I've had a lot of people ask me about the soap making process, so here's a play-by-play. We start out melting down our fats in a big pot. We pride ourselves on using primarily organic, unrefined oils where studies have shown the oil to be very beneficial to one's skin. Also, we only use all natural vegetarian ingredients, so no harsh chemicals or detergents. We're sticking to vegetarian for now because I've read that animal fats can irritate conditions like eczema or psoriasis.
Then we mix our lye...which is the dangerous part. So Pete and I put the kids (Hugo and Cecil) away and dress up like mad scientists in our gloves, goggles, masks, etc. We generally mix our lye outside to dilute the fumes. Also, we keep a bottle of vinegar on stand-by as it will neutralize lye in the event of a lye burn (which isn't fun).
Also, you'll notice we have our lye mix in an ice bath. We learned this trick via trial and error. When you first mix the lye, the temperature of the mixture raises very quickly. Yesterday our liquid started out about room temperature and rose to around 212 degrees immediately upon adding the lye (and that was WITH the ice bath). The ice bath helps regulate the temperature and keeps the mixture from boiling over (or worse, exploding).
Once the lye mixture and the melted fat mixture are almost the same temperature and within a range of 110 to 120 degrees (temp regulation is key), you combine the two mixtures. Here is the result...
After stirring this mixture anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours the mixture will "trace" which means your mixture has saponified (or, as we like to call it "soapified"). Once your mixture has traced, you can add other fun things to the mixture (e.g. essential oils, ground coffee, ground oats, tea leaves, etc.) and then pour it into whatever you use for a mold. We use these awesome molds that Pete built.
During the first 24 hours, the molds will get very hot, so it's good to insulate them. In case you can't tell, we insulate ours by piling towels on and around the molds.
After 24 hours, they should be firm and ready to cut. Once we cut the bars, the bars have to sit for about 3 to 4 weeks to cure. The curing process ensures you get a really hard bar that will last awhile, and it ensures an appropriate ph level so it will feel mild and silky smooth on your skin.
If anyone has an idea for a fun soap recipe, send it and we'll try to create it for you. So far we've tried coffee soap, coconut soap (my personal favorite face wash), oatmeal cookie soap, peppermint patty soap, cheese soap (beautifully named by Pete who thinks the bar resembles cheese). So give us some creative ideas!
2 comments:
I am loving the cheese soap for body and I love the oatmeal for my face. Pat used the oatmeal for body. We are onto the mint soap now and I am really liking that as a face soap. Soft yet, exfoliating. We would love to try the coffee as a body soap with this next batch. The bar we have is in the kitchen. I almost cried when we used the last of the oatmeal soap. But I am pleasantly surprised by how much I like the mint. Keep up the great work! And don't hesitate to charge something for this to help defray the costs:-)
one word...CHOCOLATE!!!!!!! I mean come on what self-respecting woman would not want to bathe in Chocolate? Let us know how it turns out!
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