How to use a 50/50 lye water solution for soapmaking 

Yes, good point! Thanks for mentioning this and for watching our video! And, we appreciate your sweet compliment too. 🥰

Hooray!!! That's so awesome! I'm so glad this video helped get you to the other side! :)

Aww, thank you!! I'm so happy that you found it valuable. I was worried it would be too confusing, but it sounds like most people we able to follow. Let us know if you give it a try! :)

@@muddymintsoap I just need to find that container you used at the end for smaller scale storage. That's right up my alley!

Just saw the Amazon link!! #winning 😊

Woohoo!! 🎉

Yay! That's so awesome that you get it now! Thanks for watching! :)

Thank you so much!! :)

Thank you! So glad you found this video helpful! :)

You’re welcome! I’m happy it helped and good luck with your lye solution! ❤️

Thanks for watching! :)

Thanks for watching! :)

You’re so welcome! I’m happy to hear it was helpful! ❤️

Yay! So happy to hear it was helpful! Thanks for watching and for your kind comment! :)

Thank you!! :)

So happy to hear that! Thanks for watching! 🥰

Thanks for watching! 😊

Aww, thank you so much! Really appreciate that! :)

You're welcome! Thanks for watching! :)

Thanks so much for watching! :)

So glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching! ❤️

I’m so happy to hear that! Thank you for watching. ❤️

So glad you found it helpful. Thank YOU! :)

So glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching! :)

Thank you for watching! :)

So glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching! :)

Hi!! What a treat to see you here! Thank you for watching! Do you use a 50/50 lye water solution when making soap?

Glad to hear it! It can get pretty complicated, especially if you’re a new soapmaker. Way to hang in there! 😊

So happy to hear that! Thank you! And thanks for watching. :)

Thanks for watching! I’m glad you found it helpful! :)

Thank you! Appreciate you watching!

So happy this video helped! :)

We will! We have a lot going on right now, but we definitely have plans for a lot more videos! Thanks for watching. :)

Haha! I love it. You started with the hard stuff with this video... we'll be doing a series on beginner soapmaking at some point!

Thanks so much! I'm so happy you found it helpful. :)

You're welcome! Thanks for watching. :)

Thank you so much! I’m so happy you found it helpful. 😊

Thank you so much! And thanks for watching! :)

Thank you! Glad you found it helpful. :)

Wow! That's great! I'm really happy to hear that. Glad you found it valuable and thanks for watching!

Aww, thanks! And thanks for watching! ❤️

Haha! Love it!! :)

So glad to hear that, as this is a complicated topic it seems! Thanks for watching! :)

That’s so great to hear! I’m glad you found it to be clear. It’s a hard thing to explain! :)

Thank you so much! 😊

Thank you so much! I'm glad you found it helpful! :)

Thanks for watching! :)

Thank you so much for watching and I'm glad you found this video helpful! :)

Awesome! Yes, I think most bagged ice works, but it's good to check. Good luck with the lye water!

Wow! Thank you so much for this incredibly kind comment. I'm so happy that you were able to understand, as it can be a difficult concept to explain. Good luck with cold process! Hope it rocks your world! :)

I'm so happy to hear that you found it valuable! Thank you for your kind comment and for watching! :)

That’s great to hear! Thanks for watching! ❤️

Thanks!

I’m happy to hear you found it helpful. Thanks for watching! ❤️

Thanks for watching! ❤️

Yes! I love hearing that! It really is a game-changer (or business changer?) to have your lye water all ready to go. Glad you enjoyed the video. Thank you! ❤️

I hope it was easy to follow - thanks! :)

Wow! This is great feedback! Thank you! I'm hoping we can get back to making videos soon. I'm so happy to hear you found this helpful and good luck with your back of lye-water!

Thank you so much! I'm glad you found the drawing helpful! :)

Aww, thanks! So happy you found the video to be informative. Thanks for watching!

Hooray!! So glad to hear that! :)

Thank you!! :)

Hooray! I'm so glad you found it to be clear. Thanks!

Yay!! I just love getting this comment. So happy the video was helpful to you! :)

Wow! Thank you so much!! That means a lot to us. Good luck!

Hi there! The link to the container is here: amzn.to/3K3oe9a. I hope this helps!

Thank you!! That means a lot and I'm so glad that you have the confidence to try a 50/50 lye water solution! Let us know how it goes!

Thank you so much for watching! I'd be really curious to see what you think of a soap made with only part goat milk and if you notice a big difference when using the bar. I just love when soapmakers made soap from their own goat milk! I would love to do that! :)

Studying up is a great idea. I watched videos for 3+ months before diving in because I was nervous, so it was a breeze once I actually did it. You got this!!

I love hearing that! Let us know how it goes!

@@muddymintsoap thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge and experience 💚. I already did the lye water and storage in a plastic container, but it seems like drip out despite having air tightening lid. Is that normal? Or could be that I may fill it very much?

Glad you tried it!! It’s dripping out? That’s odd. You certainly want to make sure you have a little room at the top, so maybe make a little less next time.

Wow! Thank you sooo much! We can't wait to get back at it too! It seems to be taking forever to get organized over here... we'll get there though. Thanks for being patient!

Thank you! I'm so glad it was helpful and that you found it easy to follow. A video on SAP values would be fun, along with oils and butters. Thanks for the suggestion!

@@muddymintsoap I have a suggestion to NO ONE makes videos on. Lye calculators often give conditioning and hardness et. etc. .. No one covers the math behind that! If I knew that math I could put it in graph form into the lye calculator I made. It would also help others to calculate the values they are trying to get to. The benefit of that knowledge is making better soap. Before I made my calculator I blindly followed a lye calculator and did what it said not knowing what really went into a recipe. By the time I finished my lye calculator I know exactly what's going on but at the same time I see what online lye calculators can do much better. For instance, Online lye calculators do not allow you to change the value of oils. Did you know there are 3 different values for cocoa butter? That can make a difference in calculating the amount of lye. So , short story is the more info you give people the more they are in control of their own recipe.

Oh good! I'm so glad to hear that! We did it this way for many years and it works great! Let us know if you try it!

I warmed my lye just putting the container in a hot water bath. It's pretty simple and works fairly quickly.

Did this help at all or did I just make it worse? 😂

So happy to hear that! Thanks for watching. ❤️

Yay! So glad you get it! Thank you. :)

Thanks so much for watching! We add our additives to our oils almost all the time. We do sometimes make hot lye water from scratch when using sea salt or indigo. Hope that helps!

Haha! Love it! Thank you sooo much! Hopefully the game gets a little more interesting, as we have more time to make videos in the new year!

@@muddymintsoap 🥰

Yep! That's why it's so nice to make a larger batch. I'm glad you found our video helpful! :)

You're welcome! I hope it helped. :)

That is great to hear! I'm so happy that this video was helpful. :)

Thanks for watching! :)

Yes! We'll be doing a studio tour soon! :)

Yes! It does save SO much time! Thanks for the other video idea... that's an interesting one! I'll have to think on it! This topic will be covered in my upcoming book too. ;)

I'm so happy to hear that it was easy to understand! I used to keep the containers with pre-mixed lye-water for at least a month. As long as its properly sealed and you store it in a cool/dry place, it should be good. However, if you notice anything unusual about the lye-water, I wouldn't use it. You can certainly make a smaller amount to suit your needs - whatever amount of soap you typically make in a month. I hope that helps!

Yes, the speed that you add your dry lye does matter, you're right! Also, the cooler your distilled water, the better! You can try putting your water in the fridge and that might make your process go faster. I personally can't imagine taking an hour to mix lye (I'd rather have it hot and let it sit while I do other things), but you should do what works best for you!

Oh yeah!! I love hearing that!! How did it go? Did you make your batch and also use it? So glad we were able to inspire you! :)

@@muddymintsoap yes I did make it! I had a number of part containers of NaOH so weighed all the scraps then weighed out the equivalent in water before adding the scraps. I have so much room on my bench without all those part containers.

Great question! It is much faster to warm up the solution in a separate container, so I usually pour what I need for the day (or for my batch) and warm it up all at once. You can definitely use the original container, but it'll just take a lot longer to warm up, unless you don't have a lot in there. I hope this helps!

YES! You got it! Thanks for watching and I'm so glad it helped! :)

Thank you for sharing and helping us understand the 50/50 process

@@michellemetdepenningen1423 You’re welcome! I hope it was helpful to you! :)

Hi there! We warm it up by putting it in a warm water bath. So, I boil water, put it in a container and then stick the lye-water container in that. I timed it the other day and it took under 4 minutes for the lye water to come to temperature. If you have more than one lye water container, you can use the same warm water bath to wam up the second container. It's a bit of a pain, but it's relatively quick. I hope that helps!

Unfortunately, you need an alkali to make soap, but you can try melt and pour if you want to avoid the lye part of the process! You can also purchase pre-mixed 50/50 lye water, so you don't have to make it yourself! :)

Hi! We used a warm water bath to warm up our lye water. :)

I'm glad you found the video helpufl! Thanks for watching! We can certainly do a masterbatch of oils in a future video. You can definitely make a big batch of oil, reheat, and mix (the mixing is important!) and use that for your recipes. We have 80% of our oils batched and then we add the extra 20% for a bit of variety between recipes.

Hi! The link should be in the description… I’m currently traveling but will take a look when I get back!

Hi there! Thanks for sharing your technique! Using cold water from the fridge will definitely help with fumes and with the lye water getting too hot. For larger production, a lye-tank can make things much quicker, but for smaller batches your technique works great!

Thank you for watching! I'm glad our video was helpful. It's definitely easier than preparing lye every day. I'm not sure I understand your question about the molds?

@@muddymintsoap You answered my question about soap molds on Instagram. ❤️I understand. 🤗Thank you🌹

Thank you soooo much! Really appreciate this and thanks for watching. I’m writing a soapmaking book, so we’ve had to take a little hiatus on the videos, but when this book is done, we’ll be back in action (and have plans to make a lot of videos!). ❤️

Of course! Thanks for watching and I'm so glad to hear it was helpful. It's a simple concept, but kind of tricky to explain, particularly to newer soapmakers. If you freeze the water completely, you might have a hard time mixing the lye in... I recommend using ice cubes, so you can still stir everything around and make sure the lye is fully incorporated. Otherwise the dry lye might just sit on top of your giant ice block for a while, but I might be wrong! I would think you'd want to start stirring right away if you can. Good luck!

@@muddymintsoap Thank you again!!! I’ll let you know if it works ❤️

Thank you! I'm glad it was helpful! We cure our bars for exactly one month. If we make a soap on July 13, we put them up for sale on Aug 13. However, I recommend that everyone figure out the cure time of their bars by weighing them. Start by weighing your bar right after cutting it and then set that bar aside and keep weighing it regularly until it stops losing water weight. I did this with our bars early on and figured out that they stop losing most of their water weight at the three-week mark. So, in a pinch, we'll put bars out for sale at three weeks, but we usually don't need to. Now, this will vary by soap recipe, but it's good practice to get the final weight of your soap for labeling purposed. I hope this helps!

Thank you! We appreciate you watching and your kind compliment! :) The lye tank is specially made for lye water. It is made of stainless steel (you don't want to use anything else for lye!) and it has a heating element in it. As we mention in the video, you can use smaller containers for small batches of lye-water.

How do you keep the small batches of 50/50 lye water warm enough within the 10 degrees to pour. ? Hope I made sense. Lol 😂.

Oh my goodness! What a treat to have you and all the people you are teaching watch this video! This is what this channel is all about. I'm so happy you found this video to be informative. I'm so sorry it took so long to respond... we've been traveling and I wanted to make sure to reply to this question properly. To answer your questions: 1. We store our lye water at room temperature, but we heat it up to about 95 degrees before making our soap. Since we have a tank, it contains a heating element especially for this purpose, but if you're not using a lye tank, you can heat your lye-water solution by placing it in a warm water bath to slowly get your lye water to the temperature you would like. Please never heat up lye water in a microwave or directly on a flame. You always want to use a warm water bath to safely heat your lye water. 2. The shelf life of this amount of lye water is probably about a month, maybe longer. I believe I've gone 2 months and the lye-water was still good. You'll want to be sure to store it properly in a cool dry place and ensure that it has a proper lid and seal. If you start to notice that the lye-water looks lye-heavy (it has floating pieces of lye or isn't all that clear anymore), then you won't want to use it. If you know what your lye-water should look like, then it'll be obvious when it looks different. I hope this helps and please let me know if you have any follow-up questions. Thanks for watching!