Soap Makers Help!

[MullersLaneFarm]

Don,
Just last weekend, I was weighing out my master batch and weighed an oil twice (grabbed the wrong jug). Thankfully I caught it in time and was able to triple my master batch instead of just double it.

I did have to scramble around to find another 5 gallon bucket to put my 3rd master batch into though.

And I can't even blame meds ... although I was talking with my DH at the time & the jugs look the same ...

I've made coffee soaps using half the liquid in my lye solution as triple strength coffee, and finely ground fresh beans. To make the soap a bit more interesting, I would remove about 1/3rd of the soap at trace and mix the ground beans into that. Then do a 'swirl' with the ground bean mixture.

I've never had it affect the curing time though.

Mad Cow! My husband says that some men can never get Mad Cow disease (them that are being too much of a pig ....)

 

[smom1976]

That is a great idea about the coffee.. I just might try that..

Hey Don are you going to join the swap..?? I bet there would be quite a few of us ladies that would enjoy your breakfast soap..

 

[chiknwhisperer]

These are the last 2 batches I unmolded the last couple of days. The top one is strawberry sceted and the bottom is chocolate. I have one that I just took out of the mold a little while ago that I scented with pink melon. I used lard in this last batch and the soap turned out really white.

 

[chiknwhisperer]

Ok, I unmolded the soap that had the pink melon FO in it. The ones that I had in a silicon cup cake mold are really white. I just unmolded the rest of it from my wooden mold and it is more like an oil color like the strawberry scented one in my last post. Is it because one may have been insulated more then the other? I'm not really complaining about it but I am curious.

 

[Backyard Buddies]

Quote:
It could be the same thing that happened with my silicone batch. I prepared a batch of soap and poured some into the silicone molds and some into my usual mold. The usual mold gelled but the silicone molds didn't. Those that didn't gel ended up more white than the ones that gelled. The only thing different was the gelling.

 

[chiknwhisperer]

One other question. How do you figure how long of a shelf life your soap will have? I keep reading in books that you need to right down when you made it and when to use it by. But it doesn't say how to figure the shelf life.

 

[BirdBrain]

Quote:
CW, Your soaps look just great!

I am just curious though. What do you cut your soaps with? They seem to be different thicknesses and some of them have a curve to them. When I made my first batch I tried cutting with a serated knife and my soap ended up all crooked. I found the knife difficult to control. I switched to a long chefs knife and found that much more successful.

After some trial an error I also decided I had to measure my log and mark increments of an inch or inch and a quarter to get a sturdy enough bar to stand up to daily use in the shower. Some of my first bars were too big (height and width wise) but too thin and with use ended up breaking in half too soon.

Please understand that I don't mean to be critical!! I think you said that you were offering your soaps for sale and uniformness of your bars adds to their attractiveness and hopefully saleability. Obviously how they are cut doesn't affect how wonderful they feel to your skin.

I have a few bars I made over a year ago. Some of them were stored in a cardboard shoe box and the others were in a work trailer that went through Ike on the Texas coast south of Beaumont. The ones from the trailer did not get wet but were exposed to heat and high humidity. It almost seemed that the superfatted oils weeped out of the bars and they were hard as a rock and smelled odd...some smelled almost rancid. The bars I had stored here at home are much like how they were when freshly cured, except harder. When I was at my folks house I found some of lastyear's soap stored in a ziplock bag and it did not smell as good as what I stored at home but deffinately better than the work trailer. All that to say that shelf life seems to be greatly affected by the conditions in which it is stored. Plastic bags seems to be a bad choice as does exposure to heat and humidity.


p

 

[chiknwhisperer]

I tried to cut those bars with music string. Needless to say it didn't work as I hoped it would. BUT, I did go buy a machete from the army surplus. It is the best thing I have used so far! Yeah those crooked bars are going to family members lol. I guess the way I am storing them is the right way then. I have in cardboard boxes.

 

[BirdBrain]

Does the thickness of the machete affect the cut much? I found chefs knives at Sam's club for cheap that were really nice. They have a very sharp thin blade and make really nice cuts. They have textured handles that are easy to grip and control the knife.

 

[chiknwhisperer]

It actually worked pretty darn good for me. Now mind you though that I used it for the first time yesterday. I was using a butcher knife before and about all the other ones I have in my kitchen and I just had such an awful time getting the cut straight. This seemed to do it for me.