The Great Goats Milk Experiment!

Hey everyone! I know I haven't been updating like I've been wanting to but have no fear, I have been working on several projects recently and they will get posted in time (hopefully sooner than later).

I did want to share with you today an experiment in Goats Milk soap that I conducted late last week. I had been curious as to why CP soapers would add Goats Milk into their soaps but I also have been reading that the Goats Milk can be extremely tricky to work with because it tends to overheat (when it overheats, it turns orange in appearance).

I did 3 one-pound of oils batches and used varying amounts of Goats Milk as part of the water content for making the lye solution.

My recipe:
Olive Oil: 40%
Walmart GV Shortening: 40%
Coconut Oil: 15%
Castor Oil: 5%

Liquid content was at 38%

All three batches:


The first batch I made was the green soap. I scented it with Green Tea FO. I used 30% water to dissolve the lye and added 8% cold Goats Milk (I froze it and then took it out of the freezer when I started heating the oils and mixing the lye) at trace. It's colored with a little bit of Green powdered oxide. I also tried the method where the FO and colorant were added to the oils and mixed before adding the lye mixture. After pouring it into my Pringles can mold, it went into the refrigerator for 48 hours.
I don't know why, but a couple hours after I had unmolded it cracks developed on the surface :( I don't know if you can really see that in this picture. But this is the only soap that cracked out of the three batches.


My second batch was half water and half goats milk content. I dissolved as much lye as I could in the water, then added the goats milk (frozen) and finished adding the rest of the lye. The Goats Milk did burn and turned a bright orange color while I was waiting for the oils to cool down. Into my oils went a little bit of yellow powdered oxide and Energy FO. This, too, went into a Pringles can and into the refrigerator for 48 hours.

It turned a lovely yellow orange on me ^_^

My third batch was 100% goats milk for my liquid content. It took absolutely forever for the lye to dissolve in the frozen goats milk, and though the goats milk was frozen and I had the lye mixing container in an ice bath, as soon as the lye touched the goats milk, it turned orange. However, this didn't really do anything to the final outcome of the soap as it merely turned a very light tan/cream color! This batch was made without any colorant and Yuzu FO and once again, I used a Pringles can mold and it went straight into the refrigerator for 48 hours. When I first cut into this soap, it was a consistent color all the way through- I was excited! Then the next day I noticed that there was some discoloration in the middle of some of the pieces (boo!). If I try this again, I will place the soap back into the refrigerator after cutting- maybe that will keep the soap from heating up too much and turning orange?


So, yesterday I did the zap test on the soap (basically, you lick the soap to see if it "zaps" you and if it does, there is still active lye in the soap) and had no zap... sheesh... I'm a soap licker now! Hehe! Anyway, since I got no zap, I decided to do a quick test on how the soaps felt.


The Green Tea soap:
Dry, it felt kind of rough, like my usual batches do at first...


The Energy soap:
Dry, this one felt a little smoother than the Green Tea, but not by much.


The Yuzu soap:
Dry- ooh creamy! Kind of like the way commercial soaps feel when dry (but in my mind, I know this bar is actually a lot healthier for my skin). If I had the patience to do all Goats Milk in the future, I probably would be doing this all the time!

Another observation I made with the dry soap is that the soaps with the higher goats milk content feel a lot harder... I can feel some give in the Green Tea soap when I put a squeezing pressure on the middle, but no give in the Yuzu soap whatsoever.

All the soaps when wet:
When I went to wash with each soap, it was difficult to get a lather and the lather was rather slimy and ick-feeling. (I should have expected this, though, with how low a "bubbly" factor it got on the soap calculator). It also felt like it wouldn't wash off and left my skin feeling kind of sticky. So, I went online to see what was up and found out that soaps with high Olive Oil content get more of a slime lather and guess what! The Goats Milk also adds a bit of its own sliminess, too! So, I guess I should have done a little bit more research on how the oils react when used as soap :( I was also advised to let the soap cure a little bit longer and then try washing with them again to see if any of the slimy lather goes away. So, I shall update on the Great Goats Milk Experiment in a month and see how the soaps feel when used at that time! Otherwise, I have a feeling that these soaps will be going into my first ever rebatch experiment! LOL! Gotta learn how to rebatch at some point in time!