Coffee Beer Soap

This is a great soap for the kitchen or workshop.  A few folks have tried my first batch of Coffee Soap made with Tröegs JavaHead Stout and told me that the ground coffee bits were a little too rough.  This time I ground the whole coffee beans in the coffee grinder and then put them in my little food processor for a second grind.  I've decided to mold the beer soaps in PVC pipes and cut them with my new wavy cutter.

32 oz. Olive Oil
21 oz. Coconut Oil 12 oz. Palm Oil


9.8 oz Sodium Hydroxide

24 oz. JavaHead Stout


1/2 cup ground coffee beans

Essential Oils:  Rosemary, Lemongrass, Patchouli

My Favorite Soap

Today I made another batch of my favorite soap:  Goat Milk

This is the soap I've been making for about 11 years.  However, I don't usually have Sweet Almond Oil and so I just substitute Olive Oil.  Now, I'm keeping all of my oils in stock here so I had everything on hand.  In addition, I'm trying a new essential oil blend and I think I'm going to like it.

Here's the recipe:

Goat Milk Soap

12.5 oz. Olive Oil
12.5 oz. Palm Oil
10 oz. Coconut Oil
5 oz. Sweet Almond Oil

17.5 oz. Goat Milk
5.5 oz. Sodium Hydroxide

1.5 T essential oil (Red Grapefruit, Lime, Lemon, Basil, Lavender, Cedarwood)


This saponified nicely and set up great!  I bought a new mold that will make 8 bars that say "goat milk" on the surface.  After that was filled, I poured the rest into a 2" diameter PVC pipe to make trial sizes for the farmer's markets.  You can now find my soaps at Roots, Green Dragon, and Leesport markets.

Thanks, Irene!

Packaging

I'm never quite sure how to package my soaps.  I've seen handmade soaps in little boxes but that seems to be a waste of cardboard.  I've seen them in cloth bags but then you can't see the soap and it doesn't get as much access to air to continue to harden.

When I use a fancy mold, I wrap the soap in white or ivory netting and tie it with hemp or raffia.  The soap can then be easily viewed and it's open to the air.  Some folks tell me they like to use the soap with the netting on as a built-in scrubbie.

For the rectangles and circles, I'm thinking of a plain paper band with a sticker.  I just worry about the band falling off of the round shapes.

Feedback appreciated!

Honey Oatmeal Goat Milk Soap

This soap is quite popular in the winter and not usually  much of a seller in the summer.  I recently had a few requests for some and have only a few bars on hand, so honey oatmeal goat milk soap it is!  The new twist today?  I added some Cinnamon Leaf E.O.  Nice.  I started using this recipe in 2000 and love how it feels on the skin.  It takes a bit longer to trace than other recipes but I know not to worry about that.  It works best to have both the oils and the milk less than 100 degrees before combining to saponify.  I cut this recipe in half today as it makes a lot at one time.  Even the half recipe yielded 16 bars.

Honey Oatmeal Goat Milk Soap

42 oz. Olive Oil
28 oz. Coconut Oil
18 oz. Palm Oil

33 oz. Goat Milk (nearly frozen)
12.7 oz. Sodium Hydroxide

1 C. ground oats
4 T. honey
1 oz. E.O. (optional)

New Logo

Thanks to Jill Alexander for designing a logo for Willow Creek.

Beer Shampoo Bar (with Tröegs Troegenator)

After analyzing several shampoo bar recipes online, I decided to make my own formula.  Troegenator is a rather dark beer and avocado oil is a rather dark oil.  So these shampoo bars are darker in color than some I've seen.  I used the same essential oil blend that is in the Shaving Soap so that they can be paired as a set. I didn't have much beer for this batch so I used SoapCalc to get the formula right.  Therefore, I have only 8 bars.

4.8 oz Olive Oil (24%)
4 oz. Castor Oil (20%)
4 oz. Coconut Oil (20%)
3.2 oz. Palm Oil (16%)
2.8 oz. Acocado Oil (14%)
1.2 oz. Shea Butter (6%)

7.6 oz Tröegs Troegenator Beer
2.7 oz Sodium Hydroxide
0.5 oz. Essential Oil (cedarwood, juniper, frankincense)

Beer Shaving Soap (Tröegs Flying Mouflan)

Tom loves shaving the old fashioned way with a blade and a good soap in a mug.  I found a terrific recipe and decided to go for it.  Actually, I found three different recipes but went with the one using Shea Butter and Avocado Oil for the creaminess and froth.  I poured some right into mugs and the rest as "pucks" for someone who already has a shaving mug.  I'll get some brushes and set these up as gift sets.  The Bentonite Clay adds "slip" to the soap for a clean shave.  I chose an essential oil blend called "forest" for that woodsy smell that men would like.  I plan to make a shampoo bar with the same fragrance as a complete gift set for that special guy in your life.

Beer Shaving Soap with Tröegs Flying Mouflan

14. oz. Coconut Oil
26 oz. Olive Oil
2 oz. Castor Oil
12 oz. Avocado Oil
4 oz. Shea Butter

22 oz. Tröegs Flying Mouflan
8 oz. Sodium Hydroxide

1 Tbsp. Bentonite Clay
1 oz. Essential Oil (Forest: Cedarwood, Juniper, Frankincense)

This mixture was really dark.  The beer is a dark beer and the avocado oil is also quite dark.  However, after all chemical reactions were done, it seems to be setting up as a light brown color.  Tom is anxious to give it a try!

Spent Grain in the Soap (Tröegs Pale Ale #5)

I had one more bottle of Pale Ale ready to use in the freezer so I decided to make one more batch before leaving for our vacation.  This time, I wanted to use up a few ounces of Jojoba Oil which it really a liquid wax.  This ingredient provides a great conditioning element to the soap.  In addition, Tom saved the spent grain from his first home-brewing adventure and it was ready for us in my soap.  I took some of the grain and put it in our food dehydrator.  Then I ground it in the food processor to make the particles a bit more fine to add as a gentle exfoliant in the soap.  By the way, the rest of the spent grain was saved wet and used to make some Trobot Brot (German spent grain bread).  Yum!

This recipe was designed to create 3 pounds of soap.

14 oz. Coconut Oil
17 oz. Palm Oil
17 oz. Olive Oil
4 oz. Jojoba Oil

20 oz. Tröegs Pale Ale
7 oz. Sodium Hydroxide

1 oz. Essential Oils (Citrus Blend from Nature & Heaven including Orange, Tangerine, and Lime with Rosemary added for balance)
1/3 C. Ground Spent Grain

I read that Jojoba Oil will speed up trace so I waited for a lower temperature to blend the ingredients.  I added the Jojoba Oil at light trace followed by the Essential Oils.  Success.  I poured as much as I could into the 3" PVC pipe mold and the rest into the oval molds.