Why do you cure soap

Thank you for sharing all your reasons. For newbies just starting, there is a lot of info. I have found no info. Is there a suggested temperature and humidity level to cure soap? Can it be properly cured in a finished basement cooler but so is my house?

What info. Thank you. This will draw the excess water from the air. In order to not dehumidify the entire basement you can place the soaps in a dedicated closet for curing and place the dehumidifier in there.

You will from time to time depending on the humidity have to dump the water collected. Your soaps will sweat if there is too much humidity.

You can also try using silica beads to help draw the moisture as well. Hi , is it necessary to cure Castile liquid soap? If yes, should I cure the paste or after adding the water? I AM a newbie making soap I found my passion later in life. I Started making soaps 6 months ago and each day I love it more and more. Most of the soaps I made had given away to family and co workers. I work full time but am contemplating starting a business.

I also find each batch of soap different. Lye is a highly caustic substance with a very high pH. Just like an acid would, highly alkaline products like lye can burn your skin. When you blend together the oils and lye and reach trace, the saponification process has begun.

By the time the soap is hard enough to remove from the mold, it may already be complete. The saponification process should be finished within the first days. For the first few days, in some cases, the saponification process may have not completed. It is possible that there is a tiny bit of unreacted lye left in the soap.

If you use the soap in that state, it is possible that you feel a bit of a sting or burn, especially if you have open cuts. One of the main reasons to cure homemade bar soaps is that when they are first made, they tend to be on the softer side.

During the drying period, some of the residual moisture in the bar will evaporate away. Soap, when in bar form, is made up of a crystalline structure. As it solidifies and dries, the inner structure of the soap continues to change. The crystalline structure of soap has layers to it.

These layers are formed by a structuring of the surfactants with time. Surfactants have a hydrophilic water-loving head and a hydrophobic tail one that is not attracted to water, which appears to be repelled by it. These surfactants come together into structures called micelles. When you make soap, you are normally blending liquids oils and lye. After some blending and a chemical reaction, you end up with a gel-like solid structure.

It forms sheets of surfactants that are separated by layers of water. As time goes by, and more water evaporates, the structure lines up better, forming more level sheets with thinner layers of water between them.

People specifically go through the messier process of hot-processing because they think that it allows them to use their soap immediately vs. By the time you pour the hot-processed soap into molds, the saponification process has already completed. When cooking the soap, excess water will also tend to evaporate away more quickly. These changes will affect the quality of the soap.

Cured soap generally lathers better and may have other improvements with time. In most cases, you can safely use both hot-process and cold-process soap a few days after having made them. This is especially true if you plan on gifting or selling your soap.

First, liquid soaps are pretty much always made by hot-processing. The finished soap paste will normally have already completed the saponification process. Unlike bar soaps that need drying time, liquid soap paste needs to be diluted to be used properly. Rather than form a layered lamellar micelle structure like in bar soaps, the surfactants are more likely to come together into sphere-shaped micelles.

Micelles are spheres that form when the hydrophobic tails of the surfactants come together in the center and the water-soluble ionic heads stay on the outside of the sphere where they contact the water. I talk more about micelles in my post about how to make micellar water. So, soap needs to be altered for easy, smooth melting. Other melt-and-pour soaps are true soaps that have been made with lye , but that have propylene glycol, glycerin, or other substances added to make them meltable.

Some people ask me about my homemade glycerin soap. I also have a vegan glycerin soap recipe. They want to know if it can be used as a melt-and-pour soap. Both use a combination of solvents like alcohol, glycerin, and sugar water to dissolve away part of the crystalline structure, making the soap more translucent.

With the use of these solvents, the soap becomes much more smooth when you remelt it. For most of my recipes, I find that a To get that amount, simply multiply the amount of lye in any soap recipe by 1. Creating stronger lye concentrations speeds up how quickly your soap comes to trace and hardens.

It can also affect how evenly your soap gels and cause other issues including cracking. Another way to cure handmade soap faster is to use a dehumidifier. I keep one going in my workroom when soaps are curing.

Make sure to keep them out of the sun and that they have really good airflow. An electric fan blowing on soap could also reduce your cure time. Again make sure to weigh your soap at the beginning of the cure time and keep an eye on the weight regularly. You can also wrap them in paper packaging. Wrapping them in plastic is a bad idea though for two reasons.

First of all, single-use plastic is frowned on these days. That means that excess moisture could cause your bars to get Dreaded Orange Spot, literally orange spots on the bars.

The spots can get icky and have an unpleasant odor and are an indication that the soap has gone rancid. The best place to store handmade soap is in the open air. Please be aware that if you store handmade soap in sealed containers, such as tupperware, then it can greatly reduce the shelf-life of your soap. You could one day open that container of soap to find beads of moisture over the bars and signs that the soap has gone rancid.

This can be easily calculated by looking at all the labels of all the ingredients you used to make soap. The closest best-by date is the best-by date of your new batch of soap. Using old oil can also cause the Dreaded Orange Spot mentioned before. Some fresh oils have a shelf-life of two to three years though; coconut oil for example. Make soap with oils that have the longest natural shelf-life and that are well within that best-by date will pay off.

It will ensure that your soap will not only last a long time but that you can cure soap for longer, creating better bars, without the fear of them going rancid. For even more soap making ideas, recipes, and tips head over here. I am new to your site and enjoying reading everything I can about soap making! I have a small greenhouse 4ft by 3ft by 18 inches in my basement I use for starting my seeds in the spring.

Can I put my soap to dry in that and leave the doors open in the front? I was concerned about the temp only being about 68 degrees.

When I start my plants I use a heat mat for warmth. And should I use a small fan for circulation? Thanks for any info! Hi Barbara, room temperature is perfectly fine for allowing soap to cure. It does not need to be warm during the curing weeks and you will not need a fan. They just need to be in a dry place out of direct sunlight :. I read that it will melt if left on the soap dish while wet. BTW, loving your website!! So excited! Found your site and absolutely love it. Even by just reading the post about curing the soap I found answers to several questions I had and I look forward to check out your other posts, both on soaps and gardening.

Just want to say Thank You for sharing! This site is a gem. No, liquid soap base cannot be used to make bar soap. For bar soap you either need to purchase a pre-made melt-and-pour base or make it from scratch using the cold-process method. Here are some recipes to get you started. After you make soap from a good recipe there is zero sodium hydroxide left in the soap. And to answer your question — no, there is no way for us to test sodium hydroxide levels in soap.

I had a question Im new to soap making and made a melt and pour soap batch and when it was done hardening it was pretty greasy I used 4tsp of lavender oil to g of soap was that too much or will curing it make the oilyness go away? I also suspect you used lavender-infused carrier oil as opposed to lavender essential oil? Lavender flowers infused into a carrier oil like sunflower oil is sometimes marketed as lavender oil. Hello, I have just started to cure my first batches.

It is so exciting. Is it safe to cure them in the bedroom? My husband is worried about the lye which may evaporate into the air. Thank you, xx. Hi, I always find your post really helpful. Where I live is very humid and there are lots of dust in the air and the temperature is always above 85 F.

But Tom orden to prever the dust attach to the soap, believe me the dust is really an issue here , I cover them with a fine mesh cloth, do you think that would be ok? Thanks in advance. The cloth might stick to the soap, depending on how moist the bars are after cutting. I was making soap and I am at the curing phase. I put them into a plastic box to cure is this a good idea or do I need to bring them out in the open? Keep them in the open — the water in the bars needs to evaporate out and away.

Keeping them in a box will lead to condensation and potential spoiling. In regards to storing the soap for the 4 week period whilst it is curing, is it ok to store it in a cupboard that is a bit dark? There is plenty of air, but not so much light! Thank you! Dark is good, but the place needs to be open to the air. One of the points of curing is for water to evaporate out, and a closed cupboard is not ideal.

It keeps moisture in adding to the cure time, and the moisture might collect in the wood inside the cupboard. I made a CP this past Saturday that almost immediately started gel phase — so i added more water so that I could just get it into the mold.

Now it is still too gummy to unmold. Is this savable? I would love to rebatch but it is a gelatenous mess right now. Your soap will eventually harden up but depending on how much extra water you added it may take weeks or months for it to evaporate out.