To Gel or Not to Gel

To Gel or Not to Gel
The Effect of Starting Temps when Soapmaking
By Kelly Bloom
Use full Gel when doing CP Overpours
Why Make Ungelled Soap?
Less heat build up in your soap mold means that the more fragile, or volatile
elements of your expensive essential oils, do not get lost to the intense heat that
gel stage creates. Did you know the internal temperature of a batch of soap in full
gel stage can exceed 220 degrees? This heat can not only burn off the lighter
components of essential oil and fragrance oil, but also scorch the proteins in milk.
By keeping temps lower, you have lighter colored milk soaps. You don’t have to
overcompensate with scent materials, and can save money using less essential
oil or fragrance oil. Esthetically, ungelled soap has a very fine, smooth texture.
This is because the molecules are moving so S L O W L Y during saponification
© 2001 Kelly Bloom, BloomWorks Holdings, LLC & Soapalooza at
http://www.soapalooza.com. All text, photos, graphics, artwork and other material in this
work are copyrighted and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
without permission.
that they line up ‘dress right dress’ like little soldiers. Try the following
experiment:
Rub your hands together in a hurried fashion. Feel that warmth? Now rub your
hands together very slowly. No heat, right? This is the same principle occurring
when you start making Cold Process soap with warm lye and warm oil mixtures.
The friction of fast moving molecules builds up to a mass in the center of the
mold, resulting in the batch going into ‘gel stage’. If your batch gets too hot, it will
result in something we refer to as a soap volcano! By using lower starting lye and
oil temps, you constrain the speed the molecules are moving at, thereby limiting
the build up of excess heat, and avoid gel stage.
Nag Champa in Gel Stage
You are looking at a photo of a batch of my swirled Nag Champa soap, poured
about 2 hours before this photo was taken. Right now, this batch is in gel stage,
but not quite spread to the outermost edges. The mass of soap is having an
exothermic reaction, heat is building up as oil and lye molecules are moving
about creating friction and transforming into soap. Gel stage starts in the center
of the mold, and moves in an outward manner. Eventually, if full gel stage is
© 2001 Kelly Bloom, BloomWorks Holdings, LLC & Soapalooza at
http://www.soapalooza.com. All text, photos, graphics, artwork and other material in this
work are copyrighted and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
without permission.
reached, the entire batch will change to the slightly darker shade that you see
almost to the edges of this batch. Sometimes a batch will stay at this point, not
enough heat gets generated to extend the exothermic reaction all the way to the
mold edges and corners. If you see your batch stopping in a partial gel, you can
“push” it the rest of the way by setting your mold in a 170 degree oven for a few
hours. External heat will allow the edges, or ‘rind’ of ungelled soap to move
toward the rest of the gelled mass.
Ungelled Tropical Fruit Slices
Next, we have a photo of a batch of yellow & orange swirled Tropical Fruit Slices
soap, which was made with lower starting temps. The Tropical Fruit Slices
fragrance oil has a high ratio of Grapefruit essential oil in it, which is very volatile.
Lower temps and avoiding gel stage allow this fragrance to remain true and
strong in the finished soap. I love to use this technique for all my citrus essential
oils also. In this second batch using lower temperatures, the base oils were about
75 - 78 degrees, previously mixed, melted, and then cooled. You will need to
have at least 40% loose oils to have a cool base oils formula that is still a mixable
slurry when 75 - 80 degrees. The lye solution was cooled to 50 - 60 degrees.
This batch was mixed very cool, and experienced a temporary “False Trace”
where the cold lye solution hits the cool base oils and thickens up initially. The
soap mixture quickly loosens up again though as the lye and oils start to react
© 2001 Kelly Bloom, BloomWorks Holdings, LLC & Soapalooza at
http://www.soapalooza.com. All text, photos, graphics, artwork and other material in this
work are copyrighted and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
without permission.
and create friction and heat. Continue mixing as usual, moving right through that
false trace. Pour into mold, set into your freezer or refrigerator with no insulation
around the mold. (yes, your soap will still saponify, albeit a slower rate, even in
the freezer).
The Effect of Starting Temps when Soapmaking
Ungelled Moondance & Gelled Moondance
The pink bar of Moondance herbal soap on the Left below shows where only
partial gel occurred in the mold. The upper edge and the rounded right upper
corner is more opaque than the lower portion of the soap. The pink bar of
Moondance herbal soap on the Right below shows the same formula, same
essential oils, duplicate batch made in similar mold. Full gel was achieved by
soaping with higher oil and lye solution temps. No “rind effect” like seen on the
bar to the Left. Notice that ungelled soap is more opaque than fully gelled soap.
(the lower corners of our batches were rounded because this photo is from when
we still used shower curtains cut to fit the mold as our liner, we did not get the
perfect corners that the silicon lined molds in the photos give us now. The
rounded corners were the lower portion of the mold where the liner did not get
flush into the mold corners).
© 2001 Kelly Bloom, BloomWorks Holdings, LLC & Soapalooza at
http://www.soapalooza.com. All text, photos, graphics, artwork and other material in this
work are copyrighted and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
without permission.
Ungelled Eucalyptus & Gelled Eucalyptus
This Eucalyptus herbal soap was made in two batches. Batch on the left did not
go through gel stage. Batch on the Right went through full gel stage. Notice how
you can use gel stage, or lack of gel stage, to obtain different soap effects. I like
soaps with herbs in them to go through full gel stage. That way, I can see
“deeper” into the bar all the lovely herbs that were added to the batch.
Ungelled Goat milk soap on Left
Both of these batches, Unscented Goat Milk on the Left and Unscented Pumpkin
Illipe on the Right are both made with the Low Temp or ungelled soap method.
We have beautifully white soap in both instances by making a very concentrated
© 2001 Kelly Bloom, BloomWorks Holdings, LLC & Soapalooza at
http://www.soapalooza.com. All text, photos, graphics, artwork and other material in this
work are copyrighted and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
without permission.
solution of the powdered goat milk, making it thick like cream (small portion of
our water weight for this batch mixed up with the amount of Goat Milk powder to
have made goat milk out of the full weight of water required for this batch). The
Pumpkin Illipe soap is naturally a pretty ivory shade, it is here to show you the
level of discoloration the Goat Milk soap is when using very low soapmaking
temperatures.
© 2001 Kelly Bloom, BloomWorks Holdings, LLC & Soapalooza at
http://www.soapalooza.com. All text, photos, graphics, artwork and other material in this
work are copyrighted and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
without permission.