15 March 2013

Beeswax soap test and natural colourant



This is the first week of testing soap for the range. My brain is boiling of ideas. For a first test, I used a simple and common ingredients in soap making, but not the easiest to work with, Beeswax


It's quite tricky to make soap with beeswax. Its melting point is very high, around 62 degrees. And I usually mix my oils and lye between 30 and 35 degrees. So, I had to deal to with it and change my habit. You have to work very fast!

The oils + lye get thick quickly, so you have to work faster as usual. The trace arrived instantaneously. You are likely to experiment seize in soap making. 
If you plan to do sophisticated swirls, forget about this. Or you have to do a simple one. I didn't had any essential oils because I wanted to do a swirl into the soap. And even this, it was to late, the oils and lye was to thick to do anything with it



Melt oils + beeswax around 38 degrees


You can see on that picture how thick was the mix oils + beeswax, even at 38 degrees



     So, I had to steam the blending oil again. The perfect temperature to work with was around 55 degrees Even with a room temperature at 22 degrees, I had to work fast. I added the lye at 46 degrees






As expected, the soap had a gel phase which is normal with a high temperature saponification and beeswax





I would suggest to work with no more than 5% of beeswax. In that case, I used 5%, but 2%, 3% is better to avoid seize. A high percentage of beeswax contribute to seize. And when you work with beeswax, I suggest you not to discount your water very much, it's even better to work with a 30% lye concentration, even less it's better



Beeswax add hardness to your soap and has emollient properties. It's a nice ingredients into soap. Too much beeswax in your soap is bound to reduce the lather






Next test will be about natural colourant. This is what I have as dyes for the moment but I need to explore more of them to colour my soaps. It's not easy to have a large range of colours with natural dyes. Herbs and plants powder are difficult to mix together to obtain a new colour. However, clays mix well. So that is my next experimentation


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