Sponiebr Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 So here's one for ya, While I'm waiting to unmold let's hypothesize: I make an OMH soap and I use quite a lot of honey and oatmeal generally .9 oz/PPO for each. Somewhere my mind went to a dark place and I wondered if I might have been water starving my soaps before by not adding a "little" water to the oat flour. Well it turns out that the oat flour absorbs more than it's weight in water, and can take in fully 110% of it's weight in water and still be thirsty. (that's A LOT of water). So in this formulation I used 50 g of oat flour and I added 60 g of water to it. I had to pull an additional 40 g of water from the lye/milk/honey side to get the oat flour into a workable batter. So my formulation would normally work just fine with no added water or (apparently) starved of 60 g of water regardless of finished batch size at 2 lbs. or greater (having fun with the seemingly non sequitur variables yet?) But WHAT will happen NOW that I have added bulk AND water to the mix? I've basically got 60 g of wet fluff in there now. My brain sez it'll be fine, but might be a tad softer right out of the mold and I'll probably have to cure it a little longer. Looking at the batch as I mixed it, (apart from me trying the frozen milk and lye method) it mixed and behaved _exactly_ as all of my other batches have done from mix to mold. Anywho, what do you think's gonna happen? Slainte, Sponie (P.S.: I froze the batch as soon as I molded it and it is now defrosting in the fridge. Also I put all the milk and the honey in the lye to work out their differences before adding it to my fats.) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chefmom Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 My best guess is that it might take an extra week or two to cure out the additional water. I doubt there will be much difference in the soap from previous batches, it just will be a touch soft longer than usual. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TallTayl Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 That seems like a pretty high level of honey and oats. (Mentally measuring honey as I type this. It might not be as much as my caffeine starved brain thinks). Honey is a humectant and may not allow the excess water to evaporate as quickly as usual. If you are in a very humid area, it might actually draw humidity from the air. Honey also has a tendency to cause the soap to heat more than usual during SAP making strange things happen inside the uncut log. With extra water it is possible steam pockets formed, even if stuck in the freezer right away. The chemical reactions begin deep inside before the outside chill can work in. The oats will eventually dry. What I found with oats in soap (and solid scrub bars) is they absorb water during use and hold that water between uses more than I liked. But.... Only time will tell how your experiment will turn out. It might well end up being the best soap you have ever made! i am really curious now... If you can please post photos as it is cut and ages so we can follow along. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sponiebr Posted September 20, 2016 Author Share Posted September 20, 2016 (edited) The materials were at room temp or colder when they got into the fats and cool when they were molded. The sugars had a chance to work themselves out in the lye before going into the fats. The fact that my co-worker hasn't sent me any texts regarding the demise of the fridge, I think all may be well. I'll post some picture as soon as I can along with some other OHM soaps I have done with the same honey and oat %. Slainte, Sponie PS: I worked out the water to be about a 7% increase in water, for a total of 45% water as a % of oil weight. Edited September 20, 2016 by Sponiebr Added %. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jcandleattic Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 I agree with Chefmom - probably extra dry time so it doesn't dissolve away while using it. I also agree with TT - that seems like a high amount of honey - doesn't it overheat? If I put more than .5% honey in my soaps, I get overheating and cracking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sponiebr Posted September 20, 2016 Author Share Posted September 20, 2016 3 hours ago, Jcandleattic said: I agree with Chefmom - probably extra dry time so it doesn't dissolve away while using it. I also agree with TT - that seems like a high amount of honey - doesn't it overheat? If I put more than .5% honey in my soaps, I get overheating and cracking. Oh, It heats UP! And HOW! BUT... I start with chilled lye water and then add the honey to the lye and let them duke it out in the lye pitcher. Then I chill the honey lye solution again before I add it to the fats. I did the process a little different this time, end result was the same. Normally I add the milk powder and the dry oat flour (I use 100% Organic oat flour Arrowhead Mills brand because it's what I had on hand), to the fats and I mix the lye and honey as above and then soap cold. This time I reconstituted the milk and froze into little cubes and then added my lye onto the ice. After the lye was dissolved I added in my honey and after it had cooled down a little, (it didn't heat up as bad with this method, in fact it stayed pretty cool) I strained the milk/honey/lye mix to get out those pesky little "clinkers" of what I am assuming must be either lye or calcium bits. I also added water to my oat flour. Then I added the oat water batter to the fats and stick blended it, and then added the lye and mixed/SB until light trace. The soap never got above barely warm. I chilled my wooden silicone liner box and then poured the soap into the chilled mold and froze it. After it was frozen (about 6 hours.) it went into the fridge for another 16 hours. Today: the overage molded in the individual cups was ready to unmold when I got to work. The loaf in the fridge looked perfect and felt firm as well. I unmolded the loaf and, well, it wasn't ready for that yet. It unmolded fine but as soon as an edge started to get to room temp it started to melt. A quick zap test from my finger made me think of french kissing an electrical outlet. I got it back into it's mold without any major dings to the loaf, (just a couple of smudges) and it's sitting on the counter in just the liner saponifying peacefully. If I feel any warmth at all (well it's too late) but ostensibly I'd get it chilled down... Honestly, right now everything looks really good. The most notable difference is that it doesn't have that graham cracker smell that the other batches had. It doesn't have much smell at all TBH, but maybe a little like the GV shortening I used in the formula. I dunno... Anywho, I'll get the pictures up as soon as I can. Cheers! Sponie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sponiebr Posted September 20, 2016 Author Share Posted September 20, 2016 Pictures up in the B&B gallery. http://www.craftserver.com/topic/109219-oatmeal-honey-and-goats-milk-a-glut-of-water/ Slainte, Sponie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TallTayl Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 Oh, those are single bars! The heat rules of singles versus logs/blocks are different. Let us know how they age! (can I ask a favor? Can you please post the pics right in this thread to keep it super easy to follow this fascinating story?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sponiebr Posted September 21, 2016 Author Share Posted September 21, 2016 5 hours ago, TallTayl said: Oh, those are single bars! The heat rules of singles versus logs/blocks are different. Nope, just the overage was cast into singles. Let us know how they age! (can I ask a favor? Can you please post the pics right in this thread to keep it super easy to follow this fascinating story?) Sorry 'bout that... I didn't realize I was allowed to post them here, this MUCH easier... You got it! The loaf before unmolding with a detail of the surface. Surface detail: The loaf after I got it back into the mold. (Some minor dings and smudges is all.) Here are the little individual cast bars from the overage. A close up of the first one I unmolded without chilling it in the freezer first. (they're less than 24 hours old from the time I cast them) These are my old 100% Coconut Oil OHM soaps 20%SF. The one on the left is 1oz honey PPO and the one on the right is 1/2 oz PPO. The 1 oz PPO won the popularity contest. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sponiebr Posted September 22, 2016 Author Share Posted September 22, 2016 Ok, quick recap of the progress. The little individual cast bars are firming up nicely in the open air. I got the loaf unmolded this afternoon and the zap was just about gone. (That's good.) I cut the bars with my wavy cutter and they are pretty soft, but I expected as much. I chilled the loaf in the freezer to help get it out of the silicone loaf mold and it went just fine. Did I mention they are soft? Soft like play dough? No? Well, they are. The soap did not go through gel phase at all. (yes, a milk soap with a TON of honey altogether bypassed gel phase) I don't know if you can even see it, but the faint light colored outline in the first mm of the bar is from the condensation of the cold loaf coming out of the freezer. Everything is behaving as expected. The bars have that faint ammonia/urine smell in the middle which tells me they aren't quite done "cook'n" yet. The second unmolding of the loaf. (Thank Heaven it survived quite nicely.) The cut bar. The cutter and mold washed up quite nicely. Slainte, Sponie 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TallTayl Posted September 22, 2016 Share Posted September 22, 2016 Looks nice! are you curious about how much water will cure out? I'd be the weirdo that would weigh a bar or two. Then reweigh every week until they seem to not change any more. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sponiebr Posted September 22, 2016 Author Share Posted September 22, 2016 3 hours ago, TallTayl said: Looks nice! are you curious about how much water will cure out? I'd be the weirdo that would weigh a bar or two. Then reweigh every week until they seem to not change any more. Good idea! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sponiebr Posted September 24, 2016 Author Share Posted September 24, 2016 On 9/21/2016 at 8:51 PM, TallTayl said: Looks nice! are you curious about how much water will cure out? I'd be the weirdo that would weigh a bar or two. Then reweigh every week until they seem to not change any more. So far they seem to be losing about 2 g of water/day. My formulation isn't exactly a hard soap, but they're firming up nicely. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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