Soap

A few blog posts before I had a teaser about soap. This is something that Ed and I have talked about for nearly a year. Our concept is to make our own soap and sell it; continuing with the sustainable concept. Well today we made our first batch of soap, Ed made a comment that its like being in chemistry class. I would agree except I thing this is more fun.

The soap we made is called Homesteader’s Soap. The original homesteaders or farmers would save all the fat though out the year from there cooking, to make their soap. The different fats where bacon, chicken, beef, pork and so on. They would render this and use it for their  soap. The soap we are making is not animal, only vegetable, and is used fryer oil. Our concept for this soap is not a bath soap, but a laundry soap. As the original homesteader soap was a bit harsh for bathing, I’m sure this would be also.

The first step is to measure out your lye and water. For safety sake you should wear rubber gloves, goggles and old clothes. This is for your protection from splashing lye. The lye has the potential of burning you severely. Once you have both the lye and the water measured out you need to add the one to the other. The reason I’m saying it this way is because the way I did it was adding the lye to the water. After I did that Ed said to me that, that is a big no no. You are supposed to pour the water into the lye. I have another soap book that says to do it the way I did. So I don’t think there is a difference. Once the two are mixed together and you are stirring to dissolve  the lye. The water heats to between 150 degrees and 250 degrees. Ours was about 200 degrees. After that you let it cool to 100 degrees.

Once the lye is nearing 100 mark, you need to warm your oils and fats to the same temperature. Once that is achieved then you add your lye to the fats and oils. (Both books agree that you should add the lye to the fats, just saying.) As you are adding the lye to the fats you must stir and not stop until you are ready to pour the soap into the mould. This step can be as quick as 15 minutes or as long as an hour. It all depends on the types of fats and oils used, the lye absorbs each fat differently. The really cool think when you do add the lye to the fat, the reaction is instantaneously happening. You can feel the soap getting thicker, it took this batch about 45 minutes to be able to pour into the mould.

You know the soap is ready to be poured into the mould when you have what is called “trailing”. The best way to describe this is by thinking of pudding when you pick up the spoon a trail of pudding is left on the surface from the spoon. The same thing happens with soap. Once you have achieved that you can pour it into its mould.

You will notice that the mould is sitting on top of a wool blanket and a quilt. This is so you can cover the mould so the soap can cure slowly. As a matter of fact the mould is going to stay covered for 48 hours. Once that time period has passed you can un-mould it. Now when we do unwrap it and un-mould it. It should still be warm to the touch, I of course can’t say yes or no to this yet. But in a couple of days I will be able to.

So later in the week I will post so everyone knows how we did and what we will be doing with it from this point on.