thecandlespastore

Rebatch Soap By thecandlespastore Hello all! I had to rebatch for the first time in quite a while this week and thought I would take some pics and do a tutorial for the forum. Rebatching is not as hard as it seems, and it’s even easier with fresh soap (as in soap that is less than 3 weeks old.) In fact, it’s quite easy and should take less than 50 minutes. The things you will need to rebatch your soap: A crock pot that can hold your batch (6 quart or larger) or Double Boiler Cutting Board Good sized knife If your soap is over 5 weeks old, have a cup of distilled water or fluid of your choice. You can add the fluid 1 teaspoon at a time to increase fluidity in your soap, but usually you will not need additional fluid. If your soap is under 4 weeks old, please do not use any additional fluid, it should still have enough in it to melt. You do not want a runny rebatch, more times than not it will never harden or take forever to harden. The smaller you cut the soap, the easier it will melt down and be uniform. Now on to this batch. I needed to restock some Mango and Papaya to make myself feel like spring had finally arrived (even though its still freezing here!) I planned for a 4 color swirl, the batch was going to be gorgeous. I had already used this same exact recipe to make 4 prior batches the same night. It was 1:30 in the morning and I had had 1 wine cooler. I really don't know why this batch reacted the way it did, but it could have been my low tolerance for alcohol and not thinking clearly because of it that made me fubar this one. But here it is in all its glory: Quite gross if I do say so myself!! I guess not stick blending it and hand whisking it instead was not such a great idea, since that is the only thing I can think of that I did differently. The soap did not zap when I tasted it (by touching it with my finger and then tasting the finger of course, learned my lesson licking a bar of soap with my tongue years ago!) I am going to take a guess that the fragrance was not fully incorporated which gave me this oozing mess. After letting it sit for a week and a half to see it if would miraculously firm up and absorb the oil, I realized that it was not going to happen. So I: 1. Turned on my crock pot so that it could be piping hot when I was ready to go. This speeds up the process and cuts at least 20-30 minutes out of your time. 2. Cut my soap bars in half, then sliced the bar into 8 pieces, and poured into my crock pot: 3. Soap after 20 minutes of cooking: 4. 15 minutes later I added a touch of honey just for the heck of it: 5. At this point I realized that all those pretty colors were finite and that I had to do something if I did not want to end up with pea green mango and papaya soap. So I grabbed one of my neon oxides and did a quite color fix: 6. Scooped a bit of the soap out and stirred it into the color: 7. Glopped back into the main batch and did an in the pot swirl marble: 8. Spooned into my Tony Molds and set them aside. Notice the soap is still pretty fluid and scoop able, no additional fluids were needed: The finished bar unmolded the next day after a quick 1 hour detour in the freezer, popped right out of the mold. Sometimes a rebatch will have to sit in the mold an extra day or two to shrink a bit. If you use a log mold make sure to bang the crap out of it to get out any air bubbles when you pour into your mold. Same thing with using a slab mold:

Whipped Soap By thecandlespastore It is easy to formulate a cream soap recipe using soap calc. I like to use 25%-40% stearic and 20-30% coconut or palm kernel. You can go higher and lower. The rest I make with conditioning oils and butters. We will use 22 oz of oils/butters. This is a 22 oz batch to start. This batch is also going to be at a 6% superfat/discount. You will need 5.2 oz of glycerin, which will go into the oils and butters at the very beginning to be melted together. A sample recipe: 30% stearic 15% coconut oil (you can sub for all the palm kernel, so it would be 30% coconut...) 15% Olive 15% Palm Kernel (you can also sub this for all of the coconut) 15% Sunflower or similar 5% shea butter (or 5% mango, 5% shea, or whatever butter you want to use.) 5% castor oil If you do not have these exact oils, you can sub for more or less of what you do have and tweak it. This is a forgiving process (IMO) and it can be tweaked to your fancy. But make sure to keep the balance between stearic and bubbly oils. You can keep it simple and use all olive for the 40% of the conditioning oils ratio. Or any other conditioning oil you have. I have also made it with lard, tallow, crisco, etc. That is the first phase of the process. Now to the second phase, calculating lye. A lot of people don't think you can use soapcalc to calculate your lye for cream soap, when in fact you can. It's really simple. Plug in your recipe for your oils/butters you are going to use for 22 oz. Soapcalc will give you how much NaOH you need, IF you were making bars of soap. But what you are going to do is use that figure, and that is how much KOH you will need. So for my recipe above, soapcalc says I need 3.09 oz of NaOH. Which means for cream soap I actually need 3.09 oz of KOH. Now to calculate the amount of NaOH you will need. Take that figure given by soapcalc (3.09) and divide it by 5. for my figure its .68. Which is the amount of NaOH I will need. You can also divide it by 4, it all depends on experiment. I highly suggest investing in a cream soap calculator: http://www.soulgazersundries.com/calculator.html You will need 35 oz of water for the cook. I normally use less, but I think since a lot of this is new to you, we will start with more water during the cook. So to recap, I need 3.09 oz of KOH and .68 oz of NaOk. Some divide by 4, which I used to do, but I like this ratio better. There is a 3rd and 4th phase. In the 3rd phase you will need .2 oz stearic and .31 oz of glycerin, this is called supercreaming, which will be added at the end of the cook. In the 4th phase will be where you will add .31 oz of Optiphen if you need to add additional water, or plan on adding additives, veggies, etc. This will be added when we whip up the soap. Get supplies ready and weighed out. If you have not done so already weigh and mix your lyes with your water, and weigh and melt your oils/butters/stearic in your crock pot or double boiler, and pour your glycerin in the melted oils. Cooking the soap should take about 4 hours, whipping the soap will happen the next day or whenever you are ready to whip. Before you start, please remember to be safe, especially when learning a new process. Wear your gloves, goggles, hazmat suit, the works Your crock pot should be turned on high and ready to go. Everything should be pre-measured and set to start. Melt your oils till they are hot, but not too hot. Pour your oils into your crock pot or double boiler (unless they are already there if you used them to melt your goodies.) Combined your premixed lye solution with your oils and stick blend till trace. Stearic will always try to separate, but keep it going, the mix will soon stick together: Keep mixing it, careful not to burn out your stick blender (give it a rest if it starts to get too hot.) 3 minutes: 7 minutes of blending: 12 minutes: After about 15 minutes the soap will go from separated to honey texture as seen above. At this point you can put your stick blender away for the night. The next stage you will hit is this tough taffy stage: After it hits the tough taffy stage, take chill pill and leave it alone for 30-45 minutes. It will stay like this and go through a few phases for the next hour and a half. But stir it once or twice in between time to incorporated any fluids. After about 2 hours of cooking your soap should look like this. It is now starting to relax a bit, and is easier to stir: After 3 hours of cooking the soap should look like this: If you have a phenol tester, you can test it, if it is pink you still need to cook it longer. However I used to use those and stopped since I can now gage when my soap is done. I also do the old tast test by touching some cool soap to my finger, rubbing my fingers together to make sure I do not feel any gritty bits, and then I touch my finger to my tongue. If you get even the slightest zap, cook it until the zap is gone and all you taste is the sweet glycerin. Once your soap is ready, its time to supercream. Melt your pre-measured stearic and glycerin now. Slowly stir the mix into your soap and let it cook for another 15 minutes. After supercream is added and stirred: At this point you can turn off your pot and leave the soap covered overnight. The next day you will notice that your soap has relaxed a bit and has a glossy finish to it (looks like its grown fur overnight.) You want to resist adding water to it because looks can be deceiving, it might relax a lot over the next few days. Take a spoon and stir it up a bit and then leave it alone for a few hours. Later you can whip it up bit by bit in your stand mixer: Mixing away in my 30 year old Kitchenaid. Once all your soap is whipped, get out your buckets and pour the soap inside and store it away for a few weeks. This process is called rotting. Cream soap is just like any other handmade soap, it gets better with age. A few quick comments. Cream soap is a very forgiving soap and there is so much that you can do with it. You can add sugar or exfoliates to it and make a scrub, you can shave with it, or just bathe with it. You do not have to scent the entire batch. I scent at the time of purchase. I take however much I need, nuke it for 10 seconds, and add my fragrance (usually 2 teaspoons per 8 oz is enough of a punch) and use my hand whisk to mix it in. If you find that your soap has not softened up in 3 days and/or has became rock hard and you are not able to whip it or even stir it, this is the time to add a little water at a time. Warm your soap up a bit for 20 minutes in the oven. Add distilled water to it tablespoon at a time until you can chunk it up into smaller pieces and stir it by hand. Let it sit and soften a bit more, and then try whipping it again. Some recipes will need more additional water than others, while some recipes will not need any additional water at all. I once had a recipe I had to add 25 oz of water to, but I also added some Phenonip if I am adding extra water. If you are adding sugars or botanicals, phenonip is also in order. Its rare for anything to grow in this soap, but you can never be too safe. Additional NOTEs: If you find that your soap is the complete opposite, runny and not holding form after a few days, you can thicken it with boric acid (not borax.) Take .2-.3 oz of boric acid and dissolve in 1 oz of water. Take half to 3/4 of this mixture and add it to the soap and mix it in with your stick blender. Leave it for a few hours, and whip it again. This is a little trick I learned over at the cream soap forum, a great resource for anyone making this method. I determine the amount of glycerin needed by taking the amount of oils and dividing it by 4 or 4.2 if you do not want that much glycerin (for me, I like to go with a bit more glycerin so I divide by 4.) I calculate my water as whatever soapcalc gives me times 2. But for a beginner use more water so that it is easier for you to make the first time around. As you become more experienced with the process you can lower your water amounts. Super creaming is optional, some people do not even use it, you will have to try and see which you like better. To calculate the stearic its the amount of oils multiplied by .01%, and to calculate the glycerin its the amount of oils multiplied by .015%. Or you can just calculate the entire thing in the soulgazer calculator. *Optiphen is the preservative you would need to use for cream soap.* Just to make sure that everyone understands, the 35 oz of water is to be used to mix your lyes right from the beginning for the cook. The glycerin cannot be put into soapcalc since it is not a saponified oil. It is just an extra part of your recipe, along with your oils. I don't know if the batch can be saved. I would try adding the glycerin in when you are whipping it and see what happens. When adding the glycerin, if there are small chunks heat it and whip it again. The chunks should melt down. Help questions: Help please, once I got to the taffy stage my entire batch went to liquid with about 2 inches of foam on the top layer. I've never had it do this before, usually my batches do exactly as your method shows, so I am not sure what went wrong here, any ideas? ANSWER: Rewhip. If foaming persists, let it cool off and then whip it again on low. Question: How long does cream soap need to cure (rot) before it is usable? Answer: Six weeks. Question: When using a preservative when adding additives would that include clay and seeds? Answer: I don't think you need preservative with clay, but with seeds, I would say yes.

Liquid Soap By thecandlespastore Rating for class beginner/intermediate List of ingredients: 33 oz sunflower oil 14 oz of coconut oil 11 oz KOH 33 oz of Distiller Water (this recipe is courtesy of Ellen's Essentials, tried it once and stuck with it cause it works!) Hand on hand either a large double boiler or a large crockpot, and of course the usual for making soap (goggles, gloves etc.) No need to worry about the temps or heating up your oils. Measure your oils right into the crock pot. KOH does not get as hot as NaOH, although it will sound like Rice Crispies when you pour it into your water. At around 7:55, go ahead and combine your KOH with your water (always lye into water, not the other way around.) We should all have our KOH mixed and ready to go. When you mix the KOH as previously mentioned, you will hear a crackling sounds. It sounds pissed off, but luckily it gets nowhere near as hot as NaOH. Pour lye into our oils with crock pot turned to highest setting: high for 4 hours, high for 6 hours, low for 8 house and low for 10. I put mine on high for 6 hours because typically its takes about 4-5 hours from start to finish. Don't worry, you can put your crock on low and let it cook through the night if you do not want to stay up late waiting. It will be fine in the morning. Now let's get to stick blending until we reach trace. Liquid soap's trace looks a lot like cp trace, except it takes forever. So you will want to give your stick blender a break every few minutes. Takes me about 15 minutes to reach trace: After about 15 minutes, the soap has started to thicken up a bit. It will want to separate but keep stirring it: After stirring/stick blending for about 12 minutes I get this: A close up of the separation: The next stage I hit after a few minutes: Runny mash potatoes is good, it means you are not far from this stage: At this point you can put the stick blender away for the night, because soon you will not be able to do much with it. After you hit runny mashed potatoes, you go to something that feels like very thick cp trace. After that, you hit taffy stage: Until you hit taffy stage, the key is to keep stirring away. The soap will continue to try and separate at the edges, but keep trying to stir as best you can: This is a pretty long process, so the key is to let it do its magic, checking it every 20-30 minutes and stirring in any separation. Soap after about 50 minutes of cooking and second time around stirring in moisture: This is my soap after 2 hours of cooking: This is the soap about about 3 hours: 45 minutes later: Looking kind of translucent but still not quite ready. I do a test by taking 2 oz of distilled water and boiling it, then adding some paste to it. If its cloudy its not ready yet, keep cooking: Definitely cloudy, so I cook for a bit longer: Looking a bit more translucent. I did the test again and it is still cloudy, so as of now it is still cooking. Leave it on high. You want the soap to cook at 160 degrees at least. After you have been cooking for at least 3 hours, you will want to leave it uncovered for the rest of the cook if you have kept it covered. For those who have done the soap test, boil the rest of your water for the recipe add add the soap paste to the boiling water. Turn the heat source off. If you followed the recipe to the t you should be adding about 80 oz of water (unless you want it really really thick, then only add about 60- 70.) After you have added the soap paste, cover it and just leave it to sit overnight. Let it dilute for a day. An example of clear (let's pull the attached thumb on page 15 under LovelyLathers post ... sixth one down) Here's my finished product. I got over 3 gallons, already tapped into some as you can see from the one gallon: Diluting: Additional info: If you find after 2-3 weeks that your liquid soap is too drying for your liking, you can add an ounce or two of glycerin. My personal favorite is hydrovance, because it is literally like water, yet it feels so good in applications. I reach for my hydrovance before I reach for glycerin. Soap does remain pretty clear with hydrovance and with glycerin. You can take a bit of the liquid soap, heat it in a pyrex in the microwave for 45 seconds, then add the glycerin, mix and dump back into main batch and shake it. With hydrovance I normally do not need to heat as it has the same consistency as water and blends right in. I would add .75 oz pp depending on how thick or thin my soap is. If too thin, you might need to add crothix, start with small amounts (teaspoon). Questions: If LS needs to cook for at least 3 1/2 hrs. Is that from the taffy stage or from the very beginning? Answer: from the beginning. Question: Does LS have a cure time like CP soap before it can be used? Answer: yes, you have to let it sit and rest in the jugs/jars whatever you are storing it in for the same amount of time as CP. Liquid soap gets better with age, just like cp. You will notice a dramatic difference between using it tomorrow and using it 3 weeks from now. Question: if you wanted to, say....conserve space....could you cool off and store the paste and then dilute it down as needed? And if so, do you know the ratios? Like 2oz of paste to 6oz of water? Answer: I have read of people keeping the paste in the fridge and diluting as needed. You could of course dilute it all and put it in the basement, attic or wherever so its not in the way. Diluting is pretty much 2 parts soap to 3 parts water (if that makes sense.) I like to under dilute so that if it is too thick I can add more water later. Its easier than having to boil the water out. Question: while waiting for my water to boil. Do you just put a born date label on your jugs and store in a cool dark place for the 4 to 6 weeks needed for curing? Answer: Yes, you can do that. I have used mine within a week, although I don't sell any for 6 weeks. So by all means try some sooner. Question: after sitting over night i have approx. 30% of the LS paste that didn't dissolve is it fixable? the liquid part is clear amber colored (awesome class dh was not near as excited more stuff to make) Answer: Yes, this will happen. Take something and scoop out all the undissolved chunks. Boil a bit more water, just enough for the chunks, and add those chunks to that water and let that sit just like the other batch. You can now pour the other part into your jars and bottles for the cure. Weigh the paste that you took out, and add equal parts water, that way it wont be runny. You can always up the water later if it is not completely dissolved. Question: with a master batch and scent, what is the ratio of FO/EO to the LS base. Answer: usually 1/2 oz for an 8 oz bottle, but scent to taste. Question: Mine is cloudy in the pot. Is there anything I can do to clear it up? Answer: If it is cloudy, it could mean that it did not cook long enough and there are unsaponified oils in there. No biggie. Cook it a bit longer the next batch. Question: Should I insulate my crockpot with blankets, towels etc. if I leave the soap to ignore overnight? Answer: No need to insulate, although it can help keep the heat to dissolve faster. Question: Can you superfat this soap with glycerin or castor oil so it is not as drying? Would you do this before or after dilution? Answer: You can superfat with turkey red oil (sulfated castor) but not regular castor, after the cook it will just float on top. Glycerin is water soluable so you can try adding that after the cook, during dilution.