Quote:...I also create self made soap (with the same lye) and with soap manufactoring everybody say "it must ripe 2-3 month because of remaining lye).
https://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/cold-process-soap/free-beginners-guide-to-soapmaking-cold-process/ wrote:Curing:...the total alkali of raw soap batter is about 10%, and that the total will fall to below 0.1% within an hour if the soap is held at 160 degrees. A zap test – sticking your tongue on the soap to test for a “zap” or lye reaction – or a pH test will confirm this. However, the earlier a bar is used, the softer and possibly slimier the bar will be in the shower, and the less time it will last. Additionally, the 4 to 6 week curing and drying time helps to produce the most gentle bar of soap possible. You will notice a difference in your skin when showering with a new bar of soap versus a fully cured and dried bar. It’s the final bit of pH lowering that happens in the rest of the 4-6 weeks of curing, and the main benefit of the cure time is the evaporation of excess water, which makes for a harder bar and a more true net weight for labeling purposes if you’re selling your soap. So if you’d like a harder bar, allow your soap to go through the standard 4-6 week cure.
So it seems simply a very slowly further reacting of the last remaining traces of lye with the fats/oils of the soap, like the lye gets spent more complete over time.
In our extraction recipes however, once the acid has been neutralized, our lye is not a product that gets reacted away, nor was this ever the goal like it was for soaps. I've not found a search hit on the natural decay of lye on its own, as Acy mentions.
Dude, where is that little Sherlock Holmes in you to deduct for yourself?
Anyway thanks for bringing it up, I learned a bit about soap making.