Table of Contents
- Will Bar Soap Melt In The Sun?
- At What Temperature Does a Bar of Soap Melt?
- How Do You Liquify Soap?
- How Hot Does Soap Get?
- Temperature For Cold Process Soap Making?
- How Does Water Amount Affect Temperature In Cold-Process Soap Making?
- Temperature For Hot Process Soap-Making?
- Conclusion
Will soap melt in heat? In my experience as a soap maker, soap isn’t likely to melt in hot weather because it’s improbable to reach its flashpoint (the temperature at which it can ignite).
However, prolonged exposure to high temperatures or heat can cause bar soap to soften, sweat (not the humankind! ), have a greasy texture, and lose shape.
Additionally, whether a soap will melt in heat or reach its melting point depends on factors like the type of soap and its ingredients. How to store soap.
Understanding how the weather and environment affect your soap is essential so you know how to store and preserve its quality and usability.
Let’s explore factors affecting its behavior in hot weather and some practical tips for handling soap during temperature fluctuations.
Let’s start!
Will Bar Soap Melt In The Sun?
Like I said earlier, soap is unlikely to melt in the sun or heat, but some changes happen to poorly stored soap bars in summer, which are influenced to some extent by the ingredients.
Bar soaps stored in sunny areas or enclosed spaces with little to no inflow or fresh air become soft over time and are prone to DOS.
Soaps rich in hard oils like coconut or palm oil boast a higher melting point than softer oils. This characteristic gives them resilience against moderate heat.
Nevertheless, the main point in this conversation about whether soap melts in heat is storing it in a well-ventilated area to avoid the adverse effects of the heat or sun.
Besides, you didn’t put your time, knowledge, and resources into making soap, so you could poorly store it unless you are deliberately melting it for rebatching, and that will have to involve putting your soap in a microwave.
Or if you are making a Melt-&-Pour soap, which requires you to melt the glycerin at 120°F (49°C). How to make Melt-&-Pour soap.
At What Temperature Does a Bar of Soap Melt?
When rebatching or melting glycerin for your soap, the temperature at which you melt it in the microwave or stove is paramount to the soap outcome.
Seeing that the temperature of the soap’s melting point speaks volumes to it’s result, you want to pay extra attention to avoid overheating or boiling.
The melting point for rebatching starts melting at 120° F, but some may only start melting at 140°F.
The melting point will be different depending on not only the soap type but also the ingredients present in the soap. Check it at intervals every 30 seconds.
Melting point for Melt-&-Pour soap:100°F to 120°F (38°C to 49°C). Depending on the ingredient, check it at intervals every 30 seconds
How Do You Liquify Soap?
You liquefy soap by heating it in the microwave. Many soap-making ingredients are in liquid form, like lye, oil, etc., except for dry herbs and colors.
So, to liquefy soap, you just need to cut it into small chunks, put it in the microwave or slow cooker on low heat, and voila gets to melt.
Plus, when using the microwave to melt soap, check it in 30-second intervals to prevent burn
How Hot Does Soap Get?
The temperature that soap can reach depends on various factors, such as the method of production and ingredients used.
Normal soap temperature should be around 40–50°C/100–120°F, depending on the specific ingredients and process.
However, in extreme cases, probably because of the oils 120–140 or 160°C above these degrees, it is detrimental to your soap.
Temperature For Cold Process Soap Making?
In cold-process soap making, the temperature of your oils and your lye solution does matter.
In my early days of soap-making as a soapmaker, I didn’t worry about the temperature at all because nearly all of those recipes were made in a particular way, in the way that you know it doesn’t matter so much.
So why don’t they matter in those recipes? The reason is that most of my recipes, particularly those early ones, are made with lots of liquid oils and unsaturated fats; virtually all are olive oil, maybe with a little bit of castor oil or a little bit of coconut oil melted in.
I wasn’t using palm oil, butter, waxes, or things like that. So when you’re using lots of oils in your recipes that are liquid at room temperature (for example, avocado, almond, rice bran, canola, and sunflower oil), there’s no worry about them solidifying if you add a coolish or cool lye solution to those oils.
On the other hand, suppose you’re using recipes very high in saturated fats that solidify at room temperature in cold weather, like waxes, butter, palm oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, mango butter, etc. And you add a cool lye solution that’s not warm enough.
In that case, you can get what’s called a false trace. What happens with that is the mixture can thicken up earlier than you would expect, and that’s a false trace.
It’s because the lye solution isn’t warm enough. And when you add it to the oil mixture, that has a lot of those solid fats in it.
It can cool them down and trigger some of them to solidify, so you get this kind of thickened, grainy texture in the mixture, which isn’t a trace at all.
For example, olive oil would have to be extremely cold or in a fridge or freezer before it would start to solidify.
So, at most room temperature, you can add a cold lye solution to olive oil; there won’t be any issues with false trace because olive oil will not solidify if it is cooled by a lye solution that isn’t warm.
So, the trick is to really evaluate your recipe. Look at what’s in it, and if it has lots of saturated fats, butter, beeswax, or anything like that, that could solidify.
For a soap recipe containing saturated fat, That’s a recipe; you would need to ensure that you’re making the soap with the oils and the lye solution warm enough.
A really common technique that a lot of soap makers use. It’s a brilliant one, actually. It’s called the heat transfer method.
And I used it for years. How that works is you mix your lye solution, and you should know that when you mix a fresh lye solution, that’s an exothermic reaction, so it generates a lot of heat.
So that lye solution, when it’s very first mixed when the sodium hydroxide is first dissolved into the water, gets very hot; at this point, use that hot lye solution.
Pour that into those oils, and use the heat of the lye solution to melt your oils.
So, rather than waiting for it to cool down, you can add the lye solution to the oil mixture that might have some semi-solid oils Like coconut oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, or different types of saturated fats in your oil mixture.
And hopefully, it’s hot enough, depending on the temperature of the oils.
So my room temperature might be quite cool compared to somebody else’s in summer because my room temperature fluctuates a lot.
So you have to consider that. Obviously, the cooler your oils, the more heat they will take.
The heat transfer method won’t work if you’ve got lots of butter or saturated fats in your oil blend or if they’re too cool to start with.
So, you might need to melt them a little before doing the heat transfer. But often, that heat transfer method works quite well.
You can do your research on the melting temperatures of the ingredients that you’re using for soapmaking.
How Does Water Amount Affect Temperature In Cold-Process Soap Making?
The other thing to bear in mind with that heat transfer method is that it depends on the water amount in your recipe.
So, if you’re using a very low water amount in your soap recipe, you will have less liquid in your lye solution.
If you’re depending on the heat of your lye solution, to melt your oils as you mix them in.
Bear in mind that using a low-water recipe will not have as much hot lye liquid to go into your oils as you would if you were using a high-water recipe; a high-water soap recipe has a bigger lye solution.
Temperature For Hot Process Soap-Making?
Regarding hot process soap making, I seldom take the temperature of anything for hot process soap making because I’m forcing the saponification of my soap recipe through that hot process method anyway, so I’m not too worried.
Obviously, you don’t want everything to be extremely hot.
For unsaturated oils like olive oil, almond, rice bran, and the like (40–50°C/100–120°F) and for saturated oils like shear butter, cocoa butter, coconut oil, and mango butter (120°F to 160°F (49°C to 71°C), if you observe that’s too hot, lower the heat.
But with hot process soap making, you’re forcing that saponification and the gel phase. The soap saponification reaction is exothermic, so it generates its own heat.
I usually make my hot process in my slow cooker and keep it at a low temperature.
Sometimes, I put it on high initially, depending on the soap recipe, but then I turn it down to low.
I’m not getting anything too explosive happening. But you know it’s not too slow either. Sometimes, if you have it too low, it can take forever, depending on how patient you are.
Generally, when I’m using saturated fats like beeswax, cocoa butter, or mango butter in my recipe, I let them melt while I make my lye solution.
It doesn’t matter if you put a hot lye solution into that. I don’t think you need to wait for the lye solution to cool in hot process soap-making because it’s a hot process anyway.
So you can just put your hot, freshly made lye solution straight in, and your soap will trace really fast, but that’s fine. You’re forcing it all to accelerate with the hot process.
Conclusion
Soap’s behavior in heat results from its composition, temperature, and environment.
So yes, look at the oils you’re using in your recipes and evaluate whether or not you might get a false trace if things are too cool with that.
If that’s the case, you’ll need to look at the temperatures of your oil and your lye solution and keep things warm.
But remember, with cold process soap making, don’t make things too hot. Keep them around that moderate body temperature or warm level.
That’s what you’re after; too cold is not good. Too hot is not good either
Whether you’re a hobbyist or soap-making entrepreneur, understanding soap’s melting point will enhance your soap-making journey.
