Spicy Beer & Butter Bar

Using the same recipe as the Beer & Butter Bar, I've changed only the essential oil blend to create this new version that features a combination of shea and cocoa butter along with 5 vegetable oils, spent grain, and essential oils of allspice, anise, cinnamon, patchouli and orange!  Enjoy!

18 oz.  Olive Oil
18 oz.  Coconut Oil
18 oz.  Palm Oil
5.1 oz. Castor Oil
3.2 oz. Safflower Oil
1.2 oz. Shea Butter
  .6 oz. Cocoa Butter

24 oz.  Samuel Adams East West Kölsch Beer
  9 oz.  Sodium Hydroxide

  2 oz.   Essential Oils (Allspice, Anise, Cinnamon, Patchouli, Orange)
   .5 oz.  Vitamin E oil
1/2  C.  Spent Grain

I used the square cake pan mold with the milk carton molds for the extra.
I didn't fill the cake pan to the top as I search for the perfect shape for a nice 4 oz. bar of soap.

Current Inventory of Soap - Ready to Use or Give as a Gift

I've been busy making soap all summer and have been selling samples and full-size bars to various customers.  My Goat Milk Soap is now at three farmer's markets and my beer soap will be at the new Tröegs facility in Hershey.  If you are interested in trying any of my all natural soap, let me know and I'll bring some along when I see you.

Soaps that are available in stores are really detergents.  The ingredients list is full of chemicals and the "soap" strips the skin of all natural oils.  Handmade soap is much more gentle to the skin and are a healthy option to the harsh bars in the grocery store.

I use all vegetable oils in the old fashioned, traditional method of soap-making.  These bars are superfatted to give your skin a clean feeling with plenty of moisturizing oils.  My soaps lather nicely and are great at the kitchen sink, guest bathroom or for your daily shower!  The ones with additives such as ground coffee beans, oatmeal, or spent brewer's grain add an exfoliant for a fresh feel.  All fragrances are from pure essential oils (EO).  Some soaps are unscented for a more natural bar.

Full-sized bars are all $4.  I do have $1 and $2 sample sizes of some of the soaps.  Read the list below and let me know if something interests you.

$1 Sample Mini-Bars (15 on hand and probably not making any more)
6 - Beer Soap with Patchouli EO
1 - Beer Soap Unscented
8 - Beer Soap with Lemon, Lime and Ginger EO

$2 Sample Rounds and Ovals (38 on hand)
5 - Pale Ale Beer Soap with Spent Grain and Orange, Tangerine, Lime and Rosemary EO
8 - JavaHead Beer Soap with Ground Coffee and Rosemary, Lemongrass and Patchouli EO
7 - Goat Milk Soap with Red Grapefruit, Lime, Lemon, Basil, Lavender, and Cedarwood EO
9 - Green Tea Castile Soap with Chamomile Tea Leaves and Lavender EO
9 - Concord Wine Soap which includes grapeseed oil but is naturally unscented

$4 Full Sized Bars (93 on hand)
35 - Goat Milk Soaps with Ylang Ylang EO  (3 horses, 1 goat, 3 cats, 3 roses, 5 bee on honeycomb, 7 hearts, 1 rabbit, 6 sun/moon sets, 3 dove sets, 2 angel sets, 1 sun/dove pair)
8 - Honey/Oatmeal Goat Milk Soap with Cinnamon Leaf EO  (3 hearts, 2 bee on honeycomb, 1 rose, 1 goat, 1 horse)
7 - Pale Ale Beer Soap with Spent Grain and Orange, Tangerine, Lime and Rosemary EO
11 - JavaHead Beer Soap with Ground Coffee and Rosemary, Lemongrass and Patchouli EO
4 - Goat Milk Soap with Red Grapefruit, Lime, Lemon, Basil, Lavender, and Cedarwood EO (rectangular bar with "goat milk" on the surface)
8 - 100% Castile Olive Oil Soap with Lavender (note:  with only Olive Oil, this soap is extremely gentle on the skin but will not produce lather)
10 - Green Tea Castile Soap with Chamomile Tea Leaves and Lavender EO
10 - Concord Wine Soap which includes grapeseed oil but is naturally unscented

Beer & Butter Bar

I've been told that I should name some of the soaps I make so this new combination features not just beer but also both Shea and Cocoa Butters.  This combination of natural vegetable oils will create a well-balanced bar of soap.  Great moisturizing qualities along with stable lather.  Ready to enjoy in 4-6 weeks!

13.4 oz. Olive Oil
13.4 oz. Palm Oil
13.4 oz. Coconut Oil
  3.8 oz. Castor Oil
  2.4 oz. Safflower Oil
   .95 oz. Shea Butter
   .48 oz. Cocoa Butter

18.2 oz. Beer
  6.8 oz Sodium Hydroxide

1 1/2  Tbsp. Woodsy Essential Oil Blend (Cedarwood, Cypress, Rosewood, Juniper)
 1 Tbsp. Vitamin E oil
1/3 C. Ground Spent Brewers' Grain

Soaps for Sale

I finally started tracking the cost of my supplies and the income I am receiving.  Since I started expanding my varieties of soap, I went all out and ordered a lot of supplies.  I am now set with the following:

Oils:  Olive, Palm, Coconut, Castor, Grapeseed, Safflower, Avacado, Almond, Canola
Butters:  Cocoa, Shea
Additives:  Bentonite Clay, Glycerine, Oatmeal, Spent Brewer's Grain, Coffee Beans, Violet Colorant
Essential Oils: 7 different blends (Bloomers, Bouquet, Spicy, Spicy Citrus, Forest, Woody, Breathe Green) along with Tea Tree, Lavender and a bunch of other small samples
Molds:  PVC pipes, silicone baking pans, lots of Milky Way shape molds

My favorite mail order suppliers are Soap Goods and Essential Wholesale.

Now, I just need to sell my soaps!  Actually, in the past 4 weeks I've brought in $133 in soap sales.  It will take a while until I break even, though.

Soap Books

I've decided to invest in a few books about soapmaking.  Most of my recipes have been from online resources and my own experiments using a soap calculator.  But I've read so much about Susan Miller Cavitch's book that I just had to get them.  So I just purchased:

The Natural Soap Book, Making Herbal and Vegetable-Based Soaps by Susan Miller Cavitch

The Soapmaker's Companion, a Comprehensive Guide with Recipes, Techniques & Know How by Susan Miller Cavitch

Soap Maker's Workshop, The Art and Craft of Natural Handmade Soap by Dr. Robert S. and Katherine J. McDaniel

Now I just need to take time to read!!!

Beer Soap in a Baking Pan

Now that I've been at this for a few months, I am settling down with favorite combinations.  I had a bottle of Straub's Dark Beer and returned to a recipe that I liked before to try it out using my new molds.  I've finally purchased a soap making book and it's widened my vision of molds to use.  I went to the kitchen store at the Hershey Outlets to purchase the silicone bake ware.  I bought a loaf pan and a square cake pan to use as soap molds!  I also threw out my wooden spoons and switched to new stirring utensils that are all plastic and made to withstand the high temperatures.  I popped it out of the pan in less than 24 hours and the corners stuck.  Next time, I'll be a little more patient.  Even so, it looks and smells great!

Beer Soap with Straub's Dark Beer

6.5 oz. palm oil
6.5 oz coconut oil
7.5 oz. olive oil
1.3 oz. castor oil
8 oz. Straub's Dark Beer
3.1 oz sodium hydroxide
1 Tbsp. Spicy Citrus E.O. (Lemon, Lime, Ginger)

Castile Soap

Castile soap is a very old recipe from France where they first started to make soaps from olive oil instead of animal fat.  True Castile soap is 100% olive oil.  It is a very gentle soap.  All olive oil makes a soap that does not lather much at all but it does get you clean and it's quite moisturizing.  Today, I made two different Castile soaps.  One I made only one pound (8 bars).

Pure Castile Soap

16 oz. Olive Oil
6.1 oz. Water
2.1 oz. Sodium Hydroxide
1 oz. Lavender E.O.


The other "Castile" soap meets the guidelines of being called Castile even though there are other oils involved.  I used 60% olive oil and then split the other 40% with equal amounts of palm and coconut oil. To make it interesting, I used Camomile Green Tea instead of water.  To add even more interest, I used the tea leaves as an additive at the end.  I created a 3 pound batch as that seems to fit well in my pots and molds.  Fun!


Green Tea Castile Soap

28.8 oz. Olive Oil
9.6 oz. Palm Oil
9.6 oz. Coconut Oil
18.2 oz. Twinings Camomile Green Tea
6.7 oz. Sodium Hydroxide
1.5 oz. Lavender E.O.
5 tea bags of tea leaves

Fun!  I'm excited about these soaps!

Concord Wine Soap

Using a bottle of Cassel's Concord Wine, I decided to try making soap with wine.  I spent a lot of time creating a recipe from scratch.  I am just learning how to do this to get the kind of qualities I want in a soap.  This combination should be really creamy and have great conditioning qualities.  The astringent nature of grape seed oil is balanced by the moisturizing qualities of shea butter.  The chemical reactions were amazing, most likely due to the sugar content in the wine.  I saved a bit of the wine and boiled it down to a concentrate that I added after trace to hopefully get some of the color back.  That didn't work.  This soap is dark brown like a chocolate bar!  We'll see what color it ends up being after curing.  No fragrance was added.  I had no idea what to combine with wine!  I used the soap calculator to create a 3 pound batch which fit nicely into the 2" PVC pipe and the 3" PVC pipe to create full size bars and samples.

11.5 oz. Olive Oil
11.5 oz. Palm Oil
11.5 oz. Coconut Oil
4.8 oz. Castor Oil
3.4 oz. Safflower Oil
2.4 oz. Grape Seed Oil
1.4 oz. Beeswax
1.4 oz. Shea Butter

18.2 oz. Cassel's Concord Wine
6.7 oz. Sodium Hydroxide