There are so many unique and interesting ingredients hitting beauty products all over the market. We’ve moved way beyond just Shea Butter and Cocoa Butter. If you haven’t checked out our butters lately, take a gander; you’ll be surprised at how many we’ve grown to. Coffee Butter is just one of those fun and unique ingredients that we’re intrigued with. It’s luxurious, rich and it feels like it can wake you up on one whiff! Just the smell alone makes me smile. It’s perfect for a mocha lip balm, lotion, body butter or cold process soap recipe.
Recipe for Coffee Butter Cold Process Soap:
10 oz coconut oil
10 oz palm oil
12 oz olive oil
4 oz coffee butter
12 oz water
5.1 oz lye for a three pound batch
Silicone Loaf Mold
First Time Making Cold Process Soap?
I strongly suggest getting a couple of basic recipes under your belt before diving into this advanced recipe. There are serious safety considerations (gloves, goggles, no children or pets etc...) to take into account before you get your soaping groove on. Check out Soap Queen TV on Cold Process if you want to get started! 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. Check out our E-Book on Cold Process.
This batch was split into three (uneven) layers. The bottom layer (the largest) is uncolored soap batter. The middle(ish) lighter (small) layer has a pinch of titanium dioxide and the top brown (small) layer is colored with the coffee grounds and Cappuccino Mica. Finally, the last layer is topped off with Copper Sparkle Mica. There is no fragrance oil added to the soap so you’ll get natural and subtle coffee scent with a light exfoliant from the coffee grounds in the top layer. If you want more “umph” to your scent, you can do Turkish Mocha in that top brown layer to help boost up your batch (keep it out of the light layers or else those light layers won’t stay light). Let us know if you’ve ever experimented with coffee soap! There are so many different ways that you can create a coffee soap recipe.
I know this is an old thread, but I am intrigued 🙂 I’m relatively new to soap making. I’ve taken a class and just made my first cp 3# batch at home this past weekend. This soap looks so yummy! But I am no where near ready to worry about layeriny or adding color. I could just skip they layering and the added ingredients for the layering, yes? If I wanted to use coffee ground for exfoliation, do you have a recommendation as to how much if I’m not doing the layering and want it through out the soap?
Thanks!!
Hi Donna!
We are so excited that you are starting to soap and can’t wait to see where your journey takes you. If you happen to get any pictures of your soap, we’d love for you to share them on Bramble Berry’s Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/BrambleBerry
For this particular soap, you can actually use the ingredients and not do the layers if you aren’t ready to go to that level of soaping yet. Typically, we suggest coffee grounds at 1 teaspoon – 1 tablespoon per pound of soap depending on the level of exfoliation you are looking for!
I hope that this helps. =)
-Becky with Bramble Berry
I just made this. I am tickled pink. What an amazing formula. It went so smoothly! Thanks so much for the tutorial!!
I’m so glad to hear it turned out so well! If you have any pictures, we’d all love to see how they turned out. You can share them with us on Bramble Berry’s Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/BrambleBerry
-Becky with Bramble Berry
I saw your Recipe for Coffee Butter Cold Process Soap on the SQ March 21, 2012 blog and was thinking it would be fun to reverse the colors: making most of the soap brown, with the topping white/cream.
Question: If I replaced all of the 12 oz of water with strong coffee, would the scent disappear in the lye or gel phase like it does with beer and wine?
If so, could I use 6 oz of water with the lye, then replace the other 6 oz of liquid with coffee when I add the cappuccino mica during trace? And would the coffee scent remain or again, disappear during the gel phase?
Could I color it with cocoa powder during trace and would that dissolve or be an exfoliate?
Would the cocoa scent remain?
Thank you for your expertise!
Hi Sly!
As long as you have let your strong coffee cool, you can use it as the liquid in your soap. The smell might come through, but because of the saponification process, the scent won’t be super strong. It will be there, but very subtle. If you really want the coffee scent to stay, I’d suggest using coffee as your full liquid as well as adding coffee butter to your soap recipe. Unfortunately, the cocoa powder isn’t going to give much of a scent in the soap, but you can always use fragrances like Chocolate Espresso, Dark Rich Chocolate or Turkish Mocha to help bring the full scent of coffee to your soap. Cocoa Powder is actually more of a colorant than an exfoliant, but you can always add ground coffee beans to your soap as a gentle exfoliants. I hope this helps! =) -Becky
Chocolate Espresso: https://www.brambleberry.com/Chocolate-Espresso-Cybilla-Fragrance-Oil-P3364.aspx
Dark Rich Chocolate: https://www.brambleberry.com/Dark-Rich-Chocolate-Fragrance-P3881.aspx
Turkish Mocha: https://www.brambleberry.com/Turkish-Mocha-Fragrance-Oil-P3353.aspx
Becky:
Thank you again for your helpfulness – I’m so glad you are willing and able to answer so many questions!
Anytime, Sly! You can also become part of our soapmaking community on Facebook where you can get the advice of other soapers as well. We’d love to see you there. 🙂
https://www.facebook.com/BrambleBerry
-Becky with Bramble Berry
just wondering how much coffee grounds did you use? Also, do I have to use coffee butter, can I sub it with cocoa butter instead?
Good morning, Anntoinette!
With the coffee ground, we only used a pinch to color the soaps, along with a bit of the Cappuccino Mica. We used just enough to give us the color we were going for, but I’d suggest experimenting to see what you can come up with!
https://www.brambleberry.com/Cappuccino-Mica-P3067.aspx
And you can use cocoa butter in this recipe as an alternative to the coffee butter, but remember to run it through the lye calculator again! 🙂
https://www.brambleberry.com/Pages/Lye-Calculator.aspx
-Becky with Bramble Berry
Que buen jabon te a quedado muy bonito pero no conosco la mantequilla de cafe…. saludos
¡Muchas gracias!
Thank you so much!
-Becky with Bramble Berry
I just made a soap using 100% strong coffee for the lye solution plus coffee butter at a higher percentage than your recipe PLUS olive oil infused with coffee. I’d like to report that one day out the only scent is the bitter coffee smell that you get when you are mixing with the coffee with lye. No pleasant coffee aroma has come through.
Did you use the coffee grounds? I suspect the coffee grounds is where we got our subtle, light scent of coffee but there is an emphasis on “subtle” – it’s not as strong as if we had added a fragrance oil =)
What temperature are you using for this coffee butter soap that looks so awesome?
When CP soaping, we like to keep our soap around the range of 120-130 degrees Fahrenheit. It is also important to keep your oils and lye within 10 degrees of each other. Happy Soaping!
-Becky with Bramble Berry
I was wondering what you used to cut your soap? I love it!
That would be our Crinkle Cutter! We adore it and think it makes the soaps look even more fantastic!
https://www.brambleberry.com/Crinkle-Cutter-P3792.aspx
-Becky with Bramble Berry
Hi Anne Marie, My coffe soap contains a very small percentage of coffee butter (as the previous commenter mentioned it is very expensive), but I use it in a coffee-sugar scrub that I really like. I have tried it in lip balm without fabulous results… but I LOOOOVE it in the scrub. xo jen
I agree with the lip balm statement. Not what I was looking for. It does make a fabulous scrub!
I’m loving all of these ideas. I think it sounds great in a scrub!!
-Becky with Bramble Berry
I just placed my first soap making supply order last week and am anxiously awaiting it’s arrival. I am curious how you would make a scrub with the coffee sugar scrub. Is it just like a regular sugar scrub just adding in the coffee butter? Thanks for your help!
You could definitely try to make a scrub out of the coffee butter. Here is a recipe that you could experiment with that we recently posted on the blog:
Whipped Coffee Butter Tutorial: http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/lotion/whipped-coffee-butter-tutorial/
I hope this helps! =)
-Becky with Bramble Berry
Gorgeous soap!
I’m totally in love with coffee butter, but I find it rather expensive to use in soap; the more while this butter is a blend of Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil and Coffee Seed Oil, which doesn’t really add a lot to the quality of your soap. (And what will the lye do to the benificial properties of the Coffee Bean Oil?)
If I’d consider using Coffee Seed Oil in my soap, it would be either with my standard recipe which includes Castor Oil and Cocoa butter, or a recipe containing the most luxury oils and butters to create an “Extravagant” Soap.
But that’s just me. 🙂
Coffee Seed Oil is super expensive so the most practical and cost effective way for us to sell it is in butter form.
The lye is definitely caustic and will be harsh on some of the healing properties that the Coffee Butter contains. A balm or butter is a great way to go if you want to keep all of those skin loving qualities! But in this recipe, the coffee butter adds a really nice coffee aroma to the soap.
P.S. Thanks for your comment, you may have just inspired us to make a coffee butter balm =)
Courtney from Bramble Berry
I am gonna try this someday! Looks so delicious! Thank you for this idea!
So this dark brown comes out of cappuccino mica? or coffee grounds added dark?
“The bottom row of pictures looks good enough to eat!” I agree )
I love it! I have made coffee soap using coffee butter and brewed coffee. I love the color and the scent. I’ve used coffee grounds and found out that you should go easy on the amount you use 🙂
The bottom row of pictures looks good enough to eat!