Pollywogs!

So, Kelley got the idea to make soap at home.  I thought this was a good idea, as we use very basic soap for a wide range of purposes: showering and occasionally hand washing (but we usually use diluted Dr. Bronners out of a reused pump dispenser), laundry, and hell, I use it as shampoo.

We started with a very simple recipe and I whipped up a quarter-portion batch (maybe 6 large bars of soap) while Kelley was cooking dinner tonight.

The recipe called for Olive Oil (not EVOO), Coconut Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, water, and optionally fragrance.  I warmed the olive oil and coconut oil on the stove to about 100′F while the lye and water mix cooled off, then mixed the two together.  Immediately it began to cloud, and I mixed and blended with a stick blender and it slowly solidified.  The directions called for brief, two to three second pulses of the blender followed by simply mixing with the stick blender by hand.  I think they recommend that so it doesn’t suddenly creep up on you solidified…cause once it started to get the consistence of pudding it happened fast!

Once it started to trace (I suppose this is when you lift the spoon or blender, it leaves lines on top of the mass), I added a half bottle of Wintergreen essential oil just to see what it would do.  What it did was immediately cloud the mixture even further (from a raw candle wax color to a light cake mix color):

At this point, I got a spatula and poured it into a glass brownie dish lined with parchment paper.  Then, covered with saran wrap (pushed down into the mix to keep air out), and then wrapped the whole thing in blankets to keep it warm.  24 hours from now (roughly), you pop it out and cut it into bars, and then stack on paper for a couple weeks to allow it to cure.  Shame it’ll take so long to find out how we did, but that’s soap for you…I hear if you use it too soon, it’ll be soft as hell and fall apart quickly in the shower…and can potentially be harsher (think Ivory compared to Dove).  That may be a risk I’m willing to take, so we can get started on a larger batch!

—

The economics break down as thus:

Kirk’s Castile usually costs us around $1.25 for a four ounce bar, it is a decent ‘real’-ish soap and we like it in general.

I used 10 ounces of Olive Oil at $0.21 per ounce, 2.5 ounces of Coconut Oil at $0.64 per ounce, 1.73 ounces of Lye at $0.25 per ounce, 4 ounces of water for free, and half of a $4 bottle of Wintergreen essential oil.  For those lacking wicked math skills or a calculator, that is $6.13 (plus a touch of electricity to warm the oils to 100′F) for roughly 14 ounces of soap (assuming most of the water will evaporate off).  Or, $1.75 per four ounce bar of home made soap as we created it, or $1.18 per four ounce bar without fragrance.  So, when you mass produce and play tricks with glycerin, you can make very cheap soap.  If we purchased the cheapest olive oil we could, removed the coconut oil and the fragrance, we’d likely get a decent ‘real’ soap at a much lower cost.  We have fixed costs of purchasing a digital kitchen scale at $25 and a stick blender at $14.  I’ll let you know where we go from here in a couple weeks.