Teach Soap

If you want to avoid the alien brains, I would suggest using minimum water to dissolve the lye and add the rest of the water portion as goat's milk. Either when the lye water is just lukewarm or once your oils and lye are just mixed.

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

If you can find it (I got mine on amazon.com) Anne L. Watson has an excellent book on milk soapmaking. Highly recommend it!

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

Awesome, thank you for the recommendation, just found it on ebay and purchased!

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The Soapinatrix! *whip-crack*
- Posting the trials and tribulations of my Soaping Journey!

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

Sorry you've been having issues!

I agree--go back to basics. But if you still want to use goat's milk, you can do what I did today (because I didn't have goat's milk frozen cubes made up): measure out your distilled water according to recipe, and then measure out an ounce of dried goat's milk per kilo of oils (sorry to mix weights). Add some of the distilled water to the goat's milk powder, and mix like crazy. Then do you lye thing, oil thing, and at very thin trace, add the reconstituted goat's milk to the soap/lye. Mix. Works like a charm. No worry about alien brains.

The soap was pretty orange when I mixed it, but has gone a nice cream/yellow in the mold. No smell. It was a no-palm recipe that I found on BB--search for the avocado facial bar. It's very mild and moisturizing, especially with goat's milk.

Good luck!

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Lesli Sagan
Avital's Apiaries
Like us: http://www.facebook.com/AvitalsApiaries

Coolah, I know how you feel. I have done many many batches and all of a sudden, last night, I had a disaster. It was either ricing or seizing. I changed the recipe up some since I had Palm Kernel Flakes in lieu of my Palm Oil. I played around with SoapCalc most of the day to try to get the cleansing factor down and the hardness up. I don't know if the temperature was off or if it was the FO. What a mess.

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

My goat's milk is fresh - I get it from a goat farmer the day after it's been milked out.

Since freezing it first and doing it that way I don't have anymore alien brains, but I think after that episode, I've been too timid to turn the heat up. I have that making milk soap book coming, and been googling and researching all week so think I know where I was going wrong. Just need to get back into the kitchen... we're in a heat wave at the moment (going to be 40 degrees celcius here today), so it's hard going with the kids inside and then not sleeping at night.

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The Soapinatrix! *whip-crack*
- Posting the trials and tribulations of my Soaping Journey!

Interesting.... those two soaps I posted pics on of page one are now super smooth on the outside just like my first batch! The white spots have faded, and some almost look like they 'popped' for lack of a better word. Like there was an air bubble inside the white spot and now I can just see the outside circle with a whole in the middle.

They are so lovely and smooth to the touch though!

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The Soapinatrix! *whip-crack*
- Posting the trials and tribulations of my Soaping Journey!

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

Accuracy from batch to batch is in the beginning is so very very important when measuring ingredients, temperature fragrance, color when using. Writing down each batch so you know what went on will help you learn where possible inaccuracies happened in the batch. Notes are so important.

What type of scale are you using? What type of ingredients and where are you purchasing them from, a respected supplier? How do you measure your oils? Proper measurements and uses of oils and butters, milks etc usually come after one can consistently make good usable soaps, soaps that your human testers like!

Everyone has failures along the line especially when you begin experimenting. Most don't begin experimenting until they make consistent soap and are very confident of how their ingredients will react. My first failure is documented here so you can get an idea of what went wrong. How I saved the batch took 3 times and what the final soap looked like. Unfortunately to update the bars look good, but the fragrance was too processed after the 3 processes that it smelt of furniture polish. After all that I had to dump it! LOL

I'm glad you have read so many books about the process. That is why I'm having trouble understanding why your soap isn't to your liking.

Maybe the gremlins have left your home and headed east! Happy New Year and hoping soaping is getting easier for you!

Edited to add that the one and only CP book I used was this one:

The Everything Soapmaking Book: Recipes and Techniques for Creating Colorful and Fragrant Soaps (Everything: Sports and Hobbies) by Alicia Grosso Amazon.com

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~bytheSEAsoap~ Mella bythesea, bythesea, bythebeautiful sea

海の皂

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The Soapinatrix! *whip-crack*
- Posting the trials and tribulations of my Soaping Journey!

Pft! Not annoying at all hun, troubleshooting is part of the reason there is a forum... right folks? Your posts are also great for those of us who are still learning, we learn from your questions too!

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~~Heather~~
Mad [soaping] Scientist

Everyone learns from mistakes. I have no problems helping in this regard, unless you make a CP batch and sell it tomorrow without any regard to safety or how soap should be made or cured.

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

Coolah - not to worry, your questions, problems, concerns and successes are welcome here. We love reading about soapmaking, best thing next to making soap. We have all had our issues and if it had not been for this forum I would have continued to make the same mistake over and over. Who knows maybe I would just have gotten frustrated and gave up .... so for all the ladies and guys out there that have helped us grow we are sending a word of thanks and a big hug!!!

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Susie
Sometimes A Mistake is so much fun, You just have to do it again!