Even experienced soapmakers get DOS!
Sunday November 26, 2006
It can happen to the best of us.No matter how many batches you've made...no matter how much you think you know...the day will come when you open up your box of curing soap and see them - (cue ominous music) - dreaded orange spots, or DOS.
I've been cleaning and organizing my soap and candle room and consolidating some of the batches of soap I've made over the past while. I had one batch that was about a year old. I opened up the box to look at it...and there were the spots. DOS is not completely understood, though I've got several links to "explanations" at my brief article on Dreaded Orange Spots. You'll read that superfatting is the most suspected culprit of DOS. But this batch had a zero superfat. (I was going to make laundry soap with it.) The next most common suspected culprit is soft oils like sunflower. Nope...not here either. This batch was mostly lard. The one thing that may have been this batch's downfall was that it had no scent in it. I have heard that fragrance and essential oils have a bit of a preserving effect on the soap. So my guess is that it was just a combination of the age of the soap - perhaps some uneven curing - and an unhappy soap gremlin that got into my soap room and caused some trouble.
Click on the "comments" button below and tell me your DOS stories, and what you think caused it!
Comments
Yep, I did the same thing. I make a hemp soap for my son, he needed more, it was put away for probably 6 months and when I went to get it DOS everywhere. I am going to start adding vitamin e to my oils to see if it helps. So far the only bars I have had the DOS on are the hemp bars and ones I made with soybean oil. My basic bars with palm, coconut, cocoa butter, castor and shea so far have not developed DOS.
Yes…hemp oil is pretty unstable and expires pretty quickly. Soybean as well…so I’m not surprised that a bar with high amounts of hemp or soybean would develop DOS. Thanks for your post!
I had this experience last year with some grocery store lye that I now think wasn’t 100% pure. I lost about 20 lbs. of pure castile that went rancid and became completely covered with DOS in about 4 months time. This has never happened to me before in 10 years of soapmaking.
Hi David, my fault entirely on this one. My soap was curing in the same room as the coffee machine. Teeny grains of coffee must have gotten in the soap as it set. They were so small I didn’t even see them until the DOS spread around them. Not a pretty sight. Libby
I use a pretty basic recipe containing a high percent of olive oils at around 5% superfat. I have only had a couple batches really give me constant problems with spots after about a year and those are my lavender bars. I really think it is the FO I used because no other scents have these issues. One other batch has recently started with a very min ammount of dos and those are 100% olive oil castile bars but those have a bit more life to them at 2 yrs old and were stored near the lavender bars that turned on me. It is amazing how when one bar gets it, dos spreads like the plague. I have been considering adding grapefruit seed extract in attempt to lengthen the life of my soaps.
I have also had problems with lavender fo’s. I have given up on them. Almost every problem I have ever had, including DOS, orginate from fo’s.
Yes…I’ve also heard that lavender fragrance AND essential oils (the FO contains a lot of the EO anyway) can contribute to DOS. The bar in the picture (which was a 0% superfat) had only lavender EO in it.
YEs, I’ve leeched water through ash and made lye water. My question is, how do I sue this? Do you have any recipes for this type lye water?
“8. YEs, I’ve leeched water through ash and made lye water. My question is, how do I sue this? Do you have any recipes for this type lye water?
Comment by Teresa — December 1, 2006 @
7:40 am”
This is the way the pioneers used to make lye for their soap.
The strength of your lye is not known, and in my opinion, is not ideal for making soap. Although, I think it would be fun to experiment, without the exspensive scent that is
Pioneer soap making was a crap shoot, using ladles and other crude methods of measuring lye and oils.
Nowadays, potassium hydroxide (close to the solution that you have made) is used for liquid soap, and sodium hydroxide is used for CP soap making.
Back on topic:
I have had DOS once (touch wood); it too was made with a great percentage of Olive oil but I used lavender EO. I may add that this was one of my first recipes I had ever made.