Teach Soap

I found a can at the grocery store last night and decided to buy some to use in soap. I was so excited to find it until my lovely boyfriend asked "How the heck do you use that in soap?" and I didn't have a clue. A little help, my soapmaking friends?

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ween rules

Use minimum water to dissolve your lye. Mix the milk with the rest of the water called for in a recipe. Add the milk at thin trace. Use the recommendations on the can to reconstitute the milk.

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

If you have never used goat's milk before be aware of a couple things. Your Lye, water, goats milk solution will likely turn yellow or very orange and smell strange. It may also start to curdle the milk and leave lil lumps in the mix. First off don't worry about it to much. There are a couple things you can do to reduce this.

You could put your container that you mix the lye, water, milk into an icewater bath this will keep the temps lower and cause less discoloration.

You could partially of even totally freeze the milk into ice cubes and add them to the mix after the lye and water are mixed. ( this is what I do )

Goat's milk soap will always be a pale to dark tan regardless of the FO you use the heat makes the color. Goat's milk has alot of sugars in it and thus heats up quite a bit. If you don't like to gel your soaps Goat's milk soap will requie you keep it in the frig to keep it from gelling and even then you may still get some gel.

All my soaps are made with goats milk and people seem to really like the way it works for them.


So don't get to worried about if your lye mix gets orange or smells a bit odd it will all come out fine once the soap has set over night and you will enjoy the feel of the goats milk soap.

Thanks for the tips jethro!

Soapbuddy, so I should take the amount of water it says to reconstitute it with, split it up, mix the lye with some and reconstitute the milk with the rest, add the lye water like normal, then add the milk at light trace? Just making sure I'm understanding this.

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ween rules

Wow you guys, this is way over my head. Good luck on your evaporated goats milk recipe!

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~bytheSEAsoap~ Mella bythesea, bythesea, bythebeautiful sea

海の皂

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

Soapbuddy- I see what you're saying. This is a condensed, unsweetened liquid that gets mixed with equal parts water to make the milk. Would it work the same way as you said below?

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ween rules

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

Lol! That's where my confusion was. Thanks for spelling it out for me soapbuddy, I can't wait to try this!

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ween rules

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

Yup. Jethro's down with the goats!

The condensed I've seen is reconstitute w/equal parts water, so what I do is freeze the milk in trays, (12oz I think) and then dissolve the lye with 12oz H2O....voila! When the Lye water has cooled, I add the GM cubes and dissolve. Then I make sure I'm doing it right before payday so I can fit my log mold in the fridge.

Ok, so I finally got around to making my milk soaps this weekend. When I bought the goats milk, I had also picked up a can of coconut milk that I wanted to try. For the goats milk, I just mixed equal parts aloe water and goats milk together, froze it till it was slushy and then added the lye to the whole shebang. It turned the obligatory orange-y color, but did not scorch or do anything funky (whew!). I scented with BB Mayan Gold, and it came out awesome!

The coconut milk...well... not so much. It was thicker, and therefore harder to pour once the lye was added, which did not help my nerves because it was tracing so quickly. I added kelp to it which has given it an odd smell mixed with BB's Arabian Spice. We'll just have to wait and see how they both came out! Thanks for the tips in the forum, they help out tremendously!



(Left is Coconut milk soap, Right is Goats Milk soap)

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ween rules

Good job! Was there any guar gum in the coconut milk? That might have caused a faster trace. Also FO's with spices tend to accelerate trace.

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

Yes, there was guar gum in the coconut milk, which I had read in another thread is known to accelerate trace. I was also aware that spices accelerate and figured I'd take my chances. Knock on wood, I haven't had a batch seize or go crazy, so I was kind of tempting fate to throw a tough one at me. I still made it into the mold ok though! It just smells kinda gross.

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ween rules

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