Teach Soap

The other day I was using Goat Milk as my liquid for CP, so I froze the milk into cubes and poured the lye over them. I had to stir a good bit, but once it was all incorporated I took the temp and the lye-milk was at room temperature.
So it got me thinking.....would there be any disadvantage to doing this same technique with the water itself? I find myself waiting longer than I want to for the lye water to get to a reasonable temp to use (don't feel comfortable doing the hot lye over solid oils technique), and thought this might drastically cut down my wait time.
Any thoughts? Perhaps I could try half room temp water and half frozen water to see what temp I end up with. Or would it help to just refrigerate the water before putting the lye in? Any potential danger in this?

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Carrie
Wife to my Best Friend and Homeschool mom to 7 beautiful gifts

The only concern I have when I do this with my GM is that the lye doesn't dissolve properly. From my personal testing, my lye needs to reach a minimum 32 degrees to be fully dissolved.

If you're wanting to short cut the cool down process, can you put your lye container into an ice bath? I have a small SS jug that I mix my lye in, and once mixed, I pop the jug into a bowl with fridge water in it and only have to wait 5 minutes for my lye to drop a good 20 degrees...

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

Coolah....thanks for the response. So when you use GM, are you using liquid (or powder)? If liquid, do you use it at room temp, or colder? I'm still new at using GM, and read lots of places that people suggest freezing it first. But perhaps that's not necessary?

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Carrie
Wife to my Best Friend and Homeschool mom to 7 beautiful gifts

Definitely need to freeze it. I use 100% liquid GM replacement for my water. What I do is pre-measure out the amount I need as I tend to make the same size batch every time. I freeze mine into cubes using an ice-cube tray, then pop those cubes into a zip lock back pre-measured.

When I'm ready to make a batch, I take out one of the zip lock backs and pop the frozen cubes into my lye jug. Sometimes I need to bang the cubes on the bench to break them up a bit. The one thing I do different to some others, is I don't put my lye in bit by bit... I just tip the whole lot over the ice cubes. After about a minute, the reaction between the outer edge of the frozen GM and the lye starts and as that becomes liquid, it heats up and melts the ice below. Snowball effect is that the heat generated as the lye dissolves melts the rest of the frozen GM.

The most important thing here is to stir, stir, stir!! I'm getting good at mindlessly stirring slowly while I read a book, watch TV, etc. I generally spend about 15 minutes just slowly stirring everything so that the lye doesn't sit in one spot and scorch the milk (turns it orange). This also helps ensure everything is dissolved properly.

Because you can't see with milk when it's dissolved, use temperature to gauge. Once the temp stops rising, then you know all the lye is dissolved. If the temp is still going up - even by the smallest amount, keep stirring.

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

If you do that step first, then pop the mixture into a bowl with fridge water just to help it cool down more, by the time you've got your oils and everything else ready, your lye/milk will be cold enough to use.

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

I put my lye water container down inside another bucket filled with ice water too. This helps a lot with the wait time. Usually by the time I get my oils ready I only have to wait 5-10 minutes, depending on how quickly I am moving.

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Laura<3

Sounds like I'm doing a similar method with my GM batches (but putting the lye in bit by bit.....your way sounds like it might work better).
I'm assuming the lye dissolves enough with the GM ice cubes because of the sugar in the GM heats the solution up, right? But that might not be the case with regular ice cubes----just may make the mixture too cold to adequately dissolve the lye?

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Carrie
Wife to my Best Friend and Homeschool mom to 7 beautiful gifts

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

I generally will do 50 to 60% of the water weight in ice cubes and then the remainder in liquid water. The lye starts to dissolve immediately and as long as I stir, it all dissolves quickly and stays at a semi lower temp. It does help keep the lye at closer to useable temps but allows it to get hot enough to completely dissolve.

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Haven

Thanks for the ideas and helping me think through things.....I appreciate it!
Will be trying out some new methods/techniques in my upcoming batches

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Carrie
Wife to my Best Friend and Homeschool mom to 7 beautiful gifts

I keep my water jugs in the fridge. It helps a bit

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Lesli Sagan
Avital's Apiaries
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Carrie
Wife to my Best Friend and Homeschool mom to 7 beautiful gifts