Soap Problems: Where Did You Go Wrong!Notes About Some Common Soap Problems: When your soap is almost thick enough and you're hand stirring, now is the time to weigh out your essential oil in a very small bowl (not a plastic one because the essential oils will mar it) or shot glass. You want to weigh this now, because if you had weighed it before all that stirring, you have another soap problem, you're missing some of it. Pure essential oils are not stable. They evaporate away rather quickly. So weigh your essential oil or fragrance and pour it into your mixture. Stir well with a spoon. A stick blender used to stir in scenting material may seize your batch of soap! (If you will be using this soap for soap crafting, do not add any essential oil or fragrance.) If you'd like to avoid soap problem number #1, that white powder that forms on top of soap, you can put a layer of plastic wrap right on top of the soap. It needs to be touching the soap. That way the air won't react with the soap making what we call 'soda ash'. But that step isn't necessary; you can just scrape that white powder off when the soap is done. This step can also cause soap to overheat in the molds. Overheated soap (soap problem #2) has a bit of a rind appearance around the edges. You probably wouldn't notice it unless you cut into the soap. Overheating is also the main cause of a soap's scent disappearing. The soap can sour up to 200 degrees in the mold due to insulating it and this will cook your fragrance or essential oils. Many people mistakenly think this 'gel stage' is a desirable event, it is not. If your soap overheats, then remove whatever insulation you have on it and move it to a cooler spot. The soap is still great to use, it just has lost its scent typically and has a rind appearance in the soap. The most common soap problems (soap problem #3): There are no "air bubbles" in soap usually, but a stick blender can actually cause little tiny empty holes in the soap. If you have bubbles in your soap, and there is liquid in them then they are really lye pockets and this is not safe to use. If there are tiny pin holes with no liquid in them through the texture of the soap, these are caused by over stirring with a stick blender. They are nothing to be concerned about. Gone Cold (soap problem #4): If your soap goes cold during the first 24 hours or turns to mush, you probably lost the saponification process. There can be a lot of reasons for this. Your weights of oils or lye may have been off causing a bad batch. Or your temperature was not high enough with the fats and it just lost temperature. Or it just caught a chill. After thinking long and hard about what you did during weighing, and if you're sure your weighing was correct, then pour it into your soap pot, put it on the stove. Heat it while stirring constantly. When it reaches 130, remove from heat, pour back into a fresh mold.
|
