A failed batch... and how I (hopefully) saved it.

Oh, well, a failed batch happens every now and then, it's part of the game and when it does, I always try to think positively about all the things I can learn from it instead of complaining or getting sad.

This time, I tried to make an Aloe Vera refreshing soap, scented with mint and eucalyptus. I wanted to make it HP, so that the strong, fresh scent of mint could stay almost intact in the final soap. WRONG! The problem is, with Aloe Vera you have to count it as part of your water, so you kind of have to discount water from the lye solution, in order to make up for the water in the Aloe juice, which is what I did. I also used a high percentage of unsaturated fats to make the soap softer and justify the absence of part of the water (20% to be precise). Well, it didn't work. I made my soap and brought it to trace as usual, then stuck it in the oven at 50°C for 20 mins, as usual. I took it out to stir a little, and it looked awesome, so I switched off the oven and put the soap back in for another 20 mins... but when I took it out again it was very solid, extremely difficult to mix with the remaining ingredients and way too hard to pour it into a mould!!! DISASTER!!!

In a panic attack, I decided to try to incorporate the EOs and aloe juice anyway, hoping that, mixing like crazy, I could have made it into a fairly homogeneous mix... and I thought I kind of did it, but when I tried to unmould the thing, I was horrified to be presented with this ugliness:

failed batch of HP soap

I didn't know exactly what to do with it, it smelled so good I didn't want to just throw it away, so I decided, after careful consideration, to keep a couple of pieces as samples, and to rebatch the whole thing immediately, to see if the soap would mix a little better. So I cut it into small chunks and put it on a very low heat in my soap pot:

rebatching failed HP soap

I added 1/2 cup of aloe juice and heated it up until melted (it only took a few minutes. Then I added again a few drops of EOs, just in case some evaporated in the heating process. I poured it into a mould and let it cool down, then as usual I froze it for about un hour, took it out, unmoulded and cut, and what I got now is this:

rebatched and saved aloe soap!

It's now very soft because of the extra Aloe jiuce, and as you can see, it's not completely smooth, but I'm hoping it's at least usable. I have to say it smells great, so I'm really hoping it turns out something nice for the hot summer days. I'll keep you posted on this one.

Rebatching disaster!

My goodness, the batch of white base I made last week was so awesome I was sorry I had to rebatch it... but now I'm even more sorry! 

The rebatching I did so for did not turn out very well, unfortunately. I tried with some herbal teas to see if the final soap had at least vaguely the smell of the tea (this worked with a red berries tea I tried some time ago!!), but nothing. This time I tried with chamomile tea and with fennel tea. The soap I rebatched with fennel smells very vaguely like it, but the chamomile nothing at all. :(

Plus the soaps are so very soft, I don't know how long it'll take them to become hard enough to be usable. Actually, they look ok, but they don't smell at all and are way too soft. I used different water amounts for both. On one I used half the aount of soap in water, and on the other I used the same amount. The first batch did not melt very well and turned out a bit lumpy, that's why I tried the 1:1 proportion. That was good for the melting, the soap melted nicely and became smooth and easy to be poured in the moulds, but as I just said both batches turned out a little too soft, I suppose. I'll give it a few weeks and see.

Next time I'll try to infuse the basic oils, and see the result, even though I've read that it doesn't keep the smell for long. I will also be trying (probably today or tomorrow) a kiwi fruit rebatching that I found on a book. The author of the book doesn't add any colouring or FOs to it, so I'm guessing the kiwi will leave a pleasant smell and colour to it. I know this will mean a shorter shelf life for the soap, but just for trying I'll do this with a very small amount of soap, something like 100g or so.

I guess I still have to learn a lot about rebatching...

Updates on the soap base experiment

I am so proud of the recipe I made up for the soap base to rebatch that I couldn't resist from taking some pictures to show you how it turned out. Probably from only these stupid pictures you can't see how compact and beautiful this soap looks, but believe me it is a pleasure to look at (at least for a soapmaker!), and it bubbles like crazy! The only thing is, it still smells like cheese, but I'm sure the smell will fade away with curing.

So, here it is... (I placed it on a white cloth so that you can see the actual colour it got after gelling)

I am so happy about not only because I made up the recipe myself, but especially because it is made mainly of olive oil and butter (cow's milk butter), which are very cheap and easy to find ingredients around here.

So, if anyone of you want to try it, here's the recipe of my lovely buttermilk soap. Well, before giving you the recipe I have to stress the fact that I did a different calculation at the beginning, but then I realized I didn't have enough butter, but I had already mixed my lye to the water so I had to re-calculate the fats in order to obtain the same lye amount and discount. So the percentages are a bit crazy, and if you ever decide to try it I suggest you use slightly different percentages to make them easier to calculate... but, of course, in any case I can't guarantee any result!

Other thing you have to be very careful about is the butter amount. I know in some countries it is quite difficult to get pure cow's milk butter. What is sold as "butter" is in fact a blend of animal and vegetable fats. In that case, I recommend you not to use it on your soaps, because the SAP calculation would be too difficult, and generally you have no way to know the percentage of each fat in the butter. But if you can actually get a 100% cow's milk butter, then it gets easier. The only thing you have to take into consideration is the percentage of butterfat in it. As an example, I use a 82% butterfat butter, meaning that in each 100g of butter there are 82g of butterfat and 20g of water. I round that 82 to 80, and when I put the recipe through a lye calculator, I am careful to only input the actual amount of butterfat in the butter, and to calculate the remaining water as part of the liquid in my soap. So, as an example, if I want to have 100g of butterfat in my soap, I would add 125g of butter (if my butter is 80% butterfat), and when calculating the water or liquid amount, I would take away the 25g of water in the it, so say I have to add 100g of water, I would only add 75g, because there are already 25g in the butter. 

I hope this is clear.....

Anyway, here's the recipe:


A Cow's Treat (a.k.a. Burrone --> this is its Italian name)

71% olive oil          710g
14% butterfat        (172g of butter, of which 136g butterfat and 36g water)
10% coconut oil    100g
5% castor oil         50g

lye (discount 3%)
water

at trace I added about 90g of fresh cream, and if you want to use it straight away without rebatching I suggest you add some deodorizing EOs like lemon, eucalyptus or mint.

As I said, don't worry if it smells like cheese for the first few days (or maybe even weeks), I've tried soap with butterfat before and, especially if you make it HP, after a few weeks of cure the smell fades away.

I am now sorry I didn't put any EOs in it, because it would have made a wonderful soap in itself, without need for rebatching. Anyway, I will be rebatching soon, and posting the results in here, I'm curious to see if it will maintain this consistency even after the rebatching process.

Basic soap base for re-batching

After the success of the very berry re-batching experiment, I decided to try to make re-batched chamomile, lime-blossom and fennel soap, so that I can use the wonderful herbal teas I have instead of spending a lot of money on EOs. So I decided to make a batch of "neutral" white unscented soap base, and then rebatch it with these herbal teas, and maybe try to colour it as well, or do so swirls. So that's what I did yesterday.

For my soap base I used mainly olive oil (my favourite and one of the cheapest you can find here), with some 14% butterfat and a little coconut and castor oils for lather. I used a very low lye discount (3%) so that I can later add some extra oils while rebatching without getting a oily soap. I made up the recipe myself, so I'm not quite sure of the result. If it comes out well, I'll be posting it here.

I did it CP, and I added some fresh cream at light trace, to see if I get a richer lather and a creamier soap.

EDIT: I have just unmoulded it and I was impressed by how easily it came perfectly out of the mould. I cut it and it looks so good I'm sorry I have to rebatch it!! It looks firm but creamy, a yellowish colour (I suspect it kind of overheated yesterday night while wrapped in my old blanket to gel).
I'll probably be rebatching it before it gets completely cured, maybe in a week or so, so that hopefully it is still quite soft and easy to melt down without all the lumps. We'll see.

To rebatch or not to rebatch?

Hello dears,

today I'd like to show you some rebatching experiments I've been doing. Some soapers hate rebatching, and some others love it and just make unscented white soap in order to rebatch it. Those against it, say that rebatching gives a lumpy soap and that the heat kills most of the vitamins and good stuff the oils give to the basic soap, whereas the "rebatchers" love to do so because the colours and scents stay much more than in regular CP soap, and also because it allows you much more flexibility for moulds and creativity.

Personally, I haven't decided yet. I mean, whether I choose rebatching or fresh CP depends on how I feel and what result I want to get. I love both methods and I want to improve both, because they both have great advantages that I want to be able to use at best.

So yesterday I found myself running out of lye, and I didn't want to go out buy it because I was waiting for some mail order to arrive and I didn't want the mail man to arrive and leave me a collection note. So anyway, I decided to do some rebatching experiments with a 20 days old batch of HP soap I made that i pretty looking, but doesn't bubble much and has no scent. The original batch was pink-red coloured and, as I said, unscented. Here it is:

I decided to rebatch it mainly to try some things out, and to try and give it some kind of scent.

What I did is I melted some of it on a crock pot with just a little cow's milk and, once melted, I addend some jasmine FO. Then I melted some more, this time with a red berries infused distilled water. I had this old red berries herbal tea, and wanted to give the soap a berries smell since I think it fits with the colour. I left the dried berries in, to give it some texture, and that's what I got:

The pink one underneath is the one I only added milk to, whereas the other purple one is the one with berries tea on it. I think the result is pretty amazing, they both smell great and the colour and texture seem fine. They have some white spots because I could melt the soap perfectly, but I don't think that's ugly, I just take it to be the feature of rebatched soap.

I have read somewhere that to get a very smooth rebatch it would be best to add the rebatched soap to a fresh CP batch. I'll try that next time - meaning as soon as can find some more lye. ;)

Stay tuned.