Saturday, March 16, 2013

Lye Heavy Soap

If you are a soaper you know what the title means... very sad...
If you are not a soaper, well, it's a longer story...  Lye heavy soap means it contains more lye than the fatty acid (from the oil and butter) can ever handle, therefore, excess free lye in the soap resulting in totally unusable soap because pH is so high it would "burn" your skin.  This is the worst nightmare to a soaper, worse than an ugly soap because at least you can call that soap!

Yes, this is THE batch...
So how did I find out this is lye heavy?  I knew I used a well behaving fragrance, slow trace recipe because I want to do time consuming multi spot funnel pour.  Sign #1, it traced faster than I expected.  But as you can see from the wet soap photo, still looked perfectly fine.  Sign #2, less than 12 hours the exposed surface (top) is already hard to touch.  Now that's unusual.  I used slow traced recipe plus no water discount, should not even firm up for 24 hours.  I was able to take it out of the mold without any struggle, slipped right out.  Sign #3, the raw soap crumb burned my paper cut fingers to pink.  Soap saponification usually lasts 24 to 48 hours depending on your recipe, sometimes even 72 hours.  My recipes usually take about 24 hours.  Nevertheless, the crumbs should not burn my wound.  It would feel harsh but not burn.  At that point my instinct told me something is not adding up.  I rushed back to my computer screen and stared at the lye calculator for a good few minutes... I started screaming and pulling my hair out...
What happened is that I was using the lye calculator for a new wool wash liquid soap recipe I'm developing.  That means the lye selection was set at KOH (potassium hydroxide).  Then I used it to resize my cold process batch so I can test out some new fragrance oils to see if I want to use any for future projects.  I totally forgot the lye setting was still at KOH not NaOH (sodium hydroxide).  There it is, the KILLER!!!
Oh why do you have to look and smell so good lye heavy soap?!  How am I supposed to throw you into the trash can now?!  You are killing me!

34 comments:

  1. Same thing happened to me not long ago....I nailed the colours and my swirls were perfect....I so feel your pain :(

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  2. Oh, what a pity! It's so beautiful! And it looks like it was a good-sized batch, too.

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  3. The same thing just happened to me as well. I forgot to add an oil to the batch. Your soap is so pretty too. I know it hurts to waste precious ingredients. Can't you re-batch it?

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  4. I feel your frustration and pain! I've done the same...I interchanged 4.6 to 6.4...it was a sad day when I realized I couldn't use my beautiful soap!

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  5. Oh no! That's the worst! Do you ever rebatch for laundry soap? The colors and design look gorgeous!

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  6. It's so gorgeous tho! Is there no way to fix it?

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  7. I feel with you!
    Someday something similar happened to me. I took the KOH instead of the NaOH to make CP Soap. And I was wondering why the soap wouldn´t get hard.


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  8. Oh man! That sounds frustrating! I am sorry, You can rebatch into laundry soap! What happened anyway? Lack of oil or too much lye? And “bbee” I had a batch of tea tree cp soap stay soft for a long time! It was because I used too much water! It is safe to use and we did. However you can remill without adding any water and it should be fine! :) Hey Emily...Have you ever had a batch separate on you? If so what did you do? -Emily age 15 http://sudsbythesea.storenvy.com/

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    1. If you use KOH to calculate our CP formula then you would end up with too much lye. So yes, my failed batch is very lye heavy. bbee had a different issue, she actually used KOH instead of NaOH to soap cold process. That means her soap is way under lye and would never get hard. KOH is lye used to make liquid soap, so you can imagine soap will never get hard.

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  9. Oh no! That's the worst! you could use it as a soap scent drawers or wardrobe..

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  10. Oh, I hope you rebatched it. Thanks for your videos. Your mica swirl tops are gorgeous.

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  11. So. I have a question for you. I have been making soap a lot lately and am definitely experimenting here and there with scents and products. I have a 3lb mold and stick to the recipe every time. I tried the zing test with my organic coffee and dark chocolate soap and felt a little something on the bottom. I am not quite sure if it was the lye or the concentrated chocolate at the bottom. Would I know if the zing was from being lye heavy or not? I would assume that the feeling is similar to licking a battery or something. Thoughts? Advise?

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    1. have you tried licking your other cured soap? Cured soap (that's not lye heavy) should taste like soap, which is yucky to me by the way, but it should not zap (or zing). Compare that to your coffee chocolate soap and see the difference. I don't think coffee and chocolate would cause the zap (yes like licking a battery).

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  12. Help my hot process soap has been cooking for about 1 and a half hrs butstill stings my toung whut should i do

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  13. I just made a batch of my favorite beeswax soap and forgot to add the shea butter - it is now quite a bit lye heavy (there is a lot of shea butter in this recipe). I am wondering if I can rebatch it by heating gently with the shea that I forgot to add. Wouldn't this work? Why or why not?

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    1. If your soap is quit new, like in 2 days or so then rebatch it would work. Just hot process it and add shea butter you missed last time. Your rebatch soap color would probably darken because of the cook but at least it would be normal soap. Or you can make it into laundry powder.

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    2. Thanks for the advice. I made it yesterday - will rebatch this afternoon. Sure hope this works as I love this soap.

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    3. Hi again,

      Just wanted to let you know, in case anyone else has this problem, how things turned out. My soap smelled very strongly of ammonia, but I cut it up anyway, added it to some warmed olive oil, and stirred, stirred, stirred. It melted quite well; I added the shea and poured it again. Other than a few spots of unmelted soap and a darkening of the color (this was a goats milk soap), it turned out pretty well - even the fragrance oil came through ok. It smelled slightly of ammonia for a few days after I poured it, but it has lost that now. Thanks again for your help - someday I hope to make beautiful soaps like you do!

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  14. Funny and informative. Thanks for posting. I just made a 50-bar mold CP pure soap (no additives or colorants), and forgot to add the shea butter and superfat! Just like you said, hardened up fast, and slid right out of the mold. The G-strings on my soap cutter hardly penetrated the soap (couldn't cut it), and that which was cut, was crumbly. Surprisingly, the zap test was ok.

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  15. Hi, just stumbled up this forum and I hope I can find some help!:) I have been soaping for about 4 years, but had a menopausal moment with a batch 2 days ago. I mixed up my lye amount with the water amount, but did not notice until I unmolded it and it was very dry and crumbly. I am sure that it was too much lye and know the exact amounts I used. Can I rebatch this by melting and adding the missing water? Thanks!

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    1. You can try rebatching it hot process, but you need to add the missing amount of oil, adding water is just to make it fluid enough to pour back to your mould.

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    2. I used 2 oz too much lye...i just added 6 oz ea of my oils and put it in the crock pot together with the 12 hrs soap...hopefully I get it fixed.

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  17. This just happened to use for the first time in 14 years. For our batch we used the right oils for a 6 lb batch but used the water and lye for a 14 lb recipe by mistake. I washed with a small piece of the soap after waiting 24 hours to unmold and had no burn at all or discomfort while using it. Does that mean it's usable for me if I leave it for months or do I have to throw it out?

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  18. I actually have a question????
    I made a batch of hot process goat milk soap and while adding oils and buttes realized I did not have enough sha butter so I did half sha and half palm oil and had already mixed lye and had not thought about recalculating lye portion... and when started mixing lye and oils oh my, came to a quick trace and had to cook for at least two hour before it was zap free.. or at least I thought.... also it quickly got hard/crumbley on top of mixture while cooking....
    it has now been 4 days and after cutting soap decided to just check lye testing again and oh goodness there was a defiantly a zap... question is will the lye eventually go out of soap or should I rebatch it or do I need to throw it??? thank you, karen

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    1. He there, I will try to answer your question. Shea butter has a lower saponification value than palm oil in general, meaning it requires more lye to saponify palm oil than shea butter. Therefore, even if you used 1/2 shea butter and replaced the other 1/2 with palm oil you should not have ended up with lye heavy soap even without recalculating your lye amount. If you hot processed it and 4 days later the soap is still zapping and crumbly, I'm afraid it is lye heavy. If your initial calculation was correct, it is possible that your scale was off and a mistake happened while weighing out your ingredients. Lye will eventually get neutralized by the vapor in the air, but it would take months or even year(s). If there is no way to find out how much oil you would need to neutralize the excess lye in your soap, it is the best to use it either for household cleaning or laundry and not use it to wash your body.

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  19. Hello, I made hot process soap and followed a recipe from wellness mama (coconut oil and olive oil recipe). The only thing I did differently was add avocado oil. Used the recommended amount of coconut oil, and half the recommended amount of olive oil, and the other half avocado oil. It didn't burn my skin when I used it, this morning, but it burned tonight, on my cheeks. I'm not sure why? Do I need to let it sit a little longer before using it, or what? Help!

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    1. When you substituted avocado oil for olive oil did you recalculate the recipe using a reputable lye calculator? Avocado oil has a lower saponification value than olive oil so it requires less lye. I don't know our exact recipe amount, but that's my first suspicion of culprit. Face skin is the most sensitive part of our body, usually what doesn't seem to burn our body skin sometimes will burn our facial skin. Hot process soap doesn't need to cure much because the nature of hot process meaning it is already saponified to be soap by the end of the cook.

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  20. I didn't. I'm new to soap making, so I didn't know I would need to do that. I did use less lye than it required, though, because I didn't have anymore left. It wasn't much less, but less than required. Either way, I just washed my face, again, tonight, to see if it would still burn. It didn't, at first, but it does, now. I'm not sure if it burns because it wasn't healed from when it burned, before, or if it's still just the soap.

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  21. Do you have a good recipe you could give me that I could double as a shampoo? I just bought a candy thermometer, and also a digital scale, so I can be exact with the weights.

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    1. My hair does not like soap because it's alkaline. A lot of people cannot use soap as shampoo because the same reason especially if you live in hard water area. Human hair just does not like alkaline cleaner in general. Soap opens up hair scale and damage the hair shaft which is not repairable because hair is dead, not live like our skin, hair does not regenerate. If you live in hard water area, when your hair scale opens up during wash, soap scum will accumulate inside each hair shaft and permanently damage the structure making your hair fragile and frizzy. It is more obvious in long hair vs. short hair. If you are a beginner soap maker, I suggest you reading soapqueen's blog, she also has quit a collection of very professionally done videos, and all free, you just really have to do your study: https://www.soapqueen.com Good luck.

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  22. If you use it on your skin, won't it be like a skin peel? I mean, we pay for chemical peels all the time, so.....I'd still keep it and experiment on myself.

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