Teach Soap

If it has oil pockets you will need to rebatch. At what temps did you combine all the ingredients? Did you use a stick blender? At what trace did you pour? Did it gel? That's a lot of cocoa for that size batch. It's possible that the cocoa powder sucked up any extra liquid and that's why you have oil pockets. You might also convert the ozs. to grams. It's more accurate for smaller batches. I presume you ran this recipe through a lye calc?

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

A stick blender "emulsifies" oils and lye. A hand mixer does not have enough shear to do this. I would like to bet that's where your problem is. As far as the temp of your oils, if you can put your hand on the side of the pot and it's quite warm, but not burning hot you should be ok. I use a laser thermometer for my lotions and it came from Harbour Freight online.

The biggest reason people burn out their stick blenders is because they leave it on the whole time. It is best to turn it on for a while, turn it off and use the stick blender off as a manual hand blender, then turn it back on and repeat til you get trace.

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

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

Hey Barb- I'm new to soaping but I tried my first couple batches with a hand mixer trying to make it by and not wanting to invest in equipment and they came out okay but I REALLY notice a differance now that I have a stick blender my trace times are quicker, the mess is less, and the soaps are overall better. I did buy a "used" like new hamilton on amazon for less than $8 and got free shipping because I bought it with a few presents. So you don't need to go all out. It works great and has a whip too which has been great for my little guys butters. I would guess the mixing issue is your problem.

Hi Barbara59, I made soaps for about a year by whisk, before I bought a stick blender. My soaps are far better now, their texture is finer, and they harden better than before. I would never go back to the whisk, it just doesn't make a good enough at blending thoroughly. BarbaraMay

@Barbara59 ...

I ran your recipe through a lye calculator (I used the thesage.com one b/c it has coffee butter) and you might have too much lye. The amount you're using right now shows as giving you 0% superfat (i.e. the calc shows you need 4.77 oz of lye for 0% SF ... yikes!)

Please double check my numbers but this might be the problem? Though the large amount of cocoa powder, as Irena suggested, might be interfering with things too. I'd be tempted to make your recipe using a lye calculator and without the cocoa powder (or a very small amount as it doesn't really give any scent from my experience) and see what happens.

PS: So sorry to hear about your "oil spill" incident! That would've scared the heck outta me! I hope you wear a really sturdy apron A good reminder though because sometimes I forget to put mine on!

Karri

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I soap therefore I am.

You're right Karri. It is lye heavy. I just presumed that the recipe was run through a lye calc. For a 7% superfat, I get 4.45 ozs. of lye. 4.8 ozs. of lye is NOT a 6% lye discount. For the coffee you would need between 8 to 12 fluid ounces.

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

We solved the Mocha Mystery! Happy dance
Karri

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I soap therefore I am.

@Barbara59

Darn! But yeah, something is still odd here because BB's site shows 4.85oz of lye for 6% SF while The Sage shows almost the SAME amount (4.77oz) for 0% SF!

Brambleberry and TheSage must be using different SAP values for coffee butter (or one of the ingredients but I'm thinking the coffee butter because that's a less common ingredient).

Karri

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I soap therefore I am.

I always use soapcalc.net for my lye calculator, but they don't have coffee butter listed, so I ran it through the lye calculator on the Soaper's Choice/Columbus Foods site and for 6% SF it said to use 4.452 oz lye. I think it's very interesting that they all have different lye amounts for the same SF %. Weird...

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

It must be the coffee butter. Someone aught to email BB and let them know.

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