I hate those stains in the tub, in the toilet, in the sink. so gnargnar

I ordered some actual soap supplies (such as coconut oil) and I’ll try a batch with distilled water when they show up. In the meantime, I guess I’ll wait and see what happens to the HP batch. It feels like there’s still a lot of unsaponified oil in there, which really shouldn’t be possible — but it does sort of align with what happened to the failed batch before the brown ooze.

I’m not sure I’m going to attempt to rebatch the first batch, especially if it turns out that the problem is some sort of contaminant. I sort-of-rebatched it once already, when I reheated it after it went cold the first time. That stuff just does not want to be soap.

The orange spots are an aesthetic problem only but it sounds like you had something else not go quite right. It actually sounds similar to the problem I had with my first batch — orangey-red oozing fluid. I’m not sure yet what it was: it wasn’t slick like oil and it wasn’t caustic, but I did add a lot of (distilled) water to try to bring that batch back from the early seize, so I think a lot of it was water.

You may be able to rebatch what you have and/or convert it to hot process… though when I attempted that with my failed batch, it didn’t work out so well (I ended up with this mess, which oozed like crazy and was clumpy/gritty).

When I cut my second successful CP batch (orange-cinnamon-clove, olive/palm/coconut) into bars on Monday night, I had a small sliver that I mis-cut, so I decided to try it out. It foamed! It smelled good! It was real soap! It was safe to use (as you know) but really needs a few weeks to cure to harden up a little.

I’ll be thinking good thoughts about your HP soap — and let us know if you attempt to rebatch the first CP batch.