Coffee and Milk Soap Disaster
Despite being so careful when working with milk in soap, we have a failed Coffee and Milk Soap which got overheated due to the belated gel phase.
As usual, ingredients for the Coffee and Milk Soap recipe were measured, lye added to milk which has been frozen in cubes...
The rest of the process was as per normal cold process soap: blend to trace, pour into mold and placed into freezer. We shared a post in case you are interested to know more about how to work with milk in cold processed soap.
The next day, the soap was taken out from the freezer and left on the table to be unmolded and waiting to be cut. We let it there for half a day without checking on it (we were so used to milk soap then that we didn’t suspect anything would happen). During the time when it was ignored, it threw a tantrum and went on a belated gel phase! By the time we checked on it, the gel phase was over (still slightly warm but starting to cool down – despite being frozen the whole night before!).
Everything seemed alright so the soap was cut…Alas! We were so disappointed when we saw the white specks throughout the inside of the soap! Look at the picture, ain’t it awful? At first we thought they might be lye pockets so pH strip was used to test the alkalinity/ acidity. The strip read pH10 so it shouldn’t be a problem to use. The white specks are probably the crystallized sugar from the frozen then overheated milk.
Seeing the white specks is like seeing pimples all over the face…we can’t bear with it. Half of the batch of Coffee and Milk Soap was cut to small chunks and rebatched over the double boiler (similar to hot process) by adding some milk and sugar water.
The rebatched soap now looked like this:-
The rebatched soap is surprisingly good despite the awful look! They foamed up generously and felt so nice on the skin during and after shower. All the effort and hard work in making then rebatching the Coffee and Milk Soap is totally worth it!
The rebatched soap was molded in cavity molds. As the soap cooled and hardened too fast when molding, we only managed to get half of them in good shapes with a marbled look. The other half of the soaps are "dented" here and there.
We learned a few lessons along the way while making the rebatch soap. We will put a link here soon so stay tuned if you are interested.
Coffee and Milk Soap with white spots all over
As usual, ingredients for the Coffee and Milk Soap recipe were measured, lye added to milk which has been frozen in cubes...
The rest of the process was as per normal cold process soap: blend to trace, pour into mold and placed into freezer. We shared a post in case you are interested to know more about how to work with milk in cold processed soap.
The next day, the soap was taken out from the freezer and left on the table to be unmolded and waiting to be cut. We let it there for half a day without checking on it (we were so used to milk soap then that we didn’t suspect anything would happen). During the time when it was ignored, it threw a tantrum and went on a belated gel phase! By the time we checked on it, the gel phase was over (still slightly warm but starting to cool down – despite being frozen the whole night before!).
Everything seemed alright so the soap was cut…Alas! We were so disappointed when we saw the white specks throughout the inside of the soap! Look at the picture, ain’t it awful? At first we thought they might be lye pockets so pH strip was used to test the alkalinity/ acidity. The strip read pH10 so it shouldn’t be a problem to use. The white specks are probably the crystallized sugar from the frozen then overheated milk.
Seeing the white specks is like seeing pimples all over the face…we can’t bear with it. Half of the batch of Coffee and Milk Soap was cut to small chunks and rebatched over the double boiler (similar to hot process) by adding some milk and sugar water.
The rebatched soap now looked like this:-
The rustic look of the rebatched Coffee and Milk Soap
The rebatched soap is surprisingly good despite the awful look! They foamed up generously and felt so nice on the skin during and after shower. All the effort and hard work in making then rebatching the Coffee and Milk Soap is totally worth it!
The rebatched soap was molded in cavity molds. As the soap cooled and hardened too fast when molding, we only managed to get half of them in good shapes with a marbled look. The other half of the soaps are "dented" here and there.
We learned a few lessons along the way while making the rebatch soap. We will put a link here soon so stay tuned if you are interested.
