So I made a coffee soap a couple of months ago with fresh coffee grounds in it; I found them a bit TOO scrubby for my personal taste, although some of my testers have liked them that way.
This past weekend I tried using already-used grounds, based on commentary here on the forum (at least I think it was here...). Soap got a bit too hot at gel stage and cracked, so I'm not sure if heat was a factor, but when I cut the soap, I was disturbed to find it looking like THIS:
Gaaaah, eeeewwww!! XD The coffee grounds have "haloes", and on the outside edges of the soap, you can actually feel these bubbles as having expanded beyond the rest of the bar.
I pH-tested the soap and it came out to a nice normal 9~9.5, and I used a little bit to see how rough or not the grounds were; it feels fine, no weirdness of texture or oiliness or anything.
Here is my recipe, for reference. I did all my measurements in grams (thank you, soapcalc) but since I saved the weights as oz in my recipe spreadsheet...
16 oz batch, 7% superfat
4.8 oz (30%) 3x strength coffee (made from distilled water)
4.48 oz (28%) coconut oil
3.84 oz (24%) palm oil
2.4 oz (15%) olive oil
2.4 oz (15%) rice bran oil
1.6 oz (10%) cocoa butter
1.28 oz (8%) castor oil
2.216 oz lye
1 Tbsp used coffee grounds
I am wondering if the "haloes" are caused by residual water in the coffee grounds; if other are adding used coffee grounds to their soaps, is there a trick to it?
Any thoughts?
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Coffee soap does tend to smell REALLY bad for at least the first few days, something about the coffee and lye mixing together. When you cut it, you can check for zap if you're worried about too much lye, but you can generally expect it to stink for a while until it cures. Later it might not have much scent at all, since coffee tends to wipe out scents 