Teach Soap

I knew it had to happen sometime, but it was still a shock when I discovered DOS last night. The dark orange spots glared sullenly at me from my 100% coconut, 20% superfat fisherman's soap that was born in late February. Since this soap was strictly for personal use, it wasn't stored near any of my other soaps. They are hopefully spared from catching the pox.

I can't for the life of me figure out why this happened, and I'd appreciate any trouble shooting ideas you all may have. The coconut oil was LouAna, brand new with a 2016 expiration date. The one thing I can think of is that I used small yogurt containers for molds. Life interfered and they stayed in those molds for a solid week. Was it too long in the mold and not getting enough air? I check my soaps every few days and they were fine last time I fondled them. Instead of binning them immediately, I moved them to another room just to observe the changes, and they're coming hard and fast. More and larger spots have appeared just since last night, but so far there is no rancid odor.

All this begs another question. How can you detect DOS if you have a mostly dark-colored soap? Wait until it stinks enough to notice? I don't sell but would hate to gift someone a rancid soap. Yikes!

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Jennifer
Doing my best to blow up my kitchen. In style!

I only had that happen to one batch of pure castile. I wonder if it was because of the yogurt containers and you left soap in there for a week. Soap needs to breathe. Those DOS spots are normally still visible in a dark color soap. The DOS in a dark soap can look orange with a grayish cast, or a yellow brown color. Is it humid where you are?

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

Yes, it's usually pretty humid here. I live about 30 miles inland of the upper Texas Gulf coast, and while we had a cold winter, the humidity was all over the place. Either dry as a bone or wringing wet. Plus, this time of year my husband is a fresh air, open window fiend no matter how humid it gets or how much pollen is in the air, so that may well have played a part. After this experience, I'm definitely shopping for a dehumidifier before the heat and humidity skyrocket - which can happen any time now.

I'm hoping it was just a combination of humidity and leaving the soaps in their little plastic prisons too long. I can't believe how sad it was to discover those blasted spots. It was like watching a litter of kittens expire before my eyes.

Thanks so much for the info on identifying DOS in the darker soaps. That really had me concerned. Now I'm just watching the desecration of my fisherman soaps and documenting the rot for future reference. Since I can't smell anything bad yet, I want to see when or if it happens. What's really surprising to me is how fast the damage is spreading. I had two of the six soaps that had no symptoms last night, but are thoroughly poxed today. Boo hoo hoo!

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Jennifer
Doing my best to blow up my kitchen. In style!

I know you mentioned the humidity, but I wouldn't store the soap in closed plastic boxes til they cure. Plastic traps the moisture coming out of the curing soaps.

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

I don't store any soap in plastic boxes. In fact, as humid as it is down here, I don't use much plastic at all for most things because of the condensation issues. These particular soaps were in a nice-sized box all by themselves with plenty of room between them for air circulation and they were still completely naked. I also flipped them over every time I checked on them. The soaps I give away to my test panel don't get wrapped and labeled until right before they go out the door. After reading so many posts here, I figured the more air the soap could get for the longest amount of time possible, the better off they'd be. I've also learned that six weeks is the bare minimum I'm willing to go before they leave home. Any earlier and they're just not hard enough, even when I CPOP. I can't begin to imagine how that time will increase from June through September. I'll have to start Christmas soaps by the 4th of July.

One nice thing about the whole DOS episode is that my husband wants me to convert our guest room into a soaping room and office. I think I'll discover just how seriously he meant that comment sooner than he realizes.

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Jennifer
Doing my best to blow up my kitchen. In style!

Sounds like a dehumidifier would be ideal or a separate room when you can control the humidity. I hope you get your very own soap room!

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

I found a couple of great articles from Kevin Dunn (Scientific Soapmaking) that are applicable to my DOS issue.


The one he wrote about DOS was an eye-opener for me, particularly when you see that superfatting really isn't the issue. I wondered about the 20% superfat being the culprit, but that didn't make sense because that seems to be fine for coconut oil. It appears that using a lower superfat won't prevent DOS or cause it if you use a high percentage. In his experiment, a 0% superfat soap was compared to a 10% superfat soap. Both got DOS at the same time, although the 10% superfat soap showed more color over time. Even more interesting is that he found that coconut oil is pretty resistant to DOS. Since my soaps were 100% coconut oil, I read on to another of Kevin Dunn's articles on water discounting, and think I've found the culprit.



If you look at page 3 on the right side under the heading, "Coconut Oil Soap," Dunn notes that coconut oil soap holds on to water longer than the palm soap it was compared to. "Because coconut oil soaps take longer to lose moisture than do palm soaps, the advantages of using less water are more pronounced for these soaps."

So there were my poor little soaplings, birthed with full water, gasping for air and drowning in their little plastic prisons for a full week. Add in some high humidity and they probably never had a chance. Both articles are well worth the reading, and I'll be purchasing "Scientific Soapmaking" very soon.

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Jennifer
Doing my best to blow up my kitchen. In style!

Wow, those are fascinating articles; thanks for posting, JennyBee! I desperately want to get that book, too!!!

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Olivia :)