Hey Celeste, thanks for the soap recipe, are you sure the lye amount is correct? I ran it through the sage, and got 18.46 ounces of Lye to superfat (optimum fat content for soap making for those who don't make soap)-you've got 1.67 oz, I think you left out a number.
Interesting method of soapmaking I've never done it that way before. Just for a variation (I'm sure others have other ways of doing it) this is what I did when I had my cosmetic business:
In a tupperware type plastic pitcher with handle get liquid (water and/or milk) as cold as possible, just over 32F is good as the lye heats up extremely quickly and especially with goat milk. Before I add lye I add a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of salt, one makes a more sudsy bar, the other makes a harder bar-the harder the bar the longer it lasts, stir to dissolve. You can also add chunks of an old silk shirt or scarf, up to a tablespoon just before adding the lye and mix it in well. If you can mix it outside where it's cold that is good, slowly add the lye (wear safety glasses, lye burns suck) into the water stirring as you do it until it's all incorporated into the water, this will put off some fumes you don't want to inhale, you'll catch a whiff and know why. I let my water sit outside in a safe place (where it can't be knocked over) until it cools of a bit and use a meat thermometer to test temperature often.
I slowly melt my oils, I usually use a bit more cocoanut oil to make a harder bar, palm kernel oil will also help with this. I melt slowly to keep temperature down so there is less time in mixing, and I mix this in a stainless steel pot with high sides. I turn off the burner with the oils on it when the lye mixture is about 130F outside, the goal is to mix when both oil and lye are approximately the same temperature, as near 100F as possible without the fats (oils) beginning to solidify. Once both fats and lye are at 100F, using a stick blender in the fats, pour the lye mixture very slowly into the fats as the stick blender is mixing the two, and continue to do so for a few minutes, then turn off the blender and lift it out and drizzle the soap (it's nearly soap by now) over the surface of the fat/oil mix-once it begins to trace (as Celeste said, it leaves a trail on the surface of the fat/oil mix) then add your fragrance oils if you have any and watch for the soap to start getting hard (inferior oils will seize some soap batches and make them rock hard before you can get them out of the pot). I usually give the whole thing a few quick turns with the stick blender to make sure it's all mixed (sometimes the fragrance/essential oil will react and reheat the mixture a bit) then pour into molds.
You can use anything for a mold so long as you line it with wax paper, I've used candy molds without lining, as they're flexible, also silicone cake molds will work too. The smaller the bar the faster it will cure. Anyway, the longest I've ever had to leave a bar to harden is 2 days before I could pop it out of a small mold, but usually my soaps will come out within 12 hours. Once all the soap is in molds, cover with a towel overnight. Also, for easiest cleanup, leave the whole mess until morning to clean, by then it's soap and cleans up easily.
You can add ground oatmeal, herbs and flowers (they usually turn dark) and other things to your soap once you get the hang of it, and remember to start out small, making soap can be spendy and you don't want to mess up with a big batch. Smaller batches if you don't like the smell or color can be ground up and used with other things for laundry detergent (someone else posted the recipe here a few days ago) or you can crumble them and add them as specks to your next batch of soap for some color.
If I had my soap recipe book here I'd share some of my recipes, if I can find it I will at another time. I always used
www.the-sage.com Lye Calculator to figure my lye/water/oil amounts, and I always got excellent results. I think Summerthyme also makes soap and has contributed some really good advice as well, nice to know we have so many soapers here.
I use to use Costco light olive oil for soapmaking and always had good results but never had any crystalize on me-makes one wonder what else is added to make it do that. I know some oil extraction methods use hexane, especially for cocoanut oil, perhaps the crystals are the result of a chemical oil extraction instead of pressing, though I've never heard of them doing that to olive oil before.
