Teach Soap

HELP! I had 3 attempt in total to try making milk soap and failed...

1st time I freeze low fat milk into ice pouches and use it to dissolve lye instead of water. It's hard to stir when you try to mix fine lye beads with hard frozen milk. For some reason the lye would not totally dissolve, it left tiny dusts in the lye solution and when mixed with oil it just would not trace at all.

2nd time I used half cold milk half frozen milk to tried again. It was fine until the last 1/3 of lye the milk totally heated up and and the lye solution started to stink and looked like pudding.

3rd time I used frozen milk in slush form thinking it should be easier to stir and cold enough to not overheat. Still, no luck, it became yellow pudding again.

What went wrong? How do you make a nice white milk soap?!

Please help a frustrated soap newbie!

Most milk soaps will not end up white. I would use half the water your recipe calls for as your liquid, then add the rest as room temp milk after you mix the lye and oils together.

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

I'm making soap at 50 C temperature. If I use half water for the lye and add room temperature milk would that overheat the milk and breaks down the protein again?

I would drop the temp to about 40 to 45 C. Don't insulate and put your mold in the fridge if need be to help prevent gel. Ungelled soap does take longer to completely saponify, but the soap bars will be lighter in color. You just need to leave it in the mold longer.

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

Thanks so much! I'll try tomorrow!

You're welcome. I hope it comes out just the way you envision it.

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

Report:
I made a small 1lb batch yesterday with hal water and half milk @ 40C just like soapbuddy suggested. Covered it with wax paper and left it outside on the counter. I didn't pt it in the frig since it does get pretty cold in northern CA at night. I just opened it and demold it. Everything looks perfect but 2 problems:
1. all the FO and EO smells totally disappeared, smells like nothing
2. I used Lab Color to color my soap, pink and orange, for layered sorbet look. Strange thing is the orange came out perfect but the pink started out great and ended up with small spots of concentrated color (like aged spot).
/Users/apple/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Modified/2010/Jan 9, 2010/IMG_0355.JPG

Any idea what happened?

What scent did you use and how much? Sounds like the pink needed to be shaken before you used it, or possibly more diluted. Is the color a concentrate?

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

I meant to upload a photo I took, I hope this time it works!




It's the lab color from Bramble Berry. I guess it is concentrated. I used the electrical egg beater to mix and it looked fine before pouring. And then it is not fine a day later.

I used Save on Scents extreme concentrate FO in Glow J. Lo (type), almost 1/4 oz (instructed by Save on Scents) per lb. And I also put some lavender Eo in it too.

1/4 oz. per lb. is not much at all. Their extreme concentrates are not as strong as they would like you to believe. I would have used anywhere from 0.5 to 0.7 PPO. Electrical egg beater does not have enough shear to properly mix everything. Are you able to get a stick blender?

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

I've been using 1/4 oz per lb ratio for extreme concentrate FO, it's not strong but I like that light smell. This time the FO just totally disappeared. And I thought maybe it's the milk soap or it's the sodium lactate, that's the only difference between my other batches and this one.

This question might sound silly, but what is PPO?

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

Got it. I really like the FO but I guess it's just not meant for CP soap. Thanks for your help!

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