The Fugue

Previously on The Fugue, I told you how to make Castile Soap in 5 Minutes. Having been through the process a few more times since then, I have a couple of addendums.

First, on measurements. If you’re at all serious about making soap you either need to do large batches or get a scale with 1 gram precision. With my old scale (which had 5 gram precision) I had hits and misses with the size of batch that I like. i.e. 1–2 bars worth. Most recipes you find on the internet are what I would deem “large batches”, and are really more like medium batches. But when you’re trying to nail down the perfect recipe, making 5–10 bars of soap is wasteful, or at least a really really slow way to go about it.

Second, on ingredients. Pure castile soap is great, but has to be treated with respect or it can get really slimy. Coconut Oil is easy to obtain and adds hardness and lather. Lard or tallow is cheap and also hardens the bar. So I’ve been doing 6 parts olive, 2–3 parts tallow or lard, and 1–2 parts coconut oil and others (like cocoa butter). I calculate the lye then use 2 parts liquid for 1 part lye (by volume). I like to use milk instead of water, because I made this one bar with milk and the caramelized sugars (from the lye heating up when mixed with the milk) made a bar that smelled divine.

Third, on measuring again. For the size of batch I’m doing (on the order of 80 grams fat) I figured out that measurement error gives me ±2%. So I round the lye and fats (check the total weight so the measurement errors don’t compound), then add 2g (a bit over 2%) of fat. So I know I’m between just under 1% superfat and 5% superfat, which is acceptable. I don’t want more than 5% but of course you really don’t want less than 0%. The same idea would apply with a 5g precision scale, but you’d have to be doing batches about 5 times as large (I think).

Fourth, on temperature. I don’t measure temperatures. I aim for “warm to the touch” on the outside of each container before bringing them together. Rather than wait for the lye to cool down to “warm”, I start with really cold liquid, sometimes in the form of one or two ice cubes. The ice cubes melt, and the final temperature is much closer to the target and so there’s much less waiting. Obviously, if you’re using more solid fats you want the temperature to be above their melting points until you get a good mixture.

Which brings us to the final point, mixing and molding. I am more than ever convinced that shaking in a water bottle (or large soda bottle) is an excellent way to go. It is safe, convenient, cheap, and fast. However, it’s not such a great mold. It will work as a mold, but it will take that much longer to set up (evaporate water). Usually you demold after 1–2 days, but getting cheese-consistency soap out of a water bottle without marring it is an exercise in futility. So now I use paper cups as molds, and I pour the soap in from the water bottle when it reaches trace. As a bonus, you can clean out the water bottle and use it again the next time. It’s easy to extract the soap from the paper cups, and they’re cheap and nice and round.

So here’s an updated base recipe. Go forth and wash!

The other day I was searching for something completely unrelated and came across this amusing video about making Bacon Soap.

The video brought me down memory lane—some years ago we borrowed a book on soapmaking and endeavoured to make soap for Christmas presents. That experiment went wholly wrong and our house smelled like lard for weeks and we had no soap to show for it in the end.

But this video made it look simple and easy, and so on a whim I decided to make soap. I checked for all the ingredients. I had lye, some lard (from my pie crust experiments), some canola and olive oil, and of course water. So I did some research on the web and went to work. A couple hours later, I had soap in the pot waiting to trace (”trace” is a stage the soap gets to, where it’s ready to pour into the mold). It waited… and waited… and finally several hours later (after occasional stirring, I’m not stupid enough to stir constantly for several hours) it did trace and I poured it in. Actually I’m not sure it didn’t trace earlier and I was just looking for something else.

The next day it was set up pretty well in the mold, well on its way to becoming soap. That wasn’t so hard. But I knew it could be easier. So I reformulated, used my imagination (and borrowed some imagination from the web) and tried again yesterday afternoon.

This time I decided to make Castile soap. That is, Olive Oil soap. I didn’t want to make much since it’s just an experiment. I didn’t want to stir a lot. I didn’t want lots of dirty dishes. I didn’t want to mess around with molds. I wanted the whole process to take about 5 minutes. It does. Here are my instructions for making Castile Soap in 5 minutes (and a few weeks of waiting):

Update: now find this recipe at http://hans.fugal.net/soap/castile.txt.

Enjoy your all-natural castile soap. It’s not hard to make, but you may still wonder if it’s worth all the trouble. Allow me to quote:

Hand made soap retains extra glycerin, known to soften the skin naturally. Glycerin is one of the best known humecants (attracts moisture to the skin). It is often extracted during the process of manufacturing commercially made soap, then sold as a valuable by-product. Natural ingredients are rarely used in commercially manufactured soap. If used at all, it is sparingly. One of the best advantages of making your own soap is that you are in charge of quality control. You decide which ingredients to use and how much.

If your skin is sensitive to scents, additives, etc., or you need to impress your wife/girlfriend/soon-to-be-girlfriend, then the benefits are even more pronounced.

The soap you end up with will be the same quailty of soap that sells for $5 a bar at health nut^Wfood stores. It will cost you about $1 and 5 minutes of time to make yourself. If you enjoy making soap, you may want to learn more about the chemistry and how to make different kinds of soaps each with their own qualities and benefits, and how to scent and color them into works of art. The internet is full of great instructions, and you can’t go wrong once you understand the basics, which are well-put by Caveman Chemistry (though to be honest I skipped all that chemistry junk and got to the practical instructions).