So I made my first batch tonight, which may or may not be a failure.
I ran my recipe through a lye calculator, with an 8% superfat, melted my oils in the pot and added my lye water (and HOO BOY they do not joke about the fumes - had the fan on & front door open, would’ve opened the back but didn’t want the dog running around). It didn’t start getting creamy, but it did start getting bits of opaqueness floating in the clear, with a texture like applesauce. Then, all of a sudden - BAM! - it’s like pudding. I did my happy trace dance, and added in the clay I wanted as an additive, put on the lid and turned it to low to cook.
15 minutes later I came to check on it, and instead of a hard solid mass, it looked like vaseline. I wasn’t sure if this meant it had gelled or not, so I decided that it must not’ve, and added about a cup more water (2lb batch).
15 minutes after that, it still looks like vaseline, only more… fluffy? By this time I’m running around panicking, so I added a 14 floz can of coconut milk and a dram of peppermint EO, because I am an idiot. Some of it mixed in with the soap, some did not, so I don’t even know what’s going on now.
Another half hour after that, it’s mostly still vaseline, a little creamier, and with a good bit of excess liquid in the pot. I panicked again, because I have somewhere to be tonight, so I just prayed the liquid stuff is liquid soap and not just slightly brown coconut milk, and molded the lot of it. I figure it’s either going to be funky soap, soap that I need to rebatch, or I will know that I need to watch it like a hawk next time and get a better scale and a thermometer.
It feels waxy when I touch it, but it still zaps my tongue, and now I don’t know if it’s the peppermint or the lye doing that. I feel like I missed a vital memo somewhere in my research, but I don’t know what.
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