I've spent the last few weeks hip deep in soap making research, recipes, technique, blogs about soap. Side note: there are tons of blogs about soap making. Who knew?
On 8/31, I made my very first soap (Bastille Olive Oil), which is Not pictured (but smells great! Oats and Honey scent originally purchased for a candle), but it didn't gel, and it's slowly turning a really gross grey color (which was originally a gross orange color from liquid dye). But did I mention it smells great? If we don't like it, we can use it in laundry soap so we don't waste it.
Recipe:
680g Olive Oil
181g Coconut Oil
45g Castor Oil
124g Lye
345g H20
1 oz Oats Milk and Honey fragrance oil
Should be 5% superfat, but I didn't state that in my notes.
I'll let you know in October how it turned out, as it's still curing.
This wonderful swirley soap is my second attempt. It's scented with Bergamot fragrance, and it was supposed to be a deep pink and spring green, but the soap colorings at the craft store are horrible. I don't recommend them at all. Buying from a reputable online soap store is a much better idea.
Recipe with 5% superfat:
90g Shea butter (10%)
226g Coconut Oil (25%)
272g Olive Oil (30%)
90g Castor Oil (10%)
226g Lard (25%)
126g Lye
344g H2O
2 oz Bergamot fragrance
I was interested to see the difference between an all vegetable soap and one made with animal products (lard in the above recipe), so I made the exact same recipe as stated above, but replaced the Lard with Palm Oil. The batch was separated and half was colored pink, and one was colored blue. The light colored stuff on the far left soap is soda ash, and apparently you can spray on some 91% alcohol after pouring to prevent that from occurring.
It's still curing, but the batch made with lard was noticeabley harder right out of the mold. The cute butterflies were very soft after a week in the mold; I had to throw them in the freezer and pop them out like ice cubes. This may be the result of using a silicone mold, though. Perhaps a few more experiments are in order.
And This! This is soap made with Charcoal! My better half likes grey, and I thought it'd be cool to make a grey soap. We got some charcoal at the store (the aquarium filter type. It's grainy, so I threw it in the coffee grinder to make it fine).
Lemme stop here and say that if you have charcoal and a coffee grinder, throw the charcoal in the grinder and buzz away. The pitch black smoke that seeps from the lid is epic. Open the lid and it's like you're looking down into forever.
I was anticipating an all grey soap, so the freakin' awesome veins running thru it are totally a bonus. This is lightly scented with Blackberry Sage.
Recipe is:
272g Lard (30%)
362g Olive Oil (40%)
90g Castor Oil (10%)
191g Coconut Oil (20%)
3t charcoal (added to oils before trace)
121g Lye
344g H2O
That's what I have so far. We'll wait a few weeks to try out the first few batches, but I have big dreams of goats milk, honey, green tea, herbs, rosemary steeped in olive oil, the list goes on and on.
This is just as addictive as brewing. Now I ask myself 2 questions at the grocery store: Can I ferment that? If not, can I soap with that?