olive oil soap help

[Craftedinthewoods]

I got into making soap today with my mother in law and we used olive oil because we had that on hand.

We stirred for an hour and we were still unsure if it traced. It was thickened, but the book we used said to pour it even if it hadn't traced after an hour.

Now, several hours later I checked my mold and the soap is as liquid as when we fist poured it and the oil was layered on the top. I stirred that back in, but now I wonder if we should try to heat it up again and mix it better to reach the trace.

Please help. I hate to throw this olive oil away!

[LovelyLathers]

Take it out of the mold and stir more. Did you use a water discount. I always do Olive Oil at 40%. It is separating because it has not reached trace yet. Trace will be like a creamy thickened pudding that will leave trailings that will not sink into the soap. Olive Oil soap takes a long long time to trace if you are doing it by hand a few hours sometimes. A stick blender will help it move quicker if you have one. If no stick blender try a whisk that may help make it go quicker.

[Craftedinthewoods]

Take it out of the mold and stir more. Did you use a water discount. I always do Olive Oil at 40%. It is separating because it has not reached trace yet. Trace will be like a creamy thickened pudding that will leave trailings that will not sink into the soap. Olive Oil soap takes a long long time to trace if you are doing it by hand a few hours sometimes. A stick blender will help it move quicker if you have one. If no stick blender try a whisk that may help make it go quicker.

The recipe called for 20 oz. water, 7 oz. lye and 52 oz. of olive oil. That is what I did. I didn't know about a water discount. Will adding soap flakes of another base soap help speed up tracing in my olive oil soap?

Or can I add more lye? If so how much do I add?

[LovelyLathers]

Don't add more lye!! You can not add soap flakes to it either. You have a lot of water in the mixture. Also there is no superfat in that recipe. Just keep stirring maybe 5 or 6 hours.. It will take a long time with out a dtick blender. Do you have a crock pot? You can toss it in there and do a hp with it also it will speed it up. Is this your first batch of soap?

[Kitn]

It will take a very long time with out a stick blender , could you borrow one if you don't have one?

[Craftedinthewoods]

Don't add more lye!! You can not add soap flakes to it either. You have a lot of water in the mixture. Also there is no superfat in that recipe. Just keep stirring maybe 5 or 6 hours.. It will take a long time with out a dtick blender. Do you have a crock pot? You can toss it in there and do a hp with it also it will speed it up. Is this your first batch of soap?

5 or 6 hours???!!!! Yikes. Thanks for your info. We really appreciate your help with this.

Can you explain the hp method? What does that mean? Is it something we can do overnight or does it have to be watched closely?

My Mother in law has made soap for years with tallow in the mixture and has always been sucessful with it. I think she uses what is called the cold process method. She combines the lye mixture and oils when they are 95 to 100 degrees. And for her, the soap has traced in just minutes.

Today we dicided to try something new with only olive oil as we didn't have any tallow on hand. After we combined the oil & lye at 100 degrees, we hand stirred the lye, oil mixture for 1 hour then poured it into a mold. We thing we missed the trailings point (trace?). And now it seems to separate in our mold.

We don't have a stick blender, can we use a hand mixer?

[Craftedinthewoods]

Do you think that heating this batch up again to 100 degrees and mixing it for a couple hours will work? The tempurature will drop quickly with the mixing.

The more I'm reading about this the more I think that the hot process may be the only way to go with this batch?

I'm feeling pretty dumb for making my mother in law jump into this olive oil soap. But this afternoon it looked like a great recipe to try! :lipsrseal

[thecandlespastore]

If you don't have a stick blender and you don't want to cook it you can try pouring it into an old blender, and giving it a few whips for a few minutes which will help bring it to trace.

[topofmurrayhill]

I hope the replies you got helped you save the batch.

Making 100% olive oil soap has caught on with a lot of handcrafters, for no particularly good reason besides that it has traditionally been done in parts of the world where they're swimming in olive oil. It's perfectly possible to do it with a stick blender or with the hot process. Thing is, besides requiring a lot of encouragement to trace, the resulting soap isn't very well balanced and is no milder than many better recipes you can make. The reason your MIL had an easier time (and probably made better soap) is entirely due to the tallow she used.

For the next batch, if you want to make the mildest soap possible but with better balance and easier trace, limit the olive oil to less than half the recipe and replace the rest with tallow, lard or palm oil. Tallow is the best, but all those will work. If you want more bubbles, include some coconut oil. Just to pick a number, you could try say 25% or 30% olive oil.

Don't be afraid to make your own recipe. Anything you make with those guidelines will be good and better than straight olive oil. Experiment and have fun. Go to one of the online soap calculators, plug in your ingredients and it will tell you how much water and lye to use. Only the oil and lye amounts have to be measured carefully. Water is flexible.

[beekeeper_sd]

I have found that if you leave your pot full of soap in sink of cold water (enough to go above the level of soap in the pot) it will trace faster. And, you do not have to stir the soap continuously. Just stir it occasionally and make sure you stir in the thinkening soap well.

[CareBear]

Carol - cold water? That makes no sense TO ME. Cold slows reactions (heat speeds). So how can that be?

[Kitn]

That doesn't make sense to me either .I would guess you could very easily get a false trace after the butters stiffen up from the cold ??

[topofmurrayhill]

I wasn't gonna say anything, but since y'all brought it up...sounded like a way of getting false trace to me too. I don't suppose that would happen with an olive oil soap, but anyway -- more heat rather than less is what I figure you'd want for faster trace.

[whisks]

i can understand the cold water - i soap with room temperature oils and lye and find that i don't have problems tracing and more importantly, the mixture doesn't separate. i have only ever had a problem with separation once, and that was when i heated my mixture because it was taking so long to trace. i ended up having to HP the lot.

i agree that a combination of oils can make a lovely soap, which will be much faster to trace.

[chuck_35550]

These are the Soapcalc numbers from your recipe.

Hardness 29 - 54 you have a 17, Cleansing 12 - 22 you have a 0, Conditioning 44 - 69 you have an 82

Bubbly 14 - 46 you have a 0, Creamy 16 - 48 you have a 17, Iodine 41 - 70 you have an 85,

INS 136 - 165 you have a 105. Notice the zero cleaning and zero bubbly. However, it has a conditioning number that is through the roof. If you look at Mediterranean countries who make 100% Castille soap; I think you will find they cure the soap from 6 months up to a year. Your best bet is a stick blender (about $10.00 at Walmart). HTH

Steve

Edited January 15, 2010 by chuck_35550

[beekeeper_sd]

I don't get a false trace. Actually the soap traces very well. I don't know why you don't understand the cold water, you are essentially cooling the soap the minute you mix the lye mixture with the melted oils, that has to happen to make the soap solidify.

[hem06]

I don't get a false trace. Actually the soap traces very well. I don't know why you don't understand the cold water, you are essentially cooling the soap the minute you mix the lye mixture with the melted oils, that has to happen to make the soap solidify.

But the reaction of lye+oils produces heat. If you stop or retard that heat from occurring, it takes longer to saponify. So, putting your mix in a cold bath is just going to retard the saponification process, not speed trace.

[beekeeper_sd]

Well, tell that to my soap because, since I started doing it this way I have never had trouble getting my soap to trace.

Before I had a fifty-fifty chance of making good soap.

[Starr]

When I started doing HP (and CP for that matter) soap, I read and read and read and then read some more but I also found that if you go to YouTube and search "How to make HP (or CP) soap", you will find several videos. I can't say that I've watched them all but I have watched several of them and each of them does a decent job at not only describing trace but showing it to you IN the pot while it's happening. I think that helped me avoid having any problem achieving trace, I had other problems, but that's another thread.

[whisks]

when people put their soaps in the freezer to prevent gel, saponification doesn't stop - the cold just prevents gel. ever since i started RTCP, every batch has traced beautifully and i've never had to do anything to prevent gel. if i want my soap to gel, i wrap a black towel around it and leave it in the sun. easy. i don't think it would hurt to try cooling the batter - nothing to lose.

Edited January 18, 2010 by whisks

[topofmurrayhill]

It might not hurt with an olive oil soap, but harder recipes could be destroyed by cooling them like that.

The best answer was already given at the start. If you're doing a soft, slow tracing recipe, the best way to speed it up is with an immersion mixer.