Rebatching!

I rebatched batch #4 in the earlier "ew" post.  That was some gross soap, although it smelled good and had a pretty color!  I grated it and threw it in the crockpot:

 

 

I read a website that recommended milk while the rebatch was melting, and then dry milk as the "secret ingredient" when stirring just before glopping it into the mold.  The secret ingredient didn't do much, IMO, but I gave it a shot :)  Behold the ugly glop!

 

 

I didn't insulate it since it had cooked in the crockpot.  I just left it in the (cool) oven overnight where the cats wouldn't bother it.

 

When it came out of the mold 24 hours later, it was extremely soft.  I think the extra milk and/or dry milk made it that way.  It was so soft that when I put it on a wire shelf, it glopped down onto the next shelf!  We remolded it into bar-like shapes, and it's finally firming up after a few days of curing time.

 

So I'm writing that batch off as a bad job; we'll just use it for our own bathing purposes.

 

I did another batch last night to try out the oils that I got from Soaper's Choice.  I decided to try soaping at room temperature; instead of using thermometers to keep lye and oils at the same temp, I just poured the lye into the room temperature oils.  It worked great!  I finally feel like my soap looks somewhat like the shiny glossy soaps that I see on YouTube:

 

 

Coconut Oil (76 degree) - 8 oz

Palm oil - 12 oz

Rice Bran Oil - 12 oz

Tallow - 12 oz

Water (33%) - 14.52 oz

Lye (5% superfat) - 6.09 oz

1 oz China Rain FO from Symphony Scents

1 oz Green Tea FO from Symphony Scents

1 oz green mica from 2 different Etsy sellers, different shades.

 

I think it turned out really nicely, except that I tried doing a Celene Swirl again and it just has the darker green blob in the middle:

 

 

Still, I saw the texturing technique on YouTube and I tried it and think it came out pretty.  The fragrance is a little light but you can still smell it.  All in all, a success!

 

Batch #4 - ew?

Good source of bulk oil

If you're like me, you don't have a lot of options for finding bulk oil locally.  I am in a small city of about 200,000 people, and there's just not that many soapers around here.  The biggest soaper is 2 hours away (although I want to visit his shop badly!)

 

I discovered a great site called Soaper's Choice.  They have tons of the different oils available, and for much cheaper than if you bought them at Amazon, even with free Prime shipping like I have.  16 oz of coconut oil at Amazon runs about $11 with free shipping; 7 pounds of coconut oil at Soaper's Choice costs about $15.  Deal!

 

I just submitted an order for coconut oil, palm oil, rice bran oil, and tallow.  Hopefully the shipping turn-around time isn't too long!

My first attempt at using mica

I used mica for the first time last Thursday!  It's not as easy as it looks...

 

Coconut Oil (76 degrees) - 6 oz

Palm oil - 6 oz

Olive oil - 16 oz

Water (33%) - 9.24 oz

Lye (7% superfat) - 3.83 oz

1.5 oz Blackberry Sage FO from Peak Candles

1 oz Sparkling Deep Violet Purple Mica Powder from sjmsupplies (Etsy)

1 oz sparkle mica from Peak Candles

 

I went with a simple recipe because I was trying something new (the mica), so I didn't want too much extra fuss.

 

I poured half of the mixture (after light trace) into a separate container and then added the purple mica.  I added the sparkle mica to my original bowl.  So half and half purple/sparkle.  I then poured the purple soap from a height back into the sparkle soap to create a swirl.  I think it created a pretty marble.

 

 

 

The one thing I erred on is the size of the batch.  I should have made it perhaps a pound bigger so that it would have filled my mold more.  I was using a silicone loaf mold that I got from Amazon:

 

Click the above image to go buy it at Amazon.com for $9.99.  The soap unmolded really easily and it's straight rectangular, not angled, which I like.

 

The above referenced soap recipe only fills this mold up about halfway, which is why the soap bars are so squat.  Next time I will resize the batch to about 3.5 to 4 pounds total.

 

Today or tomorrow I'm going to try doing a pink mica swirl by layering the colors in the mold and swirling with a spoon.  We'll see how that goes!

 

Rendering Beef Tallow

Recently, I purchased 4 pounds of suet from the local meat market.  I paid $1 extra per pound to have the butcher grind up the suet - worth every penny!

I brought it home and plopped it into my crock pot:

I added about a 1/2 cup of water and let it cook on low.  This was after about 20 minutes:

After checking every 15-20 minutes and giving it a stir, eventually I was left with:

We ladled it into two clear glass bowls and popped them in the fridge:



24 hours later, I had clean white tallow disks on the top of the liquid in the bowls!  I scraped off the gunk on the underside of the disks, broke them up, and plopped them into airtight containers back into the fridge.  I used 24 oz of the tallow in last weekend's pina colada soap.  Love it!

Yay, soap!

Finally, I've made some decent soap!

This is pina colada soap.  Here's the recipe:

Castor oil ~ 2 oz

Grapeseed oil ~ 5 oz

Safflower oil ~ 5 oz

Beef tallow ~ 24 oz

Coconut oil (92 degrees) ~ 8 oz

Water (32% of weight) ~ 14.08 oz

Lye (7% superfat) ~ 6.02 oz

Pina Colada FO from Symphony Scents - 0.5 oz

Coconut FO from Symphony Scents - 0.5 oz

Apricot seeds ~ 1 tsp

It smells wonderful!  Can't wait to try it out!  I have a great group of friends all ready to test it in 4-6 weeks!

Batch Fail

Our first batch was a fail :(

 

 

I came home from work and checked on the towel-wrapped mold.  I tested the soap with my tongue and it didn't zap.  However, when I cut it open, I discovered the white pockets of lye that DID zap.  Bummer!

 

I think it was from keeping the stick blender on the bottom of the bowl instead of flowing around the entire bowlful of mixture.  Must have been some globs that I didn't get!

 

So we are in the process of rebatching it in the crockpot.  Wish us luck!  Even if it doesn't look that great when we're done, we were just doing this first batch to learn the process, and we'll probably be just using it ourselves, so no big deal.  Lesson learned!

 

And we have soap!

Yay!

Lye came yesterday and we made soap last night!  Here comes the barrage of pics.

My ingredients, ready to go!

Measuring the distilled water

My husband being a smartass and taking a picture of me having measured out too much water >:(

At this point the good camera's battery died and we moved on to crappy cell phone pictures.

Measuring out the lye

Mixing the lye with the water under the vent hood fan

Measuring out the oils.  The coconut and palm oils were solid at room temperature, so we used a combination of microwaving and hot water bathing the bottles to get them splurtable.

The lye took quite a while to cool down.  We wound up putting it in an ice water bath, which worked well.  We kept the bowl of oils in a hot water bath to keep the temp up.  The lye was around 105 degrees F and the oils were about 100 degrees F when we combined them and started (blurrily) blending:

And we have trace!  This took about 3-4 minutes of continuous blending.  I made the mistake of keeping the blender base against the bottom of the bowl because I'd read about air bubbles, but once we figured out that that was incorrect and I started swirling it in the mixture more, it quickly came to trace.

Our finished soap!  The recipe said it made 4 pounds of soap, and this mold said it held 5 pounds, but as you can see it's full to the brim.  Can't wait to unmold and cut it and see how it looks!

Still no lye!

My ingredients are sad.

 

 



Amazon swears it will be delivered today, just in time for a severely rainy day.  I am concerned about this but hoping for the best.

The fine folks over at the Dish have told me that my recipe has too much hard oil (solid at room temp) and too little soft oil (liquid).  So it's a good thing that the lye didn't come because I would have made crappy soap!  Here's what I'm thinking now:

16 oz Coconut Oil @ 92 degrees

32 oz Olive Oil

16 oz Palm Oil

20.48 oz water

8.97 oz lye

32% water

6% superfat

This way it's 50% soft oil (the olive) and 50% hard oil (the palm/coconut).  I'm also going to give the local meat market a call today and see if they have tallow/suet.  My husband bought me a soapmaking book yesterday that documents how to render your own tallow from suet.  Good times!

My first recipe

I think that this is the recipe that I'm going to try as soon as I get my hands on some lye!

Water as percentage of oil weight = 32%

Superfat/discount = 6%

Oils:

Coconut Oil, 92 deg = 28 oz

Olive Oil = 6 oz

Palm Oil = 32 oz

Water = 21.12 oz

Lye = 9.86 oz

Tea tree oil EO = 1/2 oz

Color - may or may not, haven't decided for sure yet.

Wish me luck!  I am trying to talk my husband into taking pictures of the process for the blog, as he'll be there watching me to make sure I don't burn the house down anyway.

Lye Frustration!

Last night my Amazon order was delivered.  Huzzah!  I now have everything I need to try my first batch of soap ... EXCEPT the lye.  Sadly, that's a required ingredient and stuff.

I had previously checked Michael's, True Value hardware, and a local cleaning supply merchant, and none of them had lye.  I ordered a bottle of it from the Essential Depot storefront through Amazon (because I'm a Prime member so I typically get 2 day shipping upgrade for free) and had to pay $12 extra for a Hazmat shipping package.  It wasn't delivered last night ~ I don't know if it's required that someone sign for a Hazmat package or not.  We'll probably find out today whether it's left on our front porch or not.

But last night, I wanted to make soap!  I drove to Menard's (Midwest hardware store chain), and couldn't even get a store associate to look my way.  Frustrating!  I'd complain but they probably don't give a crap.

So I went to a different branch of True Value, because the first TV had told me to try there as they usually have it but were out that day, and perhaps the other branch would have it.  The gal behind the counter said that it was kept under the counter and that she had to make a copy of my driver's license in order to sell it to me.  Ok, great, whatever, GIMME MY LYE I WANT TO MAKE SOAP OMFG. 

10 minutes later, she returned, complaining about the slow copy machine.  Ok, let's move on ... she reached under the counter and ... no lye.  "Oh, we must be out."

...

Really?  You couldn't check before you went to copy the ID?

So my third stop was Home Depot, and I shouldn't have bothered, because they don't carry it either.

Needless to say, I did not get to make soap last night.  I had a headache anyway by that point.

I am hopeful that my Hazmat package is delivered today and left without needing a signature, and that I can make soap tonight.  If they leave me a sticker with no package, I may cry.

My new friends over at The Dish have given me some recommendations.  I wish I hadn't been too shy to ask before ordering at Amazon, but most of the soaping forums are pretty strict in their advice to n00bs that they shouldn't ask without searching for the information thoroughly first, and a search for "lye" produces a ton of results.  Also, I'm stubborn and don't like to admit that I can't find info on my own.

But in any case, here are some sources of lye online that they provided to me, for those of you in the same boat as me...

The Lye Guy

Essential Depot ~ supposedly this store regularly offers good shipping deals and free shipping; incidentally, it's also the storefront where I ordered my lye through Amazon and wound up paying $12 in Hazmat shipping fees.  I don't know if they require that if you order directly through their site.

AAA Chemicals

Ingredients to Die For ~ which is kind of an ironic name when you're talking about lye...

Soap Goods

Duda Diesel

Note that I haven't tried any of these stores yet, so I can't testify to their product or service.

Keep your fingers crossed for me that I will be able to make soap tonight!

I'm a total soap n00b

Welcome to my blog! 

In internet parlance, "n00b" indicates "newbie" or someone who is new to something.  That definitely describes me when it comes to making soap!

For the uninitated, there is a somewhat complicated process to making soap.  There are also multiple ways to do it - melt-and-pour, cold process, hot process, and so on.

I've tried the melt-and-pour and was disappointed with the size of the molds that came with the kit.  of course, I know that you can make loaves of melt-and-pour soap, but it looks to me after doing much research, that the lovely swirled soaps that I adore can only be made via hot or cold process.  Thus, I am going to embark on a journey of learning to make cold process soap.

Of course, upon deciding this, I realized that there would be a considerable outlay of start-up fundage.  So far, I've spent about $200 and change on getting kitted out to make this soap.  Some of what I've bought has turned out to be not crucial to the process, but it looked cool on the website.  

Here's what I've gotten so far and where I got it:

Plastic loaf mold - Bulk Apothecary

Shea butter (on backorder, sob!) - Bulk Apothecary

Green block color - Bulk Apothecary

Tea tree essential oil - Bulk Apothecary

Soap cutter - Bulk Apothecary

Miter box (also on backorder, wtf) - Bulk Apothecary

Plastic gloves - stolen from work

Safety glasses - also stolen from work

Stick blender  - Amazon

Digital scale that measures to .5 ounces - Amazon

1 quart of palm oil - Amazon

1 quart of coconut oil - Amazon

2 lb food grade lye beads - Amazon (only because I can't find any at the hardware stores here)

6-pack sampler of fragrance oils - Symphony Scents (holy crap, fast shipping!)

2 candy thermometers - Target

3 plastic pitchers - hallelujah at $1 each - Walmart

Double boiler - Walmart

Green mica colorant - Etsy

I've also bought several books for my iPad and have devoured many videos on YouTube.  It's endlessly fascinating!

So here is my plan - as soon as my Amazon order arrives this week, I will be making my first batch of cold process (CP) soap!  I am hoping to do a 2 pound loaf of green swirled with white, tea tree EO scented.  I still need to figure out my recipe because with the shea butter on back order, I'm not sure what I'll use for my 3rd oil/fat.  When I get it figured out with measurements, I'll post it here.  I am also hoping to rope my husband into taking pictures of the first batch process.  Stay tuned!