Scents.

You’ve got your equipment, your oils and your caustic. These things will make soap. But you want it to smell nice as well.

There are two ways of making soap smell nice. Essentail oils and fragrance oils.

Essential oils.

Essential oils are extracted from plant parts (roots, bark, leaves, flowers, etc) and can be added to soap to make it smell nice. Some essentail oils don’t smell nice at all and some you may hate regardless of popular opinion (I hate lavender).  Some are very cheap and some you’d need a second mortgage for.

The best way to start with essential oils is to go into a shop that sells them and smell them. Then pick a couple of cheaper ones that you like, bring them home and try your hand at blending. Mixing essential oils is like perfumery – you have ‘notes’.  A top note is the thing you smell first, and usually the most fleeting and volatile. The middle note is the overall smell and the base note is the undercurrent. Does that make sense? Go and google it for a far better explanation – I don’t want to get into bother for C&Ping other people’s work. If you think of it like music, your top note is the intro, the middle note is the melody and the base note is the beat.

Each essential oil (EO for short) has a different note and a combination of the three works the best. But don’t think you have to use three eo’s or even two. If you are only using one, go for a middle note. To blend put a drop of each note together on some absorbant paper (kitchen paper works fine). Leave it alone for a while, then come back and smell it Adjust to suit. If your base note is overpowering, use less, etc. The only way I like lavender (which has a middle note) is if it’s mixed with lime (which has a top note, like most citrus oils). Lime and Lavender might sound awful, but it’s a good combination.

Although eo’s are used in types of medicine, the consensus is that any properties the the eo had are lost in the saponification process.  Choose on the basis of smell, not any properties they may have. Having said that, if you’re worried because rosemary is bad for people with epilepsy, don’t use it.  There are plenty of eo’s that have no warnings attached to them, just stick with them.

I use 10 to 15 mls of eo (either a single one or a blend) per kilo of fats. Eo’s tend to come in 5ml bottles in the shops and that can work out quite expensive. Once you’ve decided to carry on with soapmaking I’d advise you buy bigger bottles from a supplier – much more cost effective.  You can pay over £2 for 5mls of lavender oil, but it’s only £10 for 100mls from a supplier.

There are a couple of essentail oils specifically for soapmaking.  This is because the ordinary oil just won’t stick in soap – orange and lemon are the two that come to mind because they evaporate almost immediately. Soapmaking suppliers sell something called 5 (or 10) -fold essential oils. They are a bit more pricy, but if you want a citrus soap that actually smells of citrus you’d be better using these.

If for whatever reason you can’t test the smell or results of blending (I can’t – I have no sense of smell) the easiest way to cheat is to find sites that sell handmade soap and see what combinations they are selling. They won’t make/stock combinations that are awful or unpopular and you can copy theirs

The last thing about eo’s is be careful where you buy them from. Proper shops are fine as are the well known suppliers, but if you buy a job lot at a carboot sale for pennies, chances are they will either be very diluted in a carrier oil or they will smell like crap because they are not what they claim to be. Reputable suppliers will tell you that their eo is diluted (often the case in the very expensive oils).

Sometimes you want a smell that is not available as an essential oil or the cost is prohibitive. Rose oil, for example. You can buy it diluted or you can go for a cheaper alternative. That’s where fragrance oils come in.

Fragrance Oils

Fragrance are cheaper manmade scents. If you want a chocolate and mint soap (a favourite in my house) you can buy peppermint or spearmint essential oil, but you’ll not find chocolate, so you’ll have to buy it as a fragrance oil (or FO for short).

For all the many different eo’s out there, there are many times more fo’s. You can get them as cheap copies of eo’s, copies of popular perfumes, scents of foods (apple ones can be nice, the vanillas are lovely) or just about anything really. Do you want your soap to smell of cannabis? There’s an fo for that. Pear and ginger? That’s fine. Coconut? Easy.

Be careful with fo’s. Only buy ones that have been tested on cold process soap. Some will only work in hot process soap, some will turn into a nasty smell (wee is common) and some will ‘curdle’ (or seize to use the right term) your soap mixture and make it useless (or almost useless, it can be rescued with effort). All the suppliers I buy fo’s from will state clearly that they are fine (or not) in cp soap. Some will colour your soap – suppliers will warn you of that too. I have a hazelnut one that smells lovely, but turns my soap an awful khaki brown colour that looks like it came out of the back end of a dog.  I was warned it would be ‘dark brown’, but presumably I used it with an oil that had a green tinge. Yuk.

Once you’ve got over the unsuitable hurdle the only other thing I can think of is that sometimes fo’s can smell overly artificial. But that’s because they are.  The good news is they are cheap, so if you’ve got one you don’t like it’s not so bad to bin it and pick something else.

Don’t forget that you don’t have to scent your soap. It won’t smell fatty, it’ll just smell like soap, which is nice as it is.

Caustic Soda

Along with your fat, caustic soda (or lye) is your other essential ingredient. You can’t make soap without lye.

In the UK the easiest place to buy lye is at your local DIY store. It should come in small pellets, packaged in a plastic bottle and be labelled ‘Caustic Soda’. You’ll find it next to stuff labelled ‘Drain Cleaner’. Whilst drain cleaners contain caustic soda, they also contain other ingredients that you do not want in your soap. And if some helpful customer assistant tries to tell you they are the same thing, they are wrong.

You can buy caustic soda in larger amounts on the internet, but it’s one of those products that is dangerous and a lot of carriers won’t touch it or charge you a hefty amount to deliver it to you. Much easier to go to B&Q.

Before you start making soap it really makes sense to read some basic lye handling safety rules. It can be a dangerous ingredient, but follow the rules and you’ll be fine. Imagine it as if it were a pan of boiling water or oil. You don’t want to splash yourself and you don’t want to spill it, especially over anyone. Scared yet?

If you’re new to handling caustic soda you’d be better with some rubber gloves and plastic eye protectors. The only time I have ever spilled caustic was when I was wearing rubber gloves because I couldn’t grip the container properly, but it’s far safer with them than without.  Minute splashes can be dealth with – spilling 500mls of lye on yourself needs medical intervention. Eye protection is a must, even if it’s just wearing ordinary glasses. If you get caustic in your eyes, flush them with water then go to A&E. Immediately.

To mix caustic soda you’ll need some dedicated equipment – its not a good idea to mix caustic equipment with food equipment. One plastic or glass jug, one plastic container to weight it out in and one plastic or stainless steel spoon to stir it will be fine.

Before you even open the container you need to prepare. First, banish any children and animals from your working area (which in my case is the kitchen). Children and animals are nosy – you do not want them investigating this stuff. Second, put a bottle of vinegar or lemon juice to hand. If you splash the best way of dealing with this is by dousing the area in acid. Don’t waste time by having to look in your cupboards for it – have it ready. Then open your windows. Caustic soda gives off fumes which are nasty and will burn if inhaled – ventilate the area and don’t ever put your face over the jug. Or attempt to smell it.

Once you’ve weighed your lye out and have your water ready in it’s jug it’s time to add the lye pellets to the water.  The colder the water, the better. A couple of ice cubes in it won’t hurt it.  Never add water to lye. Have you ever put vinegar into baking power? Well it does that. I’ve never tried it, but I’ve heard it desribed as ‘explosive’. Pour your pellets in, don’t breathe, give it a stir (otherwise it will clump into a solid mass at the bottom) and then leave it alone. You may notice the lye solution has got very hot. It does that. That’s why colder water is better – it won’t get as hot.

When I mix lye I leave the kitchen and shut the door, making sure no one goes in there. It doesn’t give off fumes for very long, so it’s safe to go back after a few minutes but it’ll still be very hot. Lye will burn whether it’s hot or not.

If you notice an iching or irritation (this usually happens on the back of my hands), rinse your hands in the acid you got out earlier. A pellet of the dry stuff probably touched you, but if you deal with it quickly it’ll be fine.  A bigger spill or splash will need the acid then medical attention.

Last but not least, don’t ever make a lye solution for storage or the day after. Keeping it around is a bad idea. Make it only when you need it and if you can possibly help it, try not to leave it unattended. If you have to leave it for more than a few minutes, pour it down the sink, flush it with plenty of cold water and start again when you won’t be called away. You wouldn’t leave a pan of hot oil or water on the boil and go out would you? Oil and water will cool and become safe, lye doesn’t.

Have I put you off making soap? When I first started I had a toddler, three cats and a dog and everything was fine. I still have the cats and the dog, the toddler is now a teen. And she still knows not to come into the kitchen when I’m making soap.

Fats and Oils II – the harder to find stuff

Ok, so you’ve bought some olive oil, made your first batch and are pleased with how it turned out, but now you want to experiment further.

I will explain exactly how to make that first batch, but while my mind is on oils, let’s get this down.

There are lots and lots of oils you can use to make soap. The only one I can think of that you can’t use is butter, which goes horribly wrong. Some of them are cheap and easy to find (see previous post), some are cheap-ish and harder to find and some are really hard to find and extorionate. If you’re bored, go and look at the price of emu oil (yes, from real emus). Thankfully it’s an animal fat and I don’t use them.  If you can find a supplier in the UK you’re doing better than me because I can’t.

Anyway, these are the harder to find oils. Some are stocked in Asian supermarkets, some you will have to buy online. I’ll try and give you a guide price, but these are changeable.

Apricot Kernel Oil. 1litre – £9.50 This is a nice mild moisturising oil that’s good for senstive skins. Don’t use more than 15% in your recipe. Apricot is pretty much interchangeable with Sweet Almond Oil (see below).

Avocado Oil. 1 litre – £11.85. This is one of my all-time favourite oils. It’s high in vitamins A, D and E, it’s very mild (mild enough to be used for baby soap) and it helps make a lovely creamy lather. Don’t use more than 30%, I usually use less.

Borage Oil. 1 litre – £57.70. I don’t use Borage oil, it’s beyond my price range. I only mention it because it’s widely available and it has it’s fans, but at that price, not a beginners oil. At that price it’s not an oil for me either.

Cocoa Butter. 1kg – £10.25. Cocoa butter is a hard fat that you can buy refined (with no odour) or unrefined (which smells of chocolate). The choice is up to you, just be careful if the scent will clash with another you are using.  Cocoa butter will produce a hard bar, in fact if you use too much it will be brittle – 15% is the recommended maximum. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of cocoa butter – beyond it’s hardening properties it doesn’t do much and there are other oils that will do the job just as well.

Jojoba. 1litre – £18.00. Jojoba isn’t an oil, it’s a wax, but it’s always found in with the oils and you add it like an oil, so it’s going here. The advantage of jojoba is it’s chemical makeup is very similar to the sebum our own skin produces, so it’s very easily absorbed. It’s at the upper end of my price cut off point, but you only use a small amount. It’s nice and moisturising, but I personally think that due to it’s properties it’s better used in creams or lotions which you don’t wash off than in soap which you do.

Palm Oil. 1kg – £2.50. I don’t use palm oil because of it’s dubious ethics. You can buy ethically produced palm oil, which is more expensive and it is a popular soap making oil – think of it as the vegetable equivalent of tallow (see previous post),  but as far as I’m concerned it’s one of the more expensive filler oils and it’s harder to find. Not worth the hassle.

Shea Butter. 1kg – £9.50. I use Shea Butter in every soap I make. Like cocoa butter it’s a solid fat, but has a lot more advantages. It’s very moisturising because it contains a high percentage of ‘unsaponifiables’ – fats which aren’t turned into soap during the soapmaking process  – so remain in your soap as a moisturiser. On top of that it contributes to a harder bar and gives a creamy lather. Use it at no more than 20% ( again, I use less).

I have used lots of different oils that are supposed to add moisturising properties to your soap. Shea butter is the best by a mile.

Sweet Almond Oil. 1 litre – £7.95. Sweet Almond oil is very similar to Apricot Kernel oil, sometimes a little cheaper, sometimes not. You can use more of it in your basic recipe than with the Apricot, but I tend to stick to the 10/15 %. Sweet Almond is a good all round oil for soapmaking, it’s very mild and has skin softening properties.

Wheatgerm Oil. 1 litre – £14.95.  Whilst not at Borage prices, Wheatgerm is one of the more expensive oils I occasionally use. Wheatgerm oil will allegedly soothe problem skin, rejuvenate older skin, prevent stretchmarks and act as a natural preservative. Again I am dubious about these claims when used in a soap. Strangely, wheatgerm is also one of the quickest oils to go rancid, but you can buy it in smaller amounts.  I have used it, but not noticed any rejuvenation yet. Considering how quickly it goes off, it’s not one of my staples.

Beeswax. Whilst it’s not an oil, beeswax is a useful additive in soapmaking. It will make your soap harder and add moisturising properties. You only need to use a small amount  – I tend to use 50g per kilo of oils. You can buy beeswax in white (refined) or yellow (also sometimes refined with colour added to make it look more natural – read the small print) pellets which are easy to use, but I prefer blocks of yellow ’straight out of the hive’ stuff you can get on Ebay.  You have to grate it, which can be time consuming, but it smells glorious and is cheaper than the pellets. If you have a local beekeeper you might be able to buy it directly from them. I tend to rely on coconut oil for hardness, but beeswax does a good job. And you need less of it.

There are other oils – mango butter, vitamin E oil, plenty of others. I haven’t mentioned them because I haven’t used them.

Fats and Oils

On the 10th September 2002 I wrote “Who’d have thought fats and oils could be so bloody complicated?“.

That’s not changed really. If you look on the ‘net there is loads and loads of information about fats. You can find out about their chemical make up, the exact process they go through to turn into soap, formulas, chemical symbols and so on. When you’re sat there considering making your first batch of soap this can be daunting to say the least. This information is interesting, but looking into it later won’t hurt. What you need to know is a) what sort of soap it will make and b) any properties and/or effects it may (or may not) have on your skin.

There are some very exotic (and expensive) oils out there. But you want to make your first batch, you don’t want to wait for mango butter to come through the post. And, should it go wrong (my first batch wasn’t brilliant) you don’t want to have to bin £££’s worth of oils.

For your first batch (and so you can decide whether it’s the hobby for you or not) I would suggest that you go to your local supermarket and buy the stuff off the shelves. Exotic and expensive can come later.

With that in mind, here’s the oils you can buy over the counter.

Olive Oil. You really can’t go wrong with olive oil. The only word of caution is don’t buy high grade oil, but the lowest, pomace. The lower the grade, the better the soap. Olive oil is the only oil that will successfully make a good soap on it’s own. Most soaps benefit from a blend of oils, but Castile/100% olive oil soap is fabulous.  It takes a little longer to harden, but once it has it’s rock solid.

The other advantages of olive oil are that it’s very mild, will not clog your pores and allows your skin to breathe. If you don’t want to be bothered with lots of different oils, olive oil is the one to buy. Just remember to buy Pomace grade, not virgin or extra virgin.

Vegetable Oil/Rapeseed. Usually ‘vegetable oil’ is 100% rapeseed, but occasionally it can be a blend, so you must check the label beforehand – if it is a blend don’t buy it – your measurements won’t be accurate enough. In the US there is a branded version called Canola which is to all intents and purposes the same thing.

I use a lot of rapeseed because it is very cheap, makes a decent bar of soap when blended with other oils and has good moisturising properties. It can make your soap quite soft, but if you use 50% or less with a harder oil, it’ll be fine.

Sunflower Oil. Much like rapeseed, sunflower is a cheap ‘filler’ oil that produces a decent bar when blended with other oils.  The disadvantage of sunflower is you have to use less to avoid a soft soap – 20% at most.  I have used it, I’ve never had any problems with it, but I prefer rapeseed.

Corn Oil. Your other basic filler oil. Soap sellers may tell you it has regenerative properties. Well that sounds better than cheap filler oil doesn’t it? My advice would be to buy one of the three rapeseed/sunflower/corn to blend with ‘harder’ oils – don’t buy all three because they do the same job.

Next, the animal fats. I don’t use them because I have friends who are vegetarian, but if you don’t have to worry about that they are very cheap and make good soap.

Lard. Pig fat. Despite it not being an attractive name, lard makes great soap. It’s moisturising and provides a good lather. You should probably blend it with other oils as it can make your soap quite soft.

Tallow. Beef fat. Out of the animal fats I prefer tallow – it’s very mild and makes quite a hard bar of soap. Both tallow and lard can be picked up in the supermarket for pence. Even if you don’t like the idea of using animal fat, they are both good for trial batches when you’re starting out. A lard/tallow mix works well.

The next one might be a little harder to find, but not if you know where to look.

Coconut Oil. You know how most of the oils above gave you a soft soap? Well, don’t worry because there’s coconut oil. Coconut oil is one of my essential soapmaking fats because it makes a hard soap with a fabulous lather. Some oils produce a better lather than others and coconut oil is my favourite – it’ll lather in anything, even the sea.

If your local supermarket has coconut oil, cool. If not you’ll find it in an Asian supermarket. It’s becoming popular as a hair treatment so it might be easier to find now than when I first started, but an Asian supermarket is a sure bet. You can buy it (and all the other oils) online, but the p&p can be hefty so if you can find it in a shop that’s be your best bet until you want huge amounts, then you can go wholesale.

The disadvantage of coconut oil is that it can be quite drying – try not to use more than 30%.

Castor Oil. Every chemist sells castor oil in small bottles for £notverymuch. But as you only use a small amount, that’s not a problem. Use 20% max, I use less and like coconut it makes a good lather.  Larger amounts make a softer soap, so probably not a good idea.

Unless I’ve forgotten any, those are your basic ‘easy to find’ soapmaking oils. If you do have a local Asian supermarket I’d recommend a trip because they will also stock some of the harder to find oils, which I’ll get onto next.

What you need to get started

When I first started making soap the list of essential items was long and confusing.  After several years of soaping I have found that the ‘essential’ list isn’t quite so long and the ‘useful’ list is just that – useful but not essential.

So, here’s what you need to get started.

• A stainless steel pan. Not aluminium or non stick, but stainless steel.  This is because stainless steel won’t get corroded or eaten by the caustic soap mix. It’ll need to be big enough for your batch size, but it doesn’t need to be fancy or expensive. The only time heat is applied to it is while you gently heat your oils, so a heavy expensive pan isn’t necessary. If you’ve got an old one you’re going to update, use that. If you want to go and buy one, that’s fine, but I would leave it for soap making, not food cooking and soap making. My current pan was about £9.00, holds 3 litres and does the job just fine.
• A couple of glass or plastic jugs. You’ll need one to mix your caustic solution in and the other is handy for weighing oils.
• A digital scale. Accurate weighing is very important. Manual scales just don’t cut it – you can get a digital scale for £15
• A couple of plastic or stainless steel spoons. Because you need to stir things.  Wooden ones will get eaten.
• A mould to pour your soap mixture into. You can buy expensive moulds or you can use empty ice cream tubs. Whatever you use, plastic is best. Flexible plastic is better because it’s easier to get your soap out afterwards, but rigid plastic works. If you prefer to make batches up in small moulds so you don’t have to cut it up afterwards, yoghurt pots, coleslaw tubs, etc work fine. I don’t need to say that they have to empty and clean do I?
• Fat – this needs a post of it’s own.
• Caustic Soda – You can buy caustic soda (or lye for short because it’s easier to type) from dedicated soap suppliers on the internet or you can pop to your local DIY store and get it there. The only word of caution is don’t buy anything marketed as ‘drain cleaner’ because it’s got other ingredients in it – you need as pure a lye as you can get. My local DIY store stocks 98% pure lye and it works fine.
• Water
• Safety goggles and rubber gloves. Caustic soda is a dangerous ingredient. The dry pellets burn, the solution is worse. If you don’t feel confident about handling lye, get yourself protection for your hands and eyes. For me they aren’t essential – I don’t use either, but lye burns are nasty and I wouldn’t want anyone hurting themselves.

That’s it – the essential list. Here’s the useful;

• A hand blender.  Available for £7 or less and will save you hours of stirring time. I have done it by hand stirring and two hours isn’t unusual. With a hand (or stick) blender it takes minutes. For me it’s an essential item, but technically speaking you can make soap without it.
• A meat thermometer – the type you can hang over the side of your pan. I’ve got one, I even use it sometimes. It does come in handy, but I only tend to use it when my oils have got too hot and I want to check they have got cool enough. If you aren’t confident about being able to judge between too hot and warm, get yourself a thermometer.
• Something to make it smell nice – I use essential oils mostly with fragrance oils sometimes. I’ll do a proper post on this, but what I will say here is if you do use a fragrance oil make sure it’s suitable for cold process soap (as opposed to hot process soap, candles, pot pourii, etc) because otherwise bad things will happen.
• Something to give it visual or tactile interest.  Oatmeal to make it scrubby, poppyseeds to make it dotty, dried flower buds – there’s a huge amount of stuff you can use and I’ll cover it in another post.
• Other ingredients that aren’t oils. Things like honey, goatsmilk, beeswax. I’ll get to these later too – you certainly don’t need them.

I think that’s it.

An introduction

I’ve been making cold process soap for several years now.  I’m not an expert, I just enjoy doing it. This information has been posted elsewhere, but I wanted to move it over to more of a blog type space.

There are a million cp soap sites out there, if I were you I’d go and read them instead Having said that, most of them are US-based, with US measurements and US suppliers. This is soap UK style.

I don’t make it to sell, so there’s no trading information. I don’t make huge batches, 2 kilos maximum – this is a small hobby producing soap for myself, my kids and occasionally some friends. I’ll tell you why I don’t sell it, but beyond that you’ll have to look somewhere else.

Um, I think that’s it.