Week One in the Soap Experiment

One week in and today is the first day of testing the two soaps. First, a comparison photo...

The soap at the bottom is the water based soap; the top is the apple cider vinegar soap. There's not a lot of difference in the colour any more. The cider soap is slightly darker but the difference is negligible, really.

Here they are side by side. Again, you can see that the cider soap, on the right, is slightly darker but just slightly.

And how do they lather?

Keep in mind, this is the first week. This is the water based soap. It lathered easily and the lather was lovely.

And the cider soap. The lather's not quite as fine but still, it lathered easily and the lather felt good.

Stay tuned for week #2.

Soaping Experiment - the Unmolding

It's still early here (6:50 a.m.) but I decided to check on my soapy experiment before getting ready for work. Both were hard enough to unmold and came out of the molds easily.

Both are smooth, hard, and look lovely. As you can see from the next picture, the soap with the apple cider vinegar is still slightly darker but has lightened up considerably.

Water based soap on the left, ACV based soap on the right

There is no scent of the cider vinegar in the cider soap. That surprised me a little bit, to be honest. Now, we wait. I'll try both in about a week and then each week after that... if I remember.

Soap Made

My two small batches have been made and in the molds. The recipe I used is as follows:

44% Olive oil
32% Palm oil
24% Coconut oil

I used 8 ounces of oil for each batch and my water to lye ratio was 1.4:1. Superfat was 5%. The only difference between the recipes was the liquid used to dissolve the lye. One was water, one was apple cider vinegar.

Here, you can see the difference between the ACV (at the left) with the lye dissolved in it and the lye dissolved in water. I did learn one little thing about using plastic to stir the lye into the liquid. It gets hot enough to do this...

That surprised me a little, to be honest.

The soap is now in the molds and it should be pretty easy to keep them straight. Apart from using different molds, the colour is a dead giveaway.

Made with water

Made with apple cider vinegar

I wanted to make sure there was no way these two soaps could be mistaken for each other so I used two completely different molds. Unfortunately, the green one's cavities are a little bigger than the red one. I don't think it will affect my experiment any but, in retrospect, I could have filled three cavities with one and three cavities with the other. Oh well, live and learn, right?

The next step is to see how long it takes before they're ready to unmold. Stand by.

Experimentation

It's been a while since I made soap. Yes, I've done one or two of the challenges on the Soapmaking Forum that I haven't blogged about but, really, there hasn't been a lot of soapmaking going on around here. Now, though, Christmas is coming and if I don't get myself in gear, I won't have much available.

Today, though, I want to run an experiment. I'm home with a rather upset tummy but I don't feel like sitting still so it's a good time for this. What's the experiment?

Well, I've been doing a lot of reading and have come across a blogger who uses only apple cider vinegar in her soap, rather than water. I've decided to make a very basic soap using olive oil, palm oil, and coconut oil. I'll make two small batches, one made with water, the other made with acv; I won't add any scent or colour and will put them in different molds in order to differentiate them.

I'll keep you posted.