hey everyone just a quick video today and i'm a little bit rough and ready my hair's a bit crazy
but i hope you don't mind um i'm just gonna go for it anyway while i've got the chance today i want
to show you how to do the zap test for ph testing your soap you can use this test for cold process
hot process soap and i'm pretty sure i haven't tried it but i'm pretty sure you can also use
it for ph testing liquid soap paste so there you go so the zap test lots of us have heard about it
i thought i knew a bit about it when i first started soap making but then i discovered these
things ph test strips which you've probably seen in a lot of my videos these are great honestly
if you can get these and i just bought these off ebay and i do have a video that demonstrates how i
use these so i'll link to that in the description box if you can get these these are great these are
fine bit of paper wet soap test the ph and you'll know if your soap is safe enough to use or not
and why is this important well if you have any experience with soap making you know that soap
starts off with the use of quite dangerous alkaline chemicals either sodium hydroxide
or potassium hydroxide which are highly caustic you know they will they're corrosive they will
burn your skin um and soap takes a little while for that chemical reaction to complete after it's
made and when it's fully saponified it's safe to use and there's no more sodium hydroxide or
potassium hydroxide left in the soap so we soap makers we need to test our soap to make sure that
they're safe for us to use or for us to give to other people or whatever we're doing with them
and i do advocate for ph test strips if you can get them but if you cannot
get them there is an alternative and i know a lot of you can't get them so this is for you
in this book scientific soap making by kevin dunn honestly i don't think i'll ever read the entire
book but i do pick out bits and pieces and i've read a fair chunk of it he dedicates two and a
half pages to what he calls the tongue test and really that's the other term for the zap test
and it is really the old way of testing so before we had litmus paper you know ph paper
um kevin in his book says the tongue is the oldest chemical sensor we have and soap makers have been
using it for as long as there has been soap so that was really reassuring for me to read so
in this book he teaches you the best way to do it and i'm going to share that method or my slightly
changed version of that method with you it is very very easy all you need is a finished bar of soap
hopefully it is safe to test and all you're going to taste is soap but what you do to do the zap
test is you wet your finger i'm going to use water but you could you know use a bit of saliva as well
wet your finger rub it onto the soap until you get a bit of a slurry going on till you get a bit of
soap on your finger and then yep put it on your tongue
just a little tiny bit and just see what you can taste so i know this soap is fully saponified
it just tastes like soap it's a little bit oily a little bit soapy there's nothing else going
on there though just tastes like soap there's no stinging or anything like that if this soap wasn't
fully saponified and the chemical reaction was incomplete or there was a mistake in the recipe
and too much lye was added or something went wrong and the soap was not safe to use and it was
lie heavy or unsaponified for some reason this is kevin's description of what you will experience
and i have i have tested it out it's pretty pretty good description imagining that your
finger is covered with deadly poison touch it delicate delicately to the tip of your tongue
perhaps you taste nothing in which case you can taste more boldly the second time
eventually you will taste something that tastes like fat like soap or like some terrible stinging
bitter salty something that you would prefer never to have taste again
spit it out basically he says don't worry rinse your mouth out with water and remember that taste
that is the taste of alkali so basically you will if your soap is not fully saponified or
it is lie heavy or it has too much alkali in it you will get a tingly zappy electrical charge
little zap taste when you when you test your soap and try it out try it on soap that um you've made
maybe the day before or soap that you think may be close to being saponified but not fully
and do that little taste and if you don't get any stinging or weird zappy feeling and you just can
taste soap like i can then it will be fine if your soap is not fine and you are getting the
zap if your recipe was correct and you measured everything properly then you just need to give
it more time it just needs more time to fully saponify and and become the correct ph by the way
soap completed soap is always a naturally slightly alkaline product it will always be about eight or
nine on the ph scale so uh the the ph test strips will always come up green if your soap is ready
and you will it'll pass the zap test but if it's higher than that and your paper's coming
out purple or it's really zappy and you think it should have saponified by then then there may be
something wrong with it but give it a good few days sometimes it can take a few days to fully
saponify if it is still zappy after a week then there's something gone wrong with your soap recipe
and you'd need to evaluate what happened with it and you may need to rebatch it with some more oil
it's very hard to do if you don't know what went wrong but if you know what went wrong
that's pretty easy to correct but that's a subject for a whole other video anyway
just wanted to show you the zap test it's not that scary and it's a legit method you
can do it when i first started soap making i was really quick to get these because i just
didn't want to play around with the zap test it sounded too i know dangerous to me i didn't
want to put raw soap on my tongue but um it is a legitimate method and not everybody has access to
ph test strips and they're not always easy to get for everybody in all parts of the world so use the
zap test and that way at least in one capacity you will know that your soap is safe to use
thanks for watching i hope that was helpful please head to the description box below the video if you
want to check out any links i'll put links to this book to my website other relevant things
i may think of and if you would like to buy me a coffee to support my work i would appreciate that
a lot as well i'll put the link for that below too i hope you're all well i'll see you again soon
okay