To begin, what is soap? Soap is what you get when you combine fats with wood ash or lye. The whole process takes about 45 minutes to complete with another 2-4 weeks or more for curing. You will need some supplies which fall into two categories: one-time purchases of equipment and consumables stuff that goes into the soap.
Different fats produce different results. For example, coconut oil
helps produce a nice lather, and olive oil helps to give a moisturizing effect. There are many websites and books that go into great detail about the different oils and their effects of them in soap. My goal here is to just get you started with a simple method and healthy recipe that I myself have used.
Equipment: a digital kitchen scale, a stick/immersion blender, a non-reactive pot, non-reactive, heat resistance bowls, silicone bread pan (or other
silicone soap mold), paper towels, and wooden skewers.
Consumables: coconut oil, grapeseed oil, olive oil, lye (I got mine from a local hardware store), water, vinegar, and essential oil (optional).
Important! Safety Tips
Lye is caustic, so it must be handled with an extra degree of care. It won’t explode in your face or anything like that, but a pair of gloves (like kitchen
gloves) and eye protection should be used. White vinegar is used in case of a spill; lye is a base, so if spilled, pouring some white vinegar on it will neutralize the lye. And by all means, read up on it further before beginning to feel comfortable handling the lye. You shouldn’t be scared of the lye, but caution is needed.
When using the lye, remember that the lye is always added INTO the water or oil, not the other way around. “Lye goes into” is what I repeat to myself as I’m working. Now, with all that out of the way, let’s delve into making soap.
To start, measure out your oils and lye by weight on your scale. For this recipe, you’ll need 8 oz of coconut oil, 8 oz of grapeseed oil, and 16 oz of olive oil. The solid oil (coconut) will be in one non-reactive bowl/pot, and the liquid oils (grapeseed and olive) in another. Set these aside. Next, measure out your lye and water into separate containers. You’ll need 4 oz of lye crystals and 10.5 oz of water.
Once all of these are measured out by weight, take your lye, water, vinegar, and bamboo skewers outside. The first step to mixing the ingredients for the soap is to make the lye water. Slowly pour the lye crystals INTO the water and stir with the skewers to dissolve. Two things will happen immediately when you pour the lye into the water. First is that it produces an exothermic reaction which will heat the water up to around 150 degrees F, and second is that it produces a gas that’s not healthy to breathe, hence why you’ve taken this part outside. It’ll only off-gas for a few minutes before the lye water is safe to move back inside, but it will remain quite hot, so hand protection from the heat is a must.
Once the lye water is back inside, you’ll first pour the lye water INTO the coconut oil. The heat will melt the coconut oil, but if it’s not quite enough to melt it completely, put your pot on the stove to warm it up to the point where the coconut oil is melted. Once melted then, you can add the liquid oils. Once all of the oils are added, the next step is to use the immersion blender to mix the oils until it reaches Trace. This is the point where the soap is done, where it has reached a point of mixture that allows the full chemical reaction (called Soapification) to turn the mixture into soap. What this looks like, and how you’ll know when you’ve ‘reached trace,’ is that your soap will now look like pudding. Stop mixing it here with the immersion blender, add any essential oils you may want, and blend for 10 to 15 seconds more.
The soap is now finished, so you can pour it into whatever molds you have. It will still be warm but not hot to the touch, and it will still be caustic. The soap will take about 48 hours to finish the soapification process, at which time it will no longer be caustic and can be handled with bare hands.
The soap can be removed from the molds and cut, if necessary, after 48 hours of sitting. The soap will be very soft and will still need to dry or cure for another 2 to 4 weeks. It may be hard to resist using your new soap for that long, but it’s worth the wait.
A few years ago, I did the math on how much my lovely, artisanal soap cost me, and it worked out to be around $0.67 per bar of soap, which included the essential oils, usually the most expensive part of the whole process.
Enjoy and happy soap-making.
Northern Volkstead
Homesteading in the mid-west, working towards self-reliance and self-sufficiency