Teach Soap

My soap gremlins always seem to make my soaps soft, but this is a first. I made a batch of salt soap last night, in individual molds. 90% coconut, 10% cocoa butter, 20% superfat, regular salt 80% of the oil weight. Soaped at about 120F. Reached trace--and they aren't separating in the molds, just oddly soft. I ran the whole thing through soap calc. I've done variations on this a dozen times, and always had super hard bars. In fact, in the past I've used 10% castor instead of coca butter. You'd think the cocoa butter would made an even harder bar (if that's possible).

So I'm flummoxed. The only thing I can figure is I somehow misweighed the lye, but even so...

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Lesli Sagan
Avital's Apiaries
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Did you change the amout of water\liquid you used? Did you use honey in this batch? Does it pass the zap test? You are sure it did not overheat? I am thinking when you say you may have misweighed the lye you are saying less than needed which would give you a huge superfat? I once had a batch of lye that was partially 'dead' but for the sake of experimentation made the soap anyways. It did stay soft for a long time but did make for a very moisturizing soap. I never gave this soap to anyone, just use it for myself. I still have some (>1.5 years) and it has not gone bad yet. So maybe you should just give it some time.

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Susie
Sometimes A Mistake is so much fun, You just have to do it again!

No changes, other than subbing cocoa butter for castor. I always add honey, and the individual bars certainly didn't overheat. They didn't even gel. I'm pretty sure the lye is ok, since I just used it in other batches, and it heated up, as expected.

They did harden up after about 24 hours. I was just surprised, because my salt soap has always popped out of the molds overnight or sooner, rock hard. Huh. No idea why they were so slow this time. Oh well. On to the cure!

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Lesli Sagan
Avital's Apiaries
Like us: http://www.facebook.com/AvitalsApiaries