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Step 6Mixing the Soap
With all of your ingredients ready, your gloves and eye protection on and your mixing implements and plastic bowls ready to go, you can begin the mixing process.
I first poured all of the fat into my plastic bowl and then placed the bowl in a warm water bath (105-110 Fahrenheit degree water). The warm water not only moderates the temperature of the soap as it's being formed, but it also speeds up the reaction slightly - I didn't want to be mixing the fat and the lye together for hours on end.
Then, take the water/lye mixture and slowly pour it into the fat while you continue to mix.
Keep mixing for a while. Now depending on your temperatures, the type of fat your using and your lye to fat ratio the mixture should begin to thicken and "trace" (this is when it become sort of a semi-solid like soft peanut butter) in anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes. You need to be mixing this whole time - this is the real challenge of at home soap making in my opinion.
After mixing the liquid soap for 15 minutes by hand I decided to use a power mixer - I used the things they use to make smoothies and vitamin shakes. Within 5 minutes of using the power mixer it began to thicken up nicely and I was able to see some tracing. I would recommend using a power mixer if yours isn't thickening by hand - it really worked well. Stay away from using a blender or hand mixer that has beaters on the end. It will splatter everywhere and will add air bubbles to your soap. The vita-mixer makes less mess and wont add in any air bubbles.
Once the soap began to trace I returned to stirring by hand. I then mixed in about 3/4 of the container of bacon bits. I then poured off about half of my mixture to keep it white and then squeezed about 15 drops of red food coloring into my remaining mixture to turn it red. I didn't do any more power mixing at this point because it would have chopped up my bacon bits.
I first poured all of the fat into my plastic bowl and then placed the bowl in a warm water bath (105-110 Fahrenheit degree water). The warm water not only moderates the temperature of the soap as it's being formed, but it also speeds up the reaction slightly - I didn't want to be mixing the fat and the lye together for hours on end.
Then, take the water/lye mixture and slowly pour it into the fat while you continue to mix.
Keep mixing for a while. Now depending on your temperatures, the type of fat your using and your lye to fat ratio the mixture should begin to thicken and "trace" (this is when it become sort of a semi-solid like soft peanut butter) in anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes. You need to be mixing this whole time - this is the real challenge of at home soap making in my opinion.
After mixing the liquid soap for 15 minutes by hand I decided to use a power mixer - I used the things they use to make smoothies and vitamin shakes. Within 5 minutes of using the power mixer it began to thicken up nicely and I was able to see some tracing. I would recommend using a power mixer if yours isn't thickening by hand - it really worked well. Stay away from using a blender or hand mixer that has beaters on the end. It will splatter everywhere and will add air bubbles to your soap. The vita-mixer makes less mess and wont add in any air bubbles.
Once the soap began to trace I returned to stirring by hand. I then mixed in about 3/4 of the container of bacon bits. I then poured off about half of my mixture to keep it white and then squeezed about 15 drops of red food coloring into my remaining mixture to turn it red. I didn't do any more power mixing at this point because it would have chopped up my bacon bits.
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