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!
