hi everyone today i want to talk about temperatures for soap making this video is really
long overdue people have been asking me about this for a long time because a lot of my earlier
soap videos well nearly all of my videos i don't take the temperature of my oils or my lye solution
i just generally use a warmish lye solution and i use a lot of liquid oils in my recipes
i put the two together and make soap i don't worry about it too much but the question comes up a lot
because lots of soap makers and a lot of the soap making information online
often talks about it being really important that you have your oils and your live solution at
the same or at the correct temperature to make the soap so i want to go into that a
little bit explain when that does matter when it doesn't and why and that will help explain why my
soap videos look the way they do and why for a lot of them i don't take any temperatures at all
so i'm going to just talk generally about cold process soap making there are some
considerations to be made regarding hot process so making in temperatures too i'll talk about that a
little bit later but basically with cold process soap making temperatures of your oils and your lye
solution they do matter but it really depends on the recipe and that's why in a lot of my
videos particularly my early ones i don't worry about the temperature at all because nearly all
of those recipes are made in a particular way in the way that you know it doesn't matter so much so
why don't they matter in those recipes the reason is that most of my recipes
particularly those early ones they are made with lots and lots of liquid oils unsaturated fats
virtually nearly all olive oil maybe with a little bit of castor oil a little bit of
coconut oil melted in but i'm not using lots of palm oil or butters or waxes or things like that
so when you're using lots of oils in your recipes that are liquid at room temperature there's no
worry about them solidifying if you add a coolish or cool lye solution to those oils if on the other
hand you're using recipes that are very high in saturated fats waxes butters things like palm oil
coconut oil you know in cold weather is is solid at room temperature things like that if you're
using a lot of those in your recipes and you add a cool lye solution that's not warm enough to
that you can get what's called a false trace what happens with that is the mixture can thicken up
earlier than you would expect it to and what that is when that's a false trace it's because
the lye solution isn't warm enough and when you add it to the oil mixture that has a lot of those
solid fats in it it can cool them down and it can trigger some of them to solidify so you get this
kind of thickened grainy texture in the mixture which isn't a trace at all and some people think
oh gosh my soap's tracing and then pour it out into the mold and then realized later that it
separated it wasn't emulsified at all but it was a false trace because the lye solution
and the oils weren't warm enough but that's only really relevant for recipes that use those hard
oils and those butters and waxes and heavily saturated fats you know things like palm oil
butters coconut oil in cold weather and things like that and as i said with recipes that are
really high in oils that are liquid at room temperature it doesn't matter so much you can use
a really cool lye solution and as long as those oils aren't going to solidify which they won't
if they're all liquid so for example olive oil you know it would have to be extremely extremely
cold weather i think or you know a fridge or a freezer before olive oil would start to solidify
so at most room temperatures you can add a cold lye solution to an olive oil you know
a castile soap recipe there's not going to be any issues with false trace because
olive oil is not going to solidify if it gets cooled by a lye solution that isn't warm so do
you understand what i'm saying it really depends on the recipe and most in particular the oils that
you're using so the trick is is to really evaluate your recipe look at what's in it and if it's got
lots of saturated fats in it or butters or any beeswax or anything like that that could solidify
that's a recipe that you would need to ensure that you're making the soap with the oils and
the lye solution warm enough a really common technique that a lot of soap makers use
it's a brilliant one actually it's called the heat transfer method and i've used it for years
and you've probably noticed in some of my videos i use it and how that one works is you mix your lye
solution and most of you should know that when you mix a fresh lye solution that's an
exothermic reaction so it generates a lot of heat so that lye solution when it's very first mixed
you know so when the sodium hydroxide is first dissolved into the water it gets very very hot
and you can use the heat of that lye solution so rather than waiting for it to cool down
you can use the heat of that lye solution to add to an oil mixture that might have some semi-solid
oils in it you know you might have a bit of coconut oil and a bit of cocoa butter or some shea
butter or you know different types of saturated fats in your oil mixture you can use that hot
lye solution pour that into those oils and use the heat of the lye solution to melt your oils
and hopefully it's hot enough you know it depends on the temperature of the oils
at my house it gets cold inside at winter we don't always use our heater so my room temperature might
actually be quite cool compared to somebody else's room temperature in summer or my room temperature
in summer it can fluctuate a lot so you've got to take that into consideration obviously the cooler
your oils the more heat they're going to take and the heat transfer method won't work if you've got
lots and lots of butters or saturated fats in your oil blend or they're too cool to start with
so you might need to melt them a little bit but often that heat transfer method
works quite well it works really really well if you've got mostly soft oils like say olive
oil mixed with a bit of coconut oil because coconut oil melts really easily and usually if
a bit of solid coconut oil is in that mixture then heat of a freshly mixed hot lye solution
poured into that that'll be fine to melt your coconut oil you've just got to watch that method
if your oils are cooler than you think they might be because that you've got to have enough heat in
that lye solution so in cool weather watch out for that heat transfer method maybe warm up your
oils just a little bit if you think they won't melt particularly if you're using things that
have a really high melting temperature like waxes and some butters but you know you can do your own
research on the melting temperatures of your ingredients that you're using for soap making
that's the trick the other thing to bear in mind with that heat transfer method is that it depends
on the water amount in your recipe so if you're using a very low water amount in your soap recipe
you're going to have less liquid in your lye solution it's going to be smaller so
if you're depending on the heat of your lye solution to melt your oils as you mix them in
bear in mind that if you're using a really low water recipe you're not going to have as much
hot lye liquid to go into your oils as you would if you were using a high water recipe
and i've got other videos that talk about water levels in soap making i'll link those below
but yeah you know a high water soap recipe is going to have a bigger lye solution and if that's
hot and you're relying on that to melt your oils for the heat transfer method that's going
to be more effective than if you're using a low water soap recipe now you know there's loads of
other information and reasons why you might use a high water soap or a moderate water level in your
soap or a low water level in your soap and that's another thing altogether so all of these factors
all come into not only formulating your soap recipes but how you actually make the soap as well
so if you're using mainly liquid oils in your soap recipes you don't have to worry too much
about the temperature of your lye solution other than the hotter the lye solution the warmer your
oils and your soap batter will be and that does speed up saponification and will make it trace a
little bit faster but it's not going to you know if you're just using liquid oils you're not going
to get a false trace or anything nasty like that happen it just if things are cool it's just going
to be a bit slower and you might have to blend it a bit longer to get that trace happening
if you're not sure and you're using a mixture of different oils and you'd like to have a more
simple blanket rule approach then i would suggest just keeping everything around body temperature
that's a really good general level for your lye solution and for your oils to be that way they
won't be too cool that they could solidify and give you a false trace but they're also
not going to be too hot either which can cause acceleration and volcanoes and things like that
so body temperature is about 37 degrees celsius and i think that's about 97 98 degrees fahrenheit
if you can cool your lye solution down to around that mark and warm your oils to around that mark
you know if you're using waxes or really hard butters in your recipe you might need to melt
the whole oil batch up higher than that in order to melt it but then let it cool down a little bit
so just look for that medium level warmth across your lye solution and your oils and then put them
together and i actually think that's probably the thinking behind the general advice that is to keep
your oils and your lie at the same temperature make sure they're the same and that's because
it's it's good advice for general recipes that use you know you might be using palm oil or lots of
coconut oil or you know lots of butters that's probably really good advice for those recipes
i do have this infrared thermometer gun now which is brilliant i love it but what i used
to do was even for those recipes where i knew it was more important to have the temperatures right
i would just feel them i would just feel the oil bucket and i would feel the lye container and i
kind of just have a bit of a sense it either feels really hot or it feels warm or it feels
cold so i would just a bit of an old-fashioned old-school way but i would literally just go by
feel and go yeah that feels warm oh yeah that feels warm that should be okay with that recipe
but like i said before there's so many things that come into play you want to look at acceleration
of trace um and acceleration of saponification if that's going to be an issue with your recipe
you want to understand about volcanoes and soap volcanoes and that you know your soap recipe can
bubble up in the mold if everything's too hot i do have a lot of these soap making terms explained on
my soap making terms page on my website which i put together a few months ago i will link that in
the description box below please read that there's a really there are some good explanations in there
of what all of this stuff means unfortunately you know there aren't really any blanket rules keeping
everything at about body temperature that's going to serve you really well for nearly every recipe
but if you don't want to have to bother with that and you want to do the heat transfer method
or you're just making olive oil soap or you know soap with soft oils and you're
not using any waxes or butters or palm oil or anything like that then maybe you don't need to
worry about your temperatures at all so you know evaluate that and decide what works best for you
regarding hot processed soap making um i never take the temperature of anything for hot processed
soap making because i'm forcing the saponification of my soap recipe through that hot process method
anyway so i'm not too worried if things are too warm obviously you don't want everything to be
extremely hot but with hot processed soap making you're forcing that spontification you're forcing
the gel phase the soap saponification reaction is exothermic anyway so it generates its own heat
so even if you tried you couldn't really keep that temperature down
i make my hot process soap usually in my slow cooker and i usually have the temperature
just on low sometimes i put it on high to begin with but then i turn it down to low
and i find that works quite well i'm not getting anything too explosive happening
but it you know it's not too slow either sometimes if you have it too low it can take forever and
it depends on how patient you are but generally with my oils and my life solution for hot process
generally i'm melting everything in the slow cooker to begin with anyway so the oils are
sitting there i'm just letting them melt and there might be like for example in my
honey and oat hot process soap recipe for beginners you'll see that i put beeswax
in that recipe i think i have cocoa butter and a couple of other things in there too so i let
that melt before i do anything else well i make my live solution while that's melting
so there's no issue with that as long as you're following a hot process where you're kind of
melting everything to begin with anyway it doesn't matter if you put a hot lye solution into that
i don't think you need to wait for that lye solution to cool in hot processed soap making
because it's going to be a hot process anyway so you can just put your hot freshly made
lye solution straight in and your soap will trace really fast but that's fine you you're forcing it
all to accelerate with hot process anyway i'll be putting together an article to go
along with this video or a blog post that will be up on my website i'll put a link to that below
so i'll write down all of those details and all of a little bit more detail about melting points and
different temperatures and some links for you all so if you're wanting to just double check
any of your understanding have a look at that it'll give more detail
thanks everyone i think that's about it i hope i've answered all your questions and
joey thank you for your patience if you get to see this hello and thanks for your suggestion
sorry i have taken way too long to get to this video but i'm glad i've done it now and hopefully
that's helped so yeah look at the oils you're using in your recipes and evaluate whether or
not you might get a false trace if things are too cool with that if that's the case then you'll need
to look at the temperatures of your oil in your lye solution and keep things a little bit warm
but remember with cold processed soap making don't make things too hot keep them you know
around that moderate body temperature warm level that's what you're after
too cold is not good too hot is not good either i'll put all the details of the temperatures and
that stuff in the blog post for the video and and yeah let me know if you've got any questions
thanks everyone hope that's helped see you in the next video bye
you