Teach Soap

Hello. I realize I have been asking a lot of questions on here lately, but I seem to be having some trouble learning to make soap. I made my seventh batch of soap yesterday, and it was my first attempt at making milk soap. It was confusing and did not seem to go all that smoothly. I just ph tested the soap and it is reading about a 13 ph, and I'm not sure what went wrong.
Here is the recipe I followed:

9oz(255g) coconut oil
21oz(595g) olive oil
9oz(255g) coconut milk
4.1oz(116g) lye
1.5 TBSP pink kaolin clay (whisked into 2TBSP reserved olive oil and then added at trace)
.3 oz Strawberries n Champagne FO (added at trace)

I froze the coconut milk and then mixed it with the lye. It made a thick almost marshmallow like substance that was slightly off-white in color. After about 10 minutes of stirring, it thinned out slightly. The temperature never got very high at all. The recipe instructions that I had did not include any idea of what temperature things were supposed to be at. I ended up combining the lye and oils when the lye/milk was at 75F and the oils were at 89F. This was much cooler than any of the other soap batches that I had made but thougth that perhaps this was normal for milk soap (??) Anyways though I stirred with both the stick blender and with a spoon for about 10-15 minutes until it was at a light trace. I poured it into the mold and refrigerated it for 3 hrs before putting it out at room temp. Today I unmolded it and did several ph tests which all came out as a 13 ph.
Did I do something wrong? And what should I do with this soap now? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you all so much

Well, I would say that is too cold, and the solid coconut oil could have just resolidified while you were mixing. I think freezing liquids keeps the temp way down for the lye solution, so that was a success! But, if your lye was 70-something degrees, the oils were 90-something....that's lower than most soapers soap.

I don't know exact numbers, but the first day after soaping the pH *IS* quite high, then the next day a lot less, and so on.

I've not used coconut milk so I don't know about the marshmallowy effect...could be the lye was reacting with the fats in the coconut milk?

And questions? Ask 'em...otherwise, how will you know? And then how will *I* know?

I don't gel and put my molds in the fridge or the freezer, but I soap at around 110 degrees.
You can use minimum water amount to dissolve the lye. After the water cooled off, add teh room temp coconut milk.
The PH of ungelled soap will be higher for at least a couple of days. If the PH does not go down after that, the soap wasn't mixed properly due to such a low temp.
You can always rebatch.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

thank you both for the help ...soapbuddy, if I end up with a lye mixture that is way cool, what should I do with it? Should I put it in a warm water bath to try to get it up to appropriate soaping temperatures? Also, if you do what I did and soap at those low temperatures does it usually end poorly, or does it even matter as long as you mix everything well enough? Obviously it is probably better to always soap at a higher temp if possible, I'm just wondering what is most important, the temps or the amount of mixing? just curious

You could warm up the lye in a warm water bath, but you need to be VERY careful.
For me, both temps and good mixing are important.
Once you get a few batches under your belt (& follow all the safety precautions), you can try room temp oils and hot lye.
Just make sure that whichever fragrance you use that it doesn't accelerate trace.

_________________
Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

I always use frozen goatmilk so that I get a white color---I add the room temp to slightly cool lye/milk mixture to slightly warmer than room temp oils. That way you don't have as easy a chance of producing a "false trace" because the fats are solidifying in the too cold temps.

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