Teach Soap

Hi!
Yesterday I put all my newbie efforts in a second recipe: 40% olive, 20% coconut, 20% sunflower and 20% soy bean, 10% lye discount, scented with Lemongrass EO and with and addiction of poppy seeds for scrub purposes. During the process, I encountered lots of problems equalizing the oil and water/lye temperatures. I tested the temperature several times with 2 cooking thermometers that do not fix to the recipients, so I had to put them in the liquids and pull them out all time time, wasting few drops. One of the thermometers also splipped in the oil pot and when I managed to retrieve it, it was obviously all wet.
Now, the naive question: could all this temperature taking plus the awkward incident (with the related liquid dispersion, although in minor quantities) have interfered with the correct balance of the recipe?

Is there a certain reason that you're trying to get the temperatures equal?
The removal of that little bit of water shouldn't affect anything.

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Genny

Temp of both don't have to be exact. Just as long as they are within about 10 degrees, you will be fine. Get yourself a laser thermometer. Places like Harbour Freight have them reasonably priced.

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

I wonder if they have Harbour Freight in Italy....
Either way, I am thinking I am gonna check out getting one for myself!

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Lisa
“What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul” ~ Yiddish proverb

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

Thank you all for your suggestions!
We don't have Harbour Freight here, but I'm sure I'll find a laser thermometer in hardware stores. The ones I saw on amazon.it were a bit pricey (circa 65 € / 80 $). Those sold on amazon.com are cheaper, but there's shipping to Europe.

About the reason why I tried to equalize oil and lye/water temperatures: when working on my very first batch I didn't care much about the temperature thing; I didn't use any tool to take it, just my hands. And the batch came out off, probably lye-heavy. So I thought: "I've been too shallow and self-confident, next time I'll strictly follow the book". Thus, yesterday I used thermometers to check if both liquids were at the same temperature of 45°C but they cooled off at different speeds (at some point one was at 70°C and the other at 50°C, it' a 30°F gap) so I had to re-heat the water/lye, etc etc etc.

It's not a good idea to reheat your lye. If it's too cool, you can place your lye water container in a pan of hot water to warm it up, but you should never heat it on the stove or microwave. You may have done it correctly, but I wanted to make sure you knew.

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

I don't take temps with my soaps, but I do with lotions and creams. I go by the feel of my hands, so I doubt that my oils and lye are at the same temp. I'm wondering if this was a small batch that you didn't reach true trace? You said that you used a 10% lye discount; did you mean 10% superfat? Did you use full water?

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

Soap Fail! I just unmoulded the batch we're talking about. I feel so discouraged right now.
Part of the soap went away with the knife and I guess the poppy seeds have stained it (see the brownish spot?).
To answer to your questions: the mixture reached trace after circa 8 minutes of stick blender. I put the EO in and stirred just a little more because the soap was now getting thick very quickly.
I heated my oils all together and used the amount of water and lye suggested by the BB calculator for a 10% superfatting level.
When I had the temperature problem I heated the lye water just as Linda said, putting it in the sink filled with warm water. Yeah, at least I did something good!

Irena's questions make me wondering if I may have misunderstood the superfatting thing : I assumed from my readings that there were 2 ways to superfat a soap. The first was to calculate the ingredients amount with a 0% superfatting level and then adding at trace an X amount of oil that I intended as superfatting agent. This seemed to me something suitable to an expert soaper so I chose the other way, the second.
The second way was to put a X% of superfatting level in the formula and let the calculator do the work for me calculating the exact amount of lye and water necessary to "eat" my oils leaving a X% superfat (in my assumptions, that would be a formula where the lye and water had been discounted). This is what I did. If I misunderstood the matter please tell me, your help is very precious to me since no one I know has any experience in soap making

This is the recipe:
olive oil 400 gr
coconut oil 200 gr
soy beans oil 200 gr
sunflower seeds oil 200 gr
10% lye amount 212,4 gr (approximated to 212)
water 700 gr.

And this is my soap disaster.

It looks lye heavy to me. Superfat and lye discount are the same thing. Since lye is still very active at trace, there is no need to add any oil or butter at this point. Lye takes whatever it wants. So calculate everything right up front including your superfat (lye discount) and add everything together.

I know there are soapmaking books and tutorials online that recommend adding extra butter or oil at trace, but that's an old wife's tale and isn't true. There is no guarantee that any oil or butter added at trace will end up as your superfat.

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

Then I'll keep on adding everything together upfront. Thank you!
About the soap in the picture: could I let it cure some weeks, gain more experience in the meantime and then rebatch it?

Your soap is indeed lye-heavy, so I'm not sure if leaving it to cure would much help. And according to Soapcalc you've applied too much water as well.
As others have already mentioned, you don't need to exactly fix the temperature of lye and oil, as Irena says, I rather rely on my hands to check the temperature. And it's true, as long as the temperature difference is up to 10 degrees celsius, there would be no problem at all. But if you're not quite comfortable and sure, then I suggest an infrared thermometer.
By Amazon.de they are not expensive at all. You can even look for it at any electronics shop, shops for crafts and hobby, etc.

Why don't you try to make smaller batches at the beginning, 300-500 gr. You may have a better feeling of trace and if anything goes wrong the waste is not too much.

I'm in Germany, not quite a neighbor to you but still near in comparison to USA. Let me know if I can do anything for you.

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Genius is 1 % inspiration and 99 % perspiration

Thanks Inspiration for the, ehm, inspirations!
I'll take a look on amazon.de for laser thermomethers, dispose of this batch and do all over again this afternoon with a smaller batch (with a lower superfat, as you suggested in the other post). I did my math again and you're right, my lye/water quantity were wrong, badly! I think I managed to mess even with the calculator.