Have you ever looked in your kitchen cabinets and thought, “Huh, I wonder if I can put that in soap?” If so, you’re in good company. It’s a pretty common thought among soapmakers. Also, you are in luck – there are plenty of fresh ingredients you can use in your cold process recipes. In addition to setting your soap apart and attracting customers, fresh ingredients add something special to your recipes. For instance, avocado gives soap a luxurious feeling. Find a roundup of recipes made with fresh ingredients here. Before getting started, there are a few things to know. The tips below will ensure your experiments turn out well so you can focus on the fun part – getting creative and trying something new!

Research Before Getting Started
Each ingredient you add to your recipe will affect how the soap performs. If you add an ingredient with natural sugar, it can cause acceleration and overheating. If you add an ingredient with a lot of liquid, it can make your batch too wet. That’s why research is important. Find out how the ingredient performs beforehand so you know what to expect and can account for any quirks. The How to Add Purees to Cold Process Soap has plenty of information to help get you started.

Honey can overheat in soap and cause discoloration and bubbles, as seen in the photo above. Learn how to work with honey here.

Buy Local
Once you decide what ingredient you want to experiment with, the next step is finding it. We recommend buying local! There are so many quality ingredients at your local stores and farmers markets. For instance, at the Farmers Market here in Bellingham, there is everything from fresh coffee to juicy blueberries. They would be an amazing addition to your recipe. Not only do you support your local economy, but you can tell your customers all about the fresh ingredients and where they come from. It’s an amazing selling point and it shows off your hometown pride.

Consider a Water Discount
To help the fresh ingredients mix in smoothly, they are often pureed with distilled water. Many fresh ingredients also contain a lot of liquid. The added water can make your soap too wet. That’s where a water discount comes in – it accounts for the extra liquid you’re adding to your batch. It also helps prevent glycerin rivers. How much water you discount from your recipe depends on the fresh ingredient. For instance, cucumber is a very watery vegetable, so a higher water discount would be helpful. A good water discount to start with is 10% and adjust from there based on the additive you choose. Learn more in the Water Discounting Cold Process Soap post.

A water discount keeps your recipe balanced.

Watch Those Temperatures
Fresh ingredients with natural sugar have the potential to overheat in cold process soap. That can cause discoloration, an unpleasant smell, heat tunnels and, worst case scenario, a soap volcano. That’s why it’s important to keep your temperatures low. Soaping around 100-110 ° F will keep things cool and give you time to work with your design. If you’re using an alternative liquid, you may want to cool or freeze it beforehand to prevent scorching. Learn more about working with coffee and tea, alcohol and milk  in your soap. Once the soap is in the mold, put it in the fridge or freezer for 5-24 hours. If you’re using a fresh ingredient without natural sugar, they can still cause glycerin rivers or partial gel phase. You can leave the soap at room temperature or cool it in the freezer to be extra careful.

Milk needs to be frozen before the lye is added to keep temperatures low. Learn more in this post.

Test it Out
Whatever fresh ingredient you choose to jazz up your cold process soap, make a small test batch of your recipe. If you’ve never worked with that ingredient before it can do unpredictable things. The test batch allows you to make adjustments before making a larger batch. It’s also a great time to test the bars on your skin to see what you think. If you add avocado and the bars are too soft, you can add more hard oils like coconut and palm. If the honey overheated your batch even with cooler temperatures, you can add less next time. Before you know it, you’ll be a pro at adding random cabinet ingredients to your handmade goodies!

The Avocado + Spearmint Cold Process Soap took several tries to get just right. 

What’s your favorite fresh additive for cold process soap?

The post 5 Tips for Using Fresh Ingredients in Soap appeared first on Soap Queen.

Of all the alternative liquids to make cold process soap with, beer may be one of the most popular. The natural sugars in beer add lather to the final bar, and are great from a marketing standpoint. If you’re a beer fan, who wouldn’t want to bathe with their favorite brew? For these Charcoal and Cedar Stout Bars, I teamed up with a local brewery, Wander Brewing. Wander is just a few blocks away from the Bramble Berry warehouse and is popular in the Bellingham community. I used their rich Correspondent Foreign Extra Stout for this project, and it served as the perfect base for these woodsy bars.

If you’ve never made cold process soap with beer before, it does require some extra prep. First, the alcohol and carbonation in beer needs to be boiled out for 10-15 minutes. Then, the beer needs to thoroughly cool before the lye can be added. Some soapers prefer to freeze the boiled beer and add the lye directly to the frozen beer to keep temperatures cool. If you’d like to read more about using alcoholic beverages in your cold process soap, check out this blog post.

For this project, activated charcoal and titanium dioxide are used to create a rich contrasting swirl. Due to the amount of charcoal, the lather of these bars is slightly gray, but I think they are worth it. You can always lessen the amount of charcoal to do away with the gray lather. =) The blend of cedarwood essential oil and fir needle essential oil is incredibly earthy and masculine. To help combat the acceleration that alcoholic beverages can cause in cold process soap, this recipe is palm oil free. To give the bars hardness, I added cocoa butter and coffee butter. Despite the butters, this is a soft recipe and will require extra time in the mold. I highly recommend using sodium lactate in this recipe to help the bars firm up in a timely manner.

If you can’t get your hands on some of Wander’s wonderful beer, any stout beer will work well. You can also use a lighter beer such as a pale ale. If you use a lighter beer for this project, the tan/creamy shade in the soap may be a bit lighter. Or, if you want to skip the beer all together you certainly can; simply use distilled water and soap as normal.

What You’ll Need:
18 Bar Birchwood Mold
Silicone Liner for 18 Bar Mold
5.8 oz. Cocoa Butter Pastilles (8.9%)
15.9 oz. Coconut Oil (24.5%)
2.9 oz. Coffee Butter (4.5%)
40.4 oz. Olive Oil (62.2%)
9 oz. Sodium Hydroxide Lye
21.5 oz. Prepared Beer
2 oz. Cedarwood Essential Oil
2 oz. Fir Needle Essential Oil
Activated Charcoal
Titanium Dioxide

Click here to add everything you need for this project to your Bramble Berry shopping cart!

If you’ve never made Cold Process soap before, stop here! I highly recommend checking out our FREE four part SoapQueen.tv series on Cold Process Soapmaking, especially the episode on lye safety. And if you’d rather do some reading, Bramble Berry carries a wide range of books on the topic, including my newest book, Soap Crafting. You can also checkout the digital downloads for that instant gratification factor.

SAFETY FIRST: Suit up for safe handling practices! That means goggles, gloves and long sleeves. Make sure kids, pets, and other distractions and tripping hazards are out of the house or don’t have access to your soaping space. Always soap in a well-ventilated area.

BEER PREP: To make soap with alcoholic liquid such as beer, the liquid first needs to be boiled in order to remove the alcohol and carbonation. Unboiled beer can react badly with lye and cause a bubbly volcano effect! For this tutorial, our neighbors at Wander Brewing generously donated some of their delicious Correspondent Stout. The wonderful dark color worked great for this recipe. If you prefer a different type of beer, I would recommend looking for another stout. Lighter beer works as well, but it will affect the colors of the final soap.

First, measure out the beer by weight. I recommend weighing out about 7-8 extra ounces to make up for the amount that will be lost as the beer is boiled. For example, in this recipe, I weighed out 28 ounces of beer. I only need 21.5 ounces of liquid. Once you have weighed the beer, transfer it to a stove top and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and allow the beer to boil for 15 minutes. Do not leave the boiling beer unattended as it may boil over. Stir occasionally.

Once the beer is done boiling, weigh the beer to see how much weight was lost. In this case, I was left with 20.7 ounces. The recipe calls for 21.5 ounces of liquid. The volume and weight measurements matched up so I decided to consider the amount missing as a small water discount. If you prefer to work with the full amount of liquid, add distilled water to your boiled beer to get the correct amount. Once the beer has been boiled, refrigerate it uncovered, overnight, to be sure that it loses as much alcohol and carbonation as possible. You may also choose to freeze the liquid and add the lye to the frozen beer. 

COLOR PREP: To ensure that the Titanium Dioxide blends smoothly into the soap batter, we recommend micronizing it before dispersing it in oil. Please note this is an optional tip but it does help with the titanium dioxide clumping in the soap. =) To micronize colorant, simply use a coffee grinder to blend the colorant to break up any clumps of color and prevent streaks of white from showing in the final soap. We like to use a coffee grinder that has a removable, stainless steel mixing area for easy cleaning. Then, disperse 1.5 tablespoons of the colorant into 1.5 tablespoons of sunflower or sweet almond oil (or any other liquid oil). Then in a separate container, disperse 2 tablespoons of activated charcoal into 4 tablespoons lightweight liquid oil. Use a mini mixer to help get rid of any clumps. Both of these dispersions are a little bit more concentrated than usual.

FRAGRANCE PREP: Measure 2 ounces of the cedarwood essential oil and 2 ounce of the fir needle essential oil in a glass, essential oil safe container. Set aside.

ONE: Remove the prepared beer from the fridge and begin to slowly add the lye to the beer. Gently stir until the lye has fully dissolved and the liquid is clear. My beer was quite cold (around 40 degrees) when I added the lye to it. As you can see below, it still got quite hot! Set aside to cool. The beer will smell unpleasant after adding the lye, but this scent will not be present in the final soap. The lye will also cause the beer to become darker. Because the stout is already quite dark, I did not try to prevent this from happening.

TWO: Melt and combine the coconut oil, cocoa butter, coffee butter and olive oil. Once the lye water and the oils have cooled to 130 degrees or below (and are ideally within 10 degrees of each other), add the lye water to the oils and stick blend until a very thin trace. If you’d like a harder bar of soap that releases faster from the mold, you can add sodium lactate to the cooled lye water. Use 1 teaspoon of sodium lactate per pound of oils in the recipe. For this recipe, you’d add about 4 teaspoons sodium lactate.

THREE: Pour about 600 mL of the soap batter into a separate container. To this small container, add 1 tablespoon dispersed titanium dioxide and use a whisk to blend in the colorant.

FOUR: To the large container of soap, add 2 tablespoons of dispersed activated charcoal and use a whisk to fully mix in. 

FIVE: Add the essential oil blend to the soap containers proportionately, it’s okay to eyeball it! Use a whisk to fully blend in the essential oils.

SIX: Pour all of the black soap into the mold, and tap the mold firmly on the counter to help eliminate bubbles. 

SEVEN: Begin to pour the cream-colored soap across the length of the mold, going back and forth. For the first few pours, don’t worry if the soap breaks through into the black. After the first few initial passes, pour more gently into the soap to ensure the cream soap is staying on top of the black. Continue to pour in the same lengthwise direction until all the cream soap has been poured.

EIGHT: Insert a dowel or chopstick into the very top of the soap (about 1/4 inch into the soap), and drag it back and forth in the opposite direction of the cream soap lines using a S-shaped curve.

Continue this pattern down the mold, until you reach the other end. 
NINE: Clean off the dowel or chopstick, then insert it into the very top of the soap and drag the tool in an S-shaped curve down the length of the mold. Continue this pattern until you reach the other side of the mold. 

TEN: Insert the dividers into the soap. Spritz the top of the soap with 99% isopropyl alcohol to help prevent soda ash. Allow this soap to harden in the mold for about 5-7 days before unmolding. Because this recipe is palm oil free and contains a lot of liquid oil, it requires more time to harden in the mold. Once ready to unmold, gently remove from the dividers and allow to cure for 4-6 weeks. Enjoy!
To give these bars a more polished look, I used the Soap Shaver to create a smooth top and the Soap Beveller to create smooth edges. I waited about one week after unmolding to use these tools, because the soap was still on the soft side.

Have you ever used beer, or another alcoholic liquid in your soap before? While it does require an extra step, beer, wine and champagne soap are such crowd pleasers!

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Charcoal & Cedar Beer Cold Process Soap Tutorial

This recipe uses dark beer and charcoal to create a beautiful contrasted swirl.

Course Cold process soap

Author Soap Queen

Ingredients

• 18 Bar Birchwood Mold
• Silicone Liner for 18 Bar Mold
• 5.8 oz. Cocoa Butter Pastilles 8.9%
• 15.9 oz. Coconut Oil 24.5%
• 2.9 oz. Coffee Butter 4.5%
• 40.4 oz. Olive Oil 62.2%
• 9 oz. Sodium Hydroxide Lye
• 21.5 oz. Prepared Beer
• 2 oz. Cedarwood Essential Oil
• 2 oz. Fir Needle Essential Oil
• Activated Charcoal
• Titanium Dioxide

Instructions

SAFETY FIRST: Suit up for safe handling practices! That means goggles, gloves and long sleeves. Make sure kids, pets, and other distractions and tripping hazards are out of the house or don’t have access to your soaping space. Always soap in a well-ventilated area.

BEER PREP: To make soap with alcoholic liquid such as beer, the liquid first needs to be boiled in order to remove the alcohol and carbonation. Unboiled beer can react badly with lye and cause a bubbly volcano effect! For this tutorial, our neighbors at Wander Brewing generously donated some of their delicious Correspondent Stout. The wonderful dark color worked great for this recipe. If you prefer a different type of beer, I would recommend looking for another stout. Lighter beer works as well, but it will affect the colors of the final soap. First, measure out the beer by weight. I recommend weighing out about 7-8 extra ounces to make up for the weight that will be lost as the beer is boiled. For example, in this recipe, I weighed out 28 ounces of beer. I only need 21.5 ounces of liquid. Once you have weighed the beer, transfer it to a stove top and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and allow the beer to boil for 15 minutes. Do not leave the boiling beer unattended as it may boil over. Stir occasionally. Once the beer is done boiling, weigh the beer to see how much weight was lost. In this case, I was left with 20.7 ounces. The recipe calls for 21.5 ounces of liquid. I decided to consider the amount missing as a small water discount. If you prefer to work with the full amount of liquid, add distilled water to your boiled beer to get the correct amount. Once the beer has been boiled, refrigerate it uncovered, overnight, to be sure that it loses as much alcohol and carbonation as possible.

COLOR PREP: To ensure that the Titanium Dioxide blends smoothly into the soap batter, we recommend micronizing it before dispersing it in oil. Please note this is an optional tip but it does help with the titanium dioxide clumping in the soap. =) To micronize colorant, simply use a coffee grinder to blend the colorant to break up any clumps of color and prevent streaks of white from showing in the final soap. We like to use a coffee grinder that has a removable, stainless steel mixing area for easy cleaning. Then, disperse 1.5 tablespoons of the colorant into 1.5 tablespoons of sunflower or sweet almond oil (or any other liquid oil). Then in a separate container, disperse 2 tablespoons of activated charcoal into 4 tablespoons lightweight liquid oil. Use a mini mixer to help get rid of any clumps. Both of these dispersions are a little bit more concentrated than usual.

FRAGRANCE PREP: Measure 2 ounces of the cedarwood essential oil and 2 ounce of the fir needle essential oil in a glass, essential oil safe container. Set aside.

• Remove the prepared beer from the fridge and begin to slowly add the lye to the beer. Gently stir until the lye has fully dissolved and the liquid is clear. My beer was quite cold (around 40 degrees) when I added the lye to it. As you can see below, it still got quite hot! Set aside to cool. The beer will smell unpleasant after adding the lye, but this scent will not be present in the final soap. The lye will also cause the beer to become darker. Because the stout is already quite dark, I did not try to prevent this from happening.
• Melt and combine the coconut oil, cocoa butter, coffee butter and olive oil. Once the lye water and the oils have cooled to 130 degrees or below (and are ideally within 10 degrees of each other), add the lye water to the oils and stick blend until a very thin trace. If you’d like a harder bar of soap that releases faster from the mold, you can add sodium lactate to the cooled lye water. Use 1 teaspoon of sodium lactate per pound of oils in the recipe. For this recipe, you’d add about 4 teaspoons sodium lactate.
• Pour about 600 mL of the soap batter into a separate container. To this small container, add 1 tablespoon dispersed titanium dioxide and use a whisk to blend in the colorant.
• To the large container of soap, add 2 tablespoons of dispersed activated charcoal and use a whisk to fully mix in.
• Add the essential oil blend to the soap containers proportionately, it’s okay to eyeball it! Use a whisk to fully blend in the essential oils.
• Pour all of the black soap into the mold, and tap the mold firmly on the counter to help eliminate bubbles.
• Begin to pour the cream-colored soap across the length of the mold, going back and forth. For the first few pours, don’t worry if the soap breaks through into the black. After the first few initial passes, pour more gently into the soap to ensure the cream soap is staying on top of the black. Continue to pour in the same lengthwise direction until all the cream soap has been poured.
• Insert a dowel or chopstick into the very top of the soap, and drag it back and forth in the opposite direction of the cream soap lines using a S-shaped curve. Continue this pattern down the mold, until you reach the other end.
• Clean off the dowel or chopstick, then insert it into the very top of the soap (about 1/4 inch into the soap), and drag the tool in an S-shaped curve down the length of the mold. Continue this pattern until you reach the other side of the mold.
• Insert the dividers into the soap. Spritz the top of the soap with 99% isopropyl alcohol to help prevent soda ash. Allow this soap to harden in the mold for about 5 days before unmolding. Because this recipe is palm oil free and contains a lot of liquid oil, it may require more time to harden in the mold. Once ready to unmold, gently remove from the dividers and allow to cure for 4-6 weeks. Enjoy!

The post Charcoal & Cedar Beer Cold Process Soap Tutorial appeared first on Soap Queen.

Ingredients

14.8 oz. Coconut Oil

15.3 oz. Olive Oil

14.8 oz. Palm Oil

6.5 oz. Lye

275 ml dark beer and 139 ml distilled water (mixed together).

3 oz Oatmeal Stout Fragrance Oil

1 oz Almond Biscotti Fragrance Oil

Super Pearly White Mica

Vertical Mold

Buy everything you need in the click of a button (beer not included).

PREP: The first step to a successful beer soap (in my opinion) is boiling the beer. In the past I’ve let the beer sit out for 24 hours so it goes flat. I’ve now discovered that you can boil a freshly opened beer ( it will go flat as it’s heated). Boil for 5-10 minutes to cook out all of the alcohol. The beer really ‘poofs’ up during this boiling phase so don’t leave it unattended. For this project I boiled a 12 oz bottle of beer. Due to evaporation, I ended up with 9.29 ounces (which is 275 ml). Let the beer cool back down to room temperature before you get started. Note: The combination of beer and lye has a distinctly strange smell (I don’t mind it but I can see how some might not like the scent). This will go away as the soap cures.

FRAGRANCE BLEND: Mix 3 oz of Oatmeal Stout Fragrance Oil and 1 oz of Almond Biscotti Fragrance Oil for a delicious, Fall blend.

SAFETY UP! Goggles on. Gloves on. Kids out of the way. No pets around. For more cold process safety tips watch the video on Soap Queen TV about lye safety!

ONE: By volume, measure out 275 ml  (about 9.2 ounces. ish) of your choice of dark beer. Combine the beer with 139 ml (4.7 oz. ish) distilled water. Mix together.

TWO: Measure out your lye (by weight) and slowly add the lye to the beer and water combination in 3 batches (pour a little lye and stir – repeat 2 more times). The reason we add the lye slowly is because it tends to roil and boil over if you add the lye to the beer too quickly (even if the beer is flat). Repeat until the lye is completely added and stir until the lye is dissolved. Let the lye mixture cool.

THREE: While the lye, beer and water combination is cooling, weigh and combine your Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Olive Oil. Make sure all of the oils are in liquid form so you may need to melt the Coconut and Palm oil in the microwave or on the stove. Although with this heat wave going around the country, you may not need to heat them at all.

FOUR: Slowly and carefully add the lye mixture to the oil mixture. I like to run it down the side of my stick blender to avoid air bubbles. Stick blend until light, light, light, trace. Notice how dark the beer lye water made my soap? Wowzers! That’s some dark beer!

FIVE: Split the soap batter into two separate batches. I normally eyeball it but you should have about 4 cups in each container (we like glass Pyrex brand). To the first container of soap add 1 heaping tablespoon of Super Pearly White mica. Give it a quick pulse with the stick blender then hand stir the rest of the way. Once the colorant is mixed in, whisk in just 1 oz of your fragrance oil combination.

SIX: Whisk in the rest of your fragrance oil combination (3 oz left) to the second batch of uncolored soap batter. Then quickly stick blend for about 10 seconds.

SEVEN: Pour each soap batter into their respective sides of the vertical mold.

See how the top is all one color in the picture above? I had the tiniest bit of dark soap left over so I just added it to the top. I hate wasting soap!

EIGHT: Lift the divider out of its resting spot on the bottom of the soap. Then, twist the divider about 25 degrees and gently pull the divider out. This is going to give us a subtle zig-zag design. Then let the soap harden for 3-4 days before attempting to unmold. I know it seems like a long time but since there’s no oxygen getting to the soap it will take a couple extra days to harden up.

NINE: Yay! It’s time to unmold. This can be a little difficult because of the design of the mold but it’s well worth the extra effort. I like to put the mold on the side of a counter top and slowly press the sides down. Pressing and sliding the sides off is really important. If you pull them off you’ll take some of the soap with you…not ideal.

The soap turned out a lovely color that darkened into a perfect Black ‘n’ Tan design over time. The soap got hot so the final bars (if you see them in person) have small titanium dioxide glycerin ‘rivers’ in the soap that adds to the textured look of the bar.

The post Soapfest 2011: Black and Tan Beer Soap appeared first on Soap Queen.

technique.

The post Advanced Oatmeal Stout Cold Process Soap appeared first on Soap Queen.