Soapmaking 101

Lesson 8: Advanced techniques

Other Advanced Techniques

Milk Soap

Adding goat's milk, or for that matter cow's milk to saop can produce a wonderful nourishing bar. Milk can be used in cold process soapmaking either fresh or powdered.

To use milk in a recipe, you simply add lye to cold milk, rather than water, making up a lye/milk solution to add to your oils. The mixture heats up very quickly, and if you add the lye too fast, or if the milk isn't ice cold, the milk can scorch and even curdle. You may even see Goat's milk recipes that call for partially frozen (slushy) milk. Some people prefer to use a combination of water and milk to prevent curdling. In this case, you dissolve the lye in the water first, wait for it to cool substantially and then add the milk.

The lye/milk mixture will probably be orangy which is normal and soap made with milk will turn soft brownish grey. If you have access to fresh (or canned) goat's milk I recommend finding a milk recipe in a book or on the web and giving it a try. For some reason, my friends flip out whenever I give them goat's milk soap, like its a miracle or something!

Blender Soap

Note: I have never used this method. When I make a cake with a blender I have to wipe cake mix off my ceiling, so I am too nervous about spraying my kitchen with lye! I am reporting it here for your information.

Blender soap is a cold process soap crafting method whereby you make up the lye and water solution, melt the fats, add them together and add your additives and then mix together with an electric blender. Obviously, one of the great advantages is that you don't have to bring the fats and the lye solution to the same temperature - no cold water baths! Also, soap made using this method usually traces within minutes.

You still have to follow all of the safety guidelines for traditional cold process soap making. Elaine White, soapmaking guru,is a huge proponent of this method, and has instructions and recipoes feely available on the web as well as a book you can purchase. See "Advanced Techniques" in my links section of the Resources for a link to her page.

Liquid Soap

To make proper liquid soap (like shampoo, body wash, and liquid hand soap), you will need a different kind of lye. Liquid soapmaking uses potassium hydroxide to saponify the oils instead of sodium hydroxide. Potassium hydroxide maintains a liquid state. Unfortunately, I can't give you a detailed explanation of liquid soapmaking here. For one thing, in liquid soapmaking it is necessary to follow a hot process soapmaking method (i.e. you boil the mixture), and in addition you must neutralize the soap with borax or citric acid. So it is even more complicated than regular soapmaking. However, many of you may want to try it to compliment your bar soap, and now that you understand lye safety and have soapmaking equipment, there is no reason why you shouldn't. I have included some links in my Resources section to get you started.

I learnt a liquid soap shortcut from Norma Coney's The Complete Soapmaker that you may want to try. To make liquid soap, make up a very basic cold process recipe. Grate the soap as soon as it is hard enough (before it has cured), and within a few days. Use 16 oz's of water to 5 oz's of grated soap and combine them using the handmilling method. Include any additives you want. Test the consistency of your soap by placing a spoonful in a small dish and setting it in an ice water bath - add more water to your recipes if it sets up fast, and add more soap if it looks too runny. Pour the soap out into a pump container. Remember to give it a good shake every few days to recombine the ingredients.

  1  2  3  4  5