Make It Soap

AKA: Earl Grey & Honey

I had the day off today and some time to do more soap making experimenting. I had this idea that I could use cold tea instead of water in my soap recipe. I had a bottle of bergamot essential oil for fragrance. I knew I made some mistakes in making my first batch and wanted to try again and try to do it right this time.

I often have some left over tea in my little pot in the morning that I forget about or don’t have time to drink. I started putting it in a jar in the fridge to save for soap. I drink Teavana Earl Grey loose tea and it has a nice strong bergamot flavor.

Last time I used coconut oil, lard and olive oil as my fats. This time I wanted to make my batch larger and use almond oil instead of olive oil. So I did a little math and put my ideas into the SoapCalc lye calculator to come up with this recipe:

• Coconut Oil (76degree) 11.2 ounces
• Lard                             9.6 ounces
• Almond Oil                   11.2 ounces
• Tea                              12.16 ounces
• Lye                               4.7 ounces (133.713 grams)
• Bergamot Essential Oil    1.7 ounces
• Honey                               1 ounce

Turn crockpot on high to preheat and measure out oils. I started with the solid oils (butters) to get them melting. Once I had all the oils in the pot and melting I measured out the tea and lye. It is VERY IMPORTANT that when you mix the liquid and lye you pour the LYE INTO THE WATER (tea). Otherwise you will have a caustic volcano on your hands!!!! And I can’t say it enough, WEAR GOGGLES AND GLOVES!

One thing I didn’t do Sunday that I was careful to do today was I took the temperature of my lye mixture and the oils before combining them. I’ve read that when doing hot process the temps of the two components isn’t as important but I wanted to do it “right” this time! LOL

Once my oil was completely melted and at about 110 degrees and the lye mixture was at about 120 degrees I carefully poured the lye mixture into the oil pot. And I also took the oil pot out of the crock pot to take it off the heat.

 

I stir it all together and use the stick blender for a bit to get everything emulsified. Another mistake I made Sunday was that I totally over-used the stick blender. To the point that I burned the motor out! Not only did I ruin a brand new stick blender but I over processed the soap to the point that it was “done” before I set it to cook.

Can you see the nice “latte” color of the mix? That is from the tea. The natural scent of the tea didn’t last through the mixture with the lye but that’s okay.

This is what I think is considered “light trace”. It is when the mixture is about the consistency of warm pudding or mayonnaise. Again most of the stuff I’ve been reading says that achieving “trace” isn’t as important in hot process soap making. Just get everything mixed together real well. If it is this nice creamy color, it is good to go.

 

 

Then I put the pot back in the heating element of the crock pot and set it on low with the lid on. After about 15-20 minutes I started to see some gelling around the edge.

Patience is truly a virtue with soap making! I had to keep myself from lifting the lid and stirring this stuff! That was what I did Sunday and never got the look that I’d seen on all the blogs and tutorials I had read.

THIS is what I was waiting for! The gelled soap had pretty much engulfed the raw soap. I gave it a few more minutes on the heat and then all the light colored raw soap was gone and it all looked like oily Vaseline.

I took it off the heat and stirred in the essential oil and honey. It is now ready to pour into the mold.

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I made my soap mold out of the Amazon box that the soap making books I just ordered came in. It even came with a flat piece that fit perfectly into the bottom that I taped in to give a smooth bottom. I had to line it though so I kind of lost the smoothness. I’ll have to work on my lining skills.

This recipe didn’t quite fill this mold as deep as I had hoped. I’ll either need to use a different mold or make my recipe bigger. In hindsight, this would be a good recipe for a Pringle’s can, I’d just have to use the oil amounts from the earlier batch to make it a bit smaller. As it was, it was about a half an inch thick rather than the 1-1.5” thickness that I had hoped for. I think a recipe with 3-3.5# fat would be just about right. This recipe had 2# fat.

Hot process soap isn’t as smooth and creamy as cold process but especially for a “natural flavored” soap like this one I think the rough surface works really well.

At some point I will try cold process. I’m not sure why it is recommended to get comfortable with CP before trying HP. To me having all that raw soap with active lye around until it cures is “harder” than just cooking it down and molding it and being done. But maybe I’m just too impatient for CP. I have seem some really amazing CP soaps with cool color effects and really nice, smooth shapes so I will have to give it a go at some time.

I left it to harden for a few hours. You can see that it lightened up in color as it cooled. At this point it smelled so good! Just like a hot cup of Earl Grey Tea! I let it sit on the kitchen counter like this while I ran some errands and picked Emma up from school. We had some shopping to do too so it probably sat for 3 hours.

 

I cut it into thirds the long way and then into six pieces the other way for 18 finished bars of soap. They only weigh about 2.5 oz. each at this point which is quite a bit lighter than I’d like for a finished bar. I’m going to have to get a different mold or modify my recipe a bit to get the finished size I ultimately want.

Overall I’m really happy with this batch of soap. The scent is divine! It truly smells like a cup of Earl Grey, hot (with a touch of honey). I think Jean Luc would enjoy a nice bubble bath with it on the Holodeck!