Teach Soap

Do you guys add EOs before or after trace. The reason I ask is b/c I've been adding my EOs after trace, the very last thing before pouring into the mold. But I ran across this paragraph in 'The Art, Science, & Biz of Aromatherapy, p 105:

"In the process of manufacturing cold process soap, , which means it is highly alkaline. Cold process soap makers try to work around potential problems by choosing EOs that are resistent to strong alkali or can accomodate the changes that occur in non-resistant scents and colors.

Have i been doing this wrong, or does the author mean that the lye will not be fully consumed until the bars are finished curing six weeks later, hence, 'essential oils are added before the lye has been consumed.' ?

Right after trace, lye is still very active. So adding the essential oils after trace makes no sense. The only exception to this would be if you add the essential oils after the cook in HP soap, but some do evaporate. This is because you need to add the essential oils to hot process soap while it's still pretty fluid and some EO's have a low flash point so they "flash off" or evaporate.

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

I am doing cold-process soap and adding them AFTER trace, immediately before. I thought that was what everybody did. So what am I supposed to do, add them to the fats before i add the lye solution?

It seems like the EOs are very fragile and trace is a chemical reaction, so it would be better to add EOs AFTER trace when things have calmed down a little bit and tracing has begun before I add the EOs the very last thing. My scents have been coming out pretty well, i thought. For a 18 lb batch i have to add about 7 ounces of EOs to get the good strong scent i want.

After trace, lye is still interacting with any oils, butters or fragrances that are in the pot. The saponification is not yet complete, so the lye will take whatever it wants. I add my essential oils to the melted and cooled off oils before I start mixing oils and lye water. Since each essential oil is used at different %, there is no one size fits all. For a 20 lb. batch, I use 0.7 of Lavender per lb. of oils. For others, like cinnamon or clove I use MUCh less.

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

Interesting. Thank you. I will try it both ways. I cannot think of anything it could be hurting adding the EOs after trace, so long as it does not seize, and there remains to possibility the fragile EOs are spared some of the violence of the initial saponification.

Trace is only the very beginning of the saponification process. If you want to add any essential oils at trace, that's your choice, but in my opinion it makes no difference, since lye at that point is not done.

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

I have done it both ways and have noticed no difference, and like soap buddy said the lye is just as much active at trace as it is before. if you are worried about stability you could as soap buddy said, HP or rebatch it or anchor it with clay or Litsea EO (there are other anchoring methods you can just do a seach of the forum)

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Anna Rose @-}--
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