2 Deadly Soap Making Mistakes That Will Ruin Your Soap Batch

Nothing is more disappointing to a soapmaker than ruining a batch of soap. You’re left with several pounds of useless goo, not to mention the loss of ingredients, time and money that results. Many soap batches are doomed for failure simply because you’ve failed to test.

Fortunately, testing a batch of soap is a simple procedure that will save you countless hours of frustration.

Imagine this scenario when you are soap making: You’ve never used this fragrance before; you’ve never even smelled it. But you’re convinced that it will work so well for the couple who asked you to do their favors for their winter wedding.

No need to run it by them... everything will work out perfect. Before you spend all of your extra funds on 10 lbs. of Juniper Mint Raspberry fragrance, think about it for a second. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not trying to snuff your creativity and try to prevent you from experimenting. But in the situation above you better know what the heck you’re doing. When the pressure’s not on though, there’s also a way to experiment properly.

A simple way.

I have had the darndest things happen to some of my batches; ones that I swore would come out perfect. I’ve had soapmaking scents that turned to brick in the pot well before I could pour them, soaps that had so many additives that they would peel the paint off the side of a dump truck, and batches that just never seemed to harden – ever.

All of those experiences have been valuable learning lessons, but some of them could have been reduced to less costly mistakes by using some simple damage control. Here are six frequent mistakes that soapmakers make, and how you can avoid them:

Soapmaking Mistake #1 – Making a Huge Batch of a New Recipe If there’s a chance that something might go wrong with a recipe you’ve never used before, doesn’t it make sense to only make a little? If you had your choice of throwing away two pounds of soap or twenty, you’d opt for two pounds, right? Two pounds is a safe test batch size to make sure that you’ve gotten your recipe right. If it works on a small scale, the likelihood of your larger batch coming out perfect is much, much higher.

Soapmaking Mistake #2 – Changing Multiple Variables If you want to try powdered goat’s milk to see how much more moisturizing it will be in your soap, use it in a recipe that is already tried and true, preferably with no additional additives. Never try to change more than one ingredient in a soap recipe until you know what each ingredient will add (or take away) from your soap. If you ignore this step and something happens that you like/dislike, you’ll have difficulty pinpointing where the success or failure came from.