Teach Soap

Hi. Can somebody tell me if I ought to throw out this batch? I allowed the lye to cool down overnight in a SS pot that was mostly covered so it couldn't breath so the lye didn't dissolve properly- that is my hypothesis and if somone could tell me if that makes sense I'd appreciate it. I took out most of it w/ a spoon but should have evidently used cheesecloth or started over w/ new lye and wait for cool-down so as to not waste the oils.

Should I throw it out? It's 15 lbs of soap but it's speckled w/ lye. That might burn somebody, right? Can I put on sale for a discount maybe to my non-sensitive skin customers?

I took a pic on my phone but don't know how to re-size it to the allowable 25 kib.

It is not safe to sell at all! I find if you stir the lye back up a lot of times it dissolved but if it isn't 100% disolved in the water then no amount of straining will help get everything out. My grandfather once bought lye heavy soap at a store and he refused to use any handmade soap (not even mine) until I described to him in detail 10 or so time what happened to the soap, so if you do sell it then you could (and probably will) turn people away for cold process soap(yours and everyone elses) forever and that just isn't good

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Anna Rose @-}--
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haha that is what I thought but I wanted someone to confirm b4 I throw loafs in the trash. Dangit. Oh well, lesson learned. It is better to let your lye cool naturally & uncovered, even if u have to spoon a couple gnats out of your lye water in the morning, rather than do what I did and lose the whole dang batch.

Thanks Rosie.

your welcome and some times I just put a paper towel ontop it lets it breath and no gnats!

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Anna Rose @-}--
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But it happened again. This time it was left uncovered. There was still some flakes so i heated it up to 160 trying to stir them in. I hope I didn't get some bad lye or i left it open or something. I have not had that problem before, let alone twice in a row. This time there not nearly as much lye floating in the water but i still got speckled soap. AND i filtered the lye water w/ paper towels. I hope something got on my blender attachment like some coffee grinds got into solution.

You should not be heating up your lye water. That's very dangerous. If it happened again, I would get a different lye.

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

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Anna Rose @-}--
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No i do not stir my lye water every two minutes. Seriously? I've never had to do that before in order to not have this problem.

I think i just got a bad bottle of lye. Covering the pot, just barely cracked, i think contributed greatly to the problem on first batch. Second batch, i stirred often, if not every two minutes.

That is good to know about not heating up lye water. Ok, won't do that again. I need to get a full face mask- yeesus. Scary. I mix stuff in my boxers all too often wearing just the eye protection and not even that sometimes. Just got me some BB goggles. Glad they didn't send me pink ones or some-such.

Geez a bad bottle of lye is going to cost me like 30 pounds of product, oils, & butter.

where is it from?

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Anna Rose @-}--
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BB, of course. That's where I get all my stuff from. I love BB. This is the first time I have ever gotten any bad lye from them.

At first I thought maybe it was the chlorella I was using for colorant, bc I just mixed up a new batch in my Vitamix, but I don't think so bc the lye was so undissolved in the pot during the first batch that I actually took a pic. I wanted to post it here but I have no idea how to convert a jpeg to under 24 kib. That is MUCH smaller than the lowest pixel setting on my smartphone.

This time I did not throw the soap out. When it cures in six weeks I will update this thread to let everyone know if the soap is bad or not due to lye speckles. I will test it on myself.

Oh, yikes! You should definitely call BB customer service and let them know what's going on! They may be able to help you problem solve - or if there is something wrong with the lye they can help resolve that as well (and check the remaining stock).

I have heard of flakes coming off dishes when people washed their lye containers a certain way, but can't remember the details. Anyone?

I stir my lye water until it dissolves immediately. I don't just stir every 2 minutes or let it sit at all.

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Shanon
Woman, wife, mother, entrepreneur,etc, etc.
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