A brief chat on DOS

Dreaded orange spots, also known as DOS, are orange spots that appear on handmade soap. Most soapers would toss a bar of soap that developed DOS (with good reason…. it has rancid superfat!), but we’re not most soapers! We’re going to salt out a batch of DOS soap to save it, and turn it into some amazing new refreshed soaps.

DOS can develop while curing, or even months later. Usually, it’s an indication of rancid oils in your soap but these spots can develop for multiple reasons.

The few times I have experienced DOS on my soap, the culprits were…

1. using tap water (hard water minerals);
2. extreme sun and humidity conditions; and
3. old alkanet. At least, I assume it was the old alkanet because identical bars from the same ingredients made on the same day never developed DOS.

Here’s a more detailed article about DOS, and below is a video showing the DOS soap that we’ll be salting out in this tutorial.