed batches during the winter soaping with cold everything. I spend more time heating up butters during this time of year so they warm up my oils well, and making sure I am pouring lye/water that is not chilled down too much...always making sure when pouring in at emulsion that my milk is warm and so is my FO or EO, putting the glass measuring cup into hot water to take the chill off. With too much of your product cold you are going to get false trace, then your soap has to HP in the oven and it's not going to because you can't stir it.

We don't teach taking temps on this forum, because most of us do room temp, but room temp for me during the summer and now is a huge difference, my soap room is chilly. I put my soap in the oven on low, turn it off immediatly to gel it, not to force moisture out with the full 2 hours like I used to, also I don't want to ruin my new molds or liner, but an oven gives me a small enough space that just the soap sopaonfiying is going to give off enough heat to warm the whole space.

I am adding on 20 X16 more feet to my soaphouse this year, in there will be a insulated closet to put soap in the mold in, with a thermostat in it which warms it to 100 degrees, a matching closet will hold cut soap that I can run a dehumidifier in to force soap for wrapping and selling faster when I need it. The rest is just going to be more room for storage. Vicki


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