Teach Soap

It has been forever since I made a castile soap. I made one last night at 8% superfat. No water discount. No gel. I put it outside to cure at about 1 degree C for three hours and then brought it inside because it started snowing. It was a light trace when I put it in the molds. 14 hours later it is like a thick trace. I could sculpt the tops easily. I don't remember previous batches behaving this way and I did not mark this recipe as having problems in the past. I have double checked my recipe and all of the numbers seem to work. In the past I have done CPOP with castile and used a Pringles mold. This time there was no gel and I used a silicone mold. Shall I just wait it out and hope it will harden up?

P.S. This soap is for a cancer patient who starts chemo Apr 10th and radiation in 3-4 months. I realize that a 6 month cure results in the best castile, but I do not have the luxury of a six month cure here. I am hoping the soap will still be mild but I expect it will be somewhat slimy in that time frame.

If the soap did not gel, it's going to take some time before it hardens up. I would have gelled it. If you didn't cut it up yet and the mold is oven safe, I would put it in a low oven (170) til the soap gels.

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

It is now almost 24 hrs and still very soft. It is in an oven safe mold. Normally if I do CPOP, I would heat the oven to 170, turn it off and add the soap. Soap Buddy, in this case are you saying I should put it in the oven with it still turned on at 170? Will it gel after 24hrs? It does zap so there is plenty of active lye. It looks like soap, just with the texture of soft butter.

The last couple of times I did Castile I did end up with some DOS. That is why I used a different mold and tried to do it without gelling. The olive oil that I use is the same one that I use for all of my other soaps. For future reference, how much of a water discount can I safely go with? I did not want to change to many things at once.

I prefer not to gel most of my soaps. it can take up to three days for ungelled soap to saponify. Which means they can zap for up to three days. For castile only, I do a 40% lye solution, so it gets harder faster. I would put the soap in an oven safe mold, turn the oven on to 170(US) then leave the heat on and wait til the soap is in full gel. Then you can take it out and let it cool. Yes, you can do this with soap that's 24 hours old.

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