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Advanced Oatmeal Stout Cold Process Soap

Filed Under: Cold Process Soap

Difficulty: Advanced
Time: 2 hours
Yields: 18 bars
The tutorial and recipe you’ve all been waiting for…Oatmeal Stout scented cold process made with real Oatmeal Stout Beer. Can it be? It’s true and it’s made with real oatmeal too!
Learn how to make oatmeal stout cold process soap in this tutorial!
If you have never made cold process soap before, I strongly suggest getting a couple of  basic recipes under your belt before diving in…working with beer is definitely an advanced technique. Click here to read more about how to use alcoholic beverages such as beer in your soap. Check out Soap Queen TV on Cold Process if you want to get started with cold process. It’s a 4 part series that will take you through the basics (and be sure to watch the episode on Lye Safety). If you’re a book worm, Bramble Berry also has some helpful reading on the cold process.
technique.

Ingredients
Lye
18 Bar Birch Wood Mold
Oatmeal Stout Beer
Titanium Dioxide
Long-Cook Ground Oatmeal

Tools
2 large glass mixing bowls
Stick Blender
Spatulas and spoons
Get all of the ingredients in one click!
(olive oil, beer and oatmeal not included)
PREP: The first step to a successful beer batch (in my opinion) is boiling flat beer. Let your beer sit open for 24 hours to get rid of the fizz then boil it for about 5 minutes to cook out all of the alcohol. The beer really ‘poofs’ up during this boiling phase so don’t leave it unattended. Also, be sure to line your wooden mold with freezer paper, shiny side up.
ONE: Measure out your lye (by weight) and beer (by volume) and slowly add the lye to the beer in 3 batches (pour a little lye and stir- repeat 2 more times). Repeat until the lye is completely added and stir until the lye is dissolved. Let the lye mixture cool to about 130 degrees.
TWO: Melt and measure the Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Palm Kernel Flakes and Palm Oil. Then stir in the Shea Butter (until liquid). Let the oils cool to 130 degrees.

THREE: Slowly pour the lye mixture into the melted oils and mix with your stick blender for about 30 seconds.

FOUR: Separate your soap batter in half. It does not have to be exact but try to eyeball it so it’s equally separated.

FIVE: Add a heaping table spoon of Titanium Dioxide to the one half of the batch to lighten it up and mix with the stick blender. Then add 1.5 tablespoons of long-cook ground oatmeal to the mixture and stick blend.
SIX: Hand stir in 2 ounces of Oatmeal Stout Fragrance Oil and pour the soap into the mold.
OPTIONAL: I dusted a vein of Super Pearly White Mica. This is an optional step. I couldn’t see it as much as I wanted in the final, cut soap.
SEVEN: To your other half of soap batter, add the rest of your Oatmeal Stout Fragrance Oil (2.1 ounces). Hand mix the fragrance in and pour the second layer.
TIP: To make sure the top layer of soap doesn’t penetrate the bottom layer of soap, pour the soap onto a spatula so it drips slowly into the mold.

EIGHT: Press your dividers down into the mold and sprinkle on some whole oats on the top for decoration. Pop the lid on and insulate with a towel to keep the temperature up. It will help with a lovely gel phase and also prevent soda ash. Once the soap hardens up, carefully unmold the soap and let it cure for 4-6 weeks.
Learn how to make oatmeal stout cold process soap in this tutorial!

 

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75 Comments

  2. I’m kind of confused on how to measure liquid by volume. I get that we need 21oz of beer after its been flat and boiled, but how do we measure it by volume instead of measuring it on the scale on ounces?

    • Good morning, Alison!

      The easiest way to measure by volume instead of measuring it on the scale would be to use the lines on a measuring cup as they will equal out to volume instead of weight. 🙂

      -Becky with Bramble

  4. You could TOTALLY try that – have you seen our whipped recipes on the blog using just those ingredients? Just add the froth early on in the process to ensure that the soap really sticks well to the rest of the soap.

  5. I wonder if you could whip up some “foam” with liquid soap, white MP, and honey ale fragrance oil and use that on the top making it really look like a frothy stout!

    I think you can add MP to CP but not the other way around. I’m gonna try it out 🙂

  6. Anne-Marie I know this is an old old forum but I was wondering do you weigh beer before or after boiling thanks!!

    • After – great question! It’s all about getting the correct amount of VOLUME for your liquid and some of that volume will boil right off =)

  7. Karen, You are one brave woman to go with a Beer Soap on your first try. I’m proud of you for doing all the research and making a successful batch! Great job!

    The soap will start to cure darker AND we started with a pretty dark soap because of the dark color of the beer too =)

    I’m so glad that your soap turned out great. I am soooooo happy to read that.

  8. I did it! Anne-Marie, thank you SO MUCH for this recipe. This was my *very first* time making soap of any kind. And it worked! I was very careful, and prepared by reading and watching your videos. I made a 1/2 batch very slowly. It took me 2 1/2 hours!

    I just unmolded my Oatmeal Stout Beer Soap tonight and cut it and set it to cure. It smells DIVINE.

    My soap is a lot lighter color than I expected–it’s fairly uniform and looks like that light caramel color of your bottom layer right after pouring. Any idea why? It’s still beautiful and will make excellent gifts next month.

    Thanks again for a great recipe!

  9. You replace the water with flat beer. The recipe calculator doesn’t allow beer in the liquids option =)

  11. If you are making wine soap, you replace the water with boiled flat wine. Make sure you’re getting the right VOLUME for the liquid replacement, not weight since wine does not weigh the same as water.

  12. Thanks Anne Marie, I can’t wait to try this soap. When making wine soap, do you replace the water part of any receipe with wine, first boiling it ?

  16. Ann-Marie, Im new to your website but would like to try to make the oatmeal stout beer recipe. Am i missing something. How much beer do you put in? And also the recipe calls for water, do you put the water in addition to the beer?

  18. I assume the beer is mixed with the water after it is boiled. So how much beer and how much water do you need? It does not exactly mention the amount. Do you do the whole thing with beer or mix beer and water?

  19. Volume of the beer should be 21.5 ounces after defizzing and boiling. Yes, this is a recipe you could definitely follow with the other beer fragrances. Of course, you can always re-do any ‘normal’ CP recipe with beer so long as you remember to de-fizz and boil the beer. It’s just a simple beer-for-water substitution. =)

  20. I love this recipe and purchased the fragrance oil but got confused when I started to make it. Should the volume of the beer be 21.5 ounces after de-fizzing and boiling? Also, is this the recipe we could follow for the other beer fragrances oils?

    Thanks so much! I always learn so much from you!

  23. Not that I’ve seen; you could probably add a bit of wine or beer to your MP soap but much more than 1Tablespoon per pound of soap and you run the danger or making your soap too soft to work with.

  25. Definitely – only insert the beer by volume and make sure to boil it first to get all the alcohol out.

  26. Just be sure to watch the beer when you’re boiling it because it really foams up a lot. Also, it smells weird when boiling so don’t be surprised about that.

    Your Honey Apple Ginger Beer soap sounds incredible!!!

  27. Definitely – if you don’t weigh out those heavier, more dense liquids, you’re basically shorting yourself water which speeds up the entire thing. =)

  28. Not boiling the beer definitely leads to less time to work (as does not working off of volume for the beer). I hope this helps you have more successful batches. =)

  30. I am new to CP soap making and am not yet ready to make this recipe, I am curious though if I can take the simple recipe that I am getting good at making and am comfortable with and sub out the water and insert the beer by weight?

  31. You sub the beer for the water entirely – so 21.5 oz. of beer, by volume, not weight. =)

  32. On the recipe listed above its says 21.5 ounces of water and I can’t find an amount of beer anywhere. I think my page might not be loading correctly. How much beer? And is there any water added? Thanks!!!

  33. Hi Anne Marie, I made a “Boch Type Beer Soap”. It’s a very Dark, Heavy Kind of German Beer. The instructions were to weight out the amount of beer (liquid) for the recipe and let it set for several days (mine was 6 days), stirring it at least 2 times per day until the beer went completely flat (no bubbles). I really wanted to make sure the beer was completely flat as the instructions were very clear that if the beer had any bubbles, AT ALL, that it would erupt like a volcano when adding the lye! I really didn’t want that to happen!! Anyway, my patience paid off and my “Honey Apple Ginger Beer” came out GREAT!! Sounds like your method is lots quicker!!!::)) I love the way your beer soap looks and will definitely give it a try! Thanks for all your great ideas and helpful tutorials!

  34. I never thought to weigh the beer by volume – I’ll try that the next time! Would this be the same for any liquid as well – weighing by volume that is (e.g. coconut milk, goatsmilk, etc)?

  35. I’ve made plenty of beer soaps, but never boiled the beer. It almost always leaves me little time to work. Now that I have the fragrances – thank you very much! – I’ll have to try this again using your methods! 🙂

  36. Ohhhh this looks fantastic! I have yet to try beer soap but have been wanting to for a while now…looks like I’ll have to take the plunge here soon!

  37. Part of the glory with this is that there is so much beer in the recipe that is fully saponified into the recipe. The only way to do this with rebatch is to use beer as the liquid to get the soap softened up to pour – and that’s not very much beer in the soap – but you definitely could do that. Just remember, it doesn’t take much liquid to soften up rebatch soap – and there’s a SoapQueen.TV video on doing rebatch so you don’t have to do it blindly without seeing it done live in person =) Thanks for being a SoapQueen community member. I am so thrilled to have you learning how to make soap with us.

  38. Would I be able to duplicate this recipe with rebatch soap? If so how would I go about doing so? I’m still very new to soap making and I plan on practicing on a few more recipes but I am collecting ideas for the coming holidays and my sister-in-law would loooove this soap. Thank you so much for all your videos on youtube Anne-Marie you’ve taught me so much already thank you from the bottom of my heart! -Karrie

  41. Beer is just a lot heavier than water so you’ll end up accidentally liquid discounting if you do it by weight and not volume. =) I hope you try the beer again. Keep me posted on how it turns out.

  43. Beer is heavier than water so if you go by weight, you’ll short yourself anywhere between 20 and 35% of the liquid making a much thicker, quicker tracing batch.

    Beer helps with the lather of the soap because of the sugars in the soap and it has some interesting protein structures that supposedly help with moisturizing skin.

  45. I have the same question as Hillary. Why measure the beer by volume? And what properties does the beer give the soap? Anything I can tell my customers that will get them excited? Thanks!

  47. I’d be happy to toss a bar in on your next order! Make sure to put it in your NOTES section and maybe write me too so I can make sure it’s in there =) We should have the batch around here for at least another month…

  50. Pyrex containers are made to endure high temperatures but I have read some of those reports. Stainless steel is a great idea- it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

  51. Great suggestion! So that way you can pour off the alcohol that doesn’t freeze. Love that idea!

  53. It really helps to cook out the alcohol. If you don’t boil the beer (which is fine) you’ll get a bubbly reaction with the lye.

  54. I’ve always heard that the hops are soothing to irritated skin and beer contains skin loving amino acids. Plus it’s fun!

  55. I just had a feeling you were going to make beer soap =) P.S. You’re going to love your birch wood mold.

  57. Looks pretty yummy, like fudge! I would caution against using pyrex to mix lye and beer though. Pyrex is no longer made with the same material it used to be made with and can easily shatter, even with just water and lye. Beer and lye gets very, very hot. You could drop a pyrex years ago and it would not shatter. If you drop a pyrex these days get ready to get your vacuum out.

    I would recommend a stainless steel pan that is at least 8-12 inches deep.

  58. Gorgeous! Someone needs to make this so I can buy it. I’m strictly M&P, but my hubby would love this!

  60. The other simple way to work with beer is to freeze it first. you then loose all the alcohol without boiling and the frozen slushy beer (it never quite goes hard) is really cold and adds easily to the lye. Also this means you can have an excuse to go to the pub in the evening, have a couple of pints, get a take out, shove it in the freezer (our real ale local does take outs in old plastic lemonade bottles) straight away and soap it in the morning!!

  63. That’s fab Anne-Marie, just waiting for the fragrance now 🙂 Having four adult sons means there’s been a fair bit of interest in the new FO’s!

  65. Very nice and detailed. You are a soapaker’s dream boat! How can so much innovation and creativity be wrapped up inside you? I’m always inspired. Always.

  68. How did you know I was going to make this? This is very similar to what I was going to try! Now I can’t wait (although my recipe is going to look slightly different). My husband is really excited because I told him he has to go out and buy me some beer (any excuse to do that is a good one!). Someday I am going to have to get one of those birch molds…

  70. This looks like a great recipe! I tried wine soap once, but didn’t boil all of the alcohol off so it seized I ended up with soap-on-a-stick. One question, why do you say to measure the beer by volume as opposed to weight (like you would with water or milk?)

    Thanks!