Teach Soap

Hi. I am following the BB liquid soap ebook. I made the olive and castor base and the base turned out as it should.

I made one batch with the base using a 5:1 ratio, water to base. This batch turned out perfectly with just adding a few drops of salt water to thicken.

The next batch I did the same, but I could not get it to thicken at all. I added even more salt water, but it would not thicken. I poured it into the pump bottle as it was and now it is separating, clear on the bottom and pearly on top. It is still pretty runny.

The batch I made the next day was 10 oz base and 50 oz water. I did everything the same as the first, cooking it down in the crock pot until the base was melted in and let it simmer for another hour or so. The resulting soap is so thin, I haven't even tried to thicken this batch.

I am not sure how I was able to get the first batch to turn out perfectly and the others not. Can I add more base to the thin soap that I already made to thicken it up?

Also, the very first batch I made (the perfect one), when it was done simmering and I allowed it to cool off, it had a pretty thick skin of soap on top. I scraped it off and it did not skin again. The other batches did not get this skin.

Please help! Thanks. I still have a lot of the base left and I would hate to waste it (throw it out in frustration!)

How long did you cook the first batch? How long the second?

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

Once the base was completely melted in (several hours), I let it simmer for about an hour.

Did you add any color or scent to it? Sometimes that can make the batch go runny or thin.

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

The good batch was made with BB Kumquat and the second was BB Apricot Freesia. The third is still sitting in its runny diluted state as I don't know what to do with it.

Some fragrances will thin liquid soap. You could try boiling off some of the water, but you could boil off the fragrance too. The third batch you can boil off some of the water since it has no fragrance added. Liquid soap is a strange beast.

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

I hate to bring up such an old thread, but I am having the exact same problem. I got BB's soap paste and followed the directions to a T. Now I have the bottom half of the bottle with clear liquid and the top have is white liquid. It's also the consistency of water! I added no color but added Vanilla Select and VCS (from WSS specifically for liquid soap and lotion) added a bit (less than an ounce) of salt water to thicken it up, but nothing. It's water! And I really don't understand this weird separation.

Can anyone please help with this???

Thank you
Brandy

The first issue was making soap from scratch - it could have been the fragrance with that one or it could be that there was unreacted fats in there. If there are unreacted facts, the soap never will thicken up no matter what you do.

The second issue using the paste is the fragrance oil. I would pull out the VCS. I used that Vanilla Select fragrance for some of the 300+ sample bottles I made for the Soap Guild Show last year. It went brown but it was fine and stayed clear.

There is nothing you can do with the soap that is separated except put it in a Foamer Bottle and use it as-is. It will not get thicker once the base has 'broken.'

I'm making some from-scratch soap today with a student from Lebanon and we're going to cover fragrance and separation today.

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Happy Soaping!

Anne-Marie
blog: www.soap-queen.blogspot.com
supplies: www.brambleberry.com