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Welcome to Soap Making on the Homestead. Be prepared to add another skill to the ever-growing list of sustainable items that you can produce as a by-product of homesteading. Some people are understandably cautious or even fearful of working with chemicals such as lye, but with the proper and safe handling of chemicals, some background and fundamental knowledge, you soon can be making your own soap right there on your homestead. We’re here to help you get started. First, let us give you some soap making history.
Some History of Soap Making
Historical evidence of soap making has been traced back to nearly 3,000 years BC. Methods varied over time but the basic formulas were the same. Lye that was made from wood ash and tallow (rendered animal fat), were combined in various processes then put into molds. These soaps were often quite caustic and burned the skin, but were great for laundering garments.
Different cultures played with their formulas adding botanicals and oils such as olive oil to soften the soap and make it easier on the user. Some of these recipes for traditional soap making with palm and olive oils carried all the way through history to the present time.
Soap making was revolutionized in the 18th century along with many other chemical processes with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Soap began to be mass-produced using steam-powered machines, and the chemical combinations or formulas began to be registered with brands and patents. This competition for market-share only grew over time.
For the first time, people didn’t need to worry about making their own soap, which was considered a laborious and potentially dangerous process. They could simply go to their local mercantile and purchase from the variety on offer.
These soap brands eventually became household names and later, advertising sponsors. First, for serialized radio shows and eventually, for television broadcasts with commercials directed to the modern housewife who was the main customer of the brands presented. Certainly, most of us have heard of the brand Palmolive. What about Pears Soap? These two brands have been around since the advent of modern soap making.
These companies grew and flourished by selling the idea that the modern woman could not manage without their product. Whether it was laundry or bath soap, specific soap for babies, for older women, you name it. There was a soap geared toward just about every demographic. Even super-powered soap for hard-working sweaty men! We, as a society, accepted that the soap companies knew best, and bought soap for everything we needed to clean; from our floors to our bodies, and everything in between.
In recent years there’s been a movement away from harsh detergents and toward a more environmentally- conscious way of cleaning. The soap companies have gotten on board as well. There are now gentle, perfume-free and less harmful cleaning agents on offer to the consumer. We now have far more choice than we once did, and that’s good for all of us.
For those who are homesteading and going “back to the land,” soap making is a great skill to have. If you are striving to be sustainable and use all the by-products of your homestead, you can add soap making to the list.
Homemade soap is a practical item, not only for your family’s use, but to sell. If you’re monetizing your homestead, this is a great item to add to your list of goods for sale. It’s also great for holiday gift-giving.
Here are two methods of making homemade soaps. As with everything you do on the farm, do your research, do your homework, and above all, be safe and have fun. Let’s get into it!
Modern Methods
Melt and Pour Method
Many people consider melt & pour “handmade” soap, when in reality it’s more of a craft item.
Sure, you can use botanicals, and customize it with fun shapes and molds. However, DO NOT add essential oils to the melted soap base. The soap base will already contain the oils, so adding more is not recommended.It will cause the mixture to separate and will create issues with the soap as it’s cooling and hardening.
You can buy a soap making melt and pour kit online for about $50. This link will take you to a free tutorial for beginners from Soap Queen.com. melt and pour soap Archives – Soap Queen
The actual soap making for melt and pour soap is done in a factory, and you don’t need to have any knowledge about the fundamentals of soap making to use this method. That is what makes the melt and pour method a good place to start for beginners to get into soap making. Hopefully, it will inspire you to explore the traditional process once you’ve had a taste of how fun it can be.
You can look at Brambleberry.com and Candlescience.com for both kits and instructions for melt and pour soap making.
Traditional Process
Soap making the old fashioned way hasn’t really changed much for hundreds of years. Have you ever heard the phrase, “Uglier than a homemade bar of soap?” Back when our ancestors were making soap, they didn’t have fancy oils or lots of fun colors and scents to choose from.
They had animal fats and lye they made from wood ash. It wasn’t until a couple hundred years ago that softer and gentler soaps with glycerin and olive oil bases became popular.
Many of our grandmothers had burned and chapped hands from dealing with making lye soap and using it to launder clothes. If you think laundry day is hard now, try to imagine using a bar of lye soap in a boiling pot!
Traditional soap making with lye is a hot process, and you need to do your homework before you get started to avoid problems with your formulas and to minimize waste.
Nobody wants harsh soaps that will irritate the skin or cause burns, so be sure you do your due diligence and follow these suggestions.
Safety First (it’s no joke)
The most important thing to stress is safety, because you’re working with lye, which is extremely caustic. You will need to cover your arms, wear gloves and eye protection. A lab coat or smock is a smart investment to protect your skin and your clothes. A lab coat from Amazon will be about $20. Goggles will run you between $30-$50.
Important Tips
- Keep Lye away from children and pets at all times.
- Work outdoors or in a well-ventilated room with windows open
- Avoid breathing fumes as the product heats to temp.
- Always add the Lye to the liquid, water, or fat/oil. NEVER the other way around.
- Never reuse containers for food items after they’ve had Lye in them
Science and Chemistry
Most people don’t realize how much science is involved in soap making.
True soap making involves understanding the chemistry before you even attempt it. Each fat/oil has its own saponification value (how much lye is required to turn it into soap), so you can’t trade oils straight across and the order in which you mix your ingredients also matters when it comes to chemical reactions.
There are a lot of recipes online that are not necessarily correct, so you ALWAYS want to run your numbers through a lye calculator like this one from BrambleBerry Lye Calculator and Fragrance Calculator (brambleberry.com) to check for accuracy so you don’t end up with lye heavy soap that will burn. Recalculate any time you change the recipe. Whether changing to a different essential oil, or changing the amount of the ingredients.
The different fats and oils also act differently in the chemical reaction as they become saponified (turn into soap.) When using animal products, be sure to pay attention to the temperatures and chemical reactions because with something such as goat milk, it can become caramelized which will cause the soap to be a dark color. If you want pastel colors or light-colored soaps, you cannot let the fat caramelize.
How To Get Started With Traditional Hot Process Soap Making
The Nerdy Farm Wife has a free downloadable checklist to help with your process. Click here and follow the link to the printable checklist. https://thenerdyfarmwife.com/ . You can also learn about the cold process of soap making here.
The best thing about the hot process of making lye soap is, with this process, you can be as creative as you like with botanicals, essential oils, different oil bases, colors and scents. This is the true artisan method, and there are endless possibilities for creative and artistic results.
Of course there will be some failures and challenges along the way. There are many recipes online for you to experiment with once you have the basics down.
Here’s a basic recipe from motherearthnews.com. You will need a dedicated digital scale,and the lye calculator for all of your recipes. This one has been calculated for you. You will also need a 2 quart bowl to mix the soap, a kitchen thermometer, and a wooden or plastic spoon to stir, and your mold for the soap. Nothing you use should be made of metal.
- 2 lbs of lard
- 4.4 oz of lye
- 7 fluid oz water
- Use a glass container to dissolve the lye. Remember to put the liquid in first. Stir the mixture until the lye is dissolved, then set it aside to cool
- Heat the lard to 90f and cool the lye to 85f. Now you can begin to pour the lye mixture into the fat and stir until combined. Continue to stir until the mixture thickens, up to 60 minutes. Now is the time to add essential oils and fragrances.
- Pour your soap into the mold and let harden for several days before unmolding them. Cut into bars if needed at this time. Lay the bars on brown paper for about a month, then test a bar, by washing your hands with it. If your hands feel slimy and not clean, let the soaps cure for another two weeks and try again. Rinse your slimy hands with vinegar to remove the residue.
Be sure to thoroughly wash up all your equipment and neutralize it with vinegar and water before you put it away for next time.
Pro Tip: Keep vinegar handy as you work in case you get splashed with the lye mixture. Vinegar is a perfect acid to neutralize the alkalinity of the lye.
We recommend that you spend some time looking at YouTube, Pinterest and Google for recipes, ingredients lists, and more in-depth instructions on the hot and cold processes of making homemade soap with lye. Remember, that nothing you get online is fool-proof, so always check your lye calculator and take notes on your failures and successes.
Thanks to Veronica from Blue Cottage Farmstead for her direction and advice in the writing of this article. You can find her here: Home | HANDCRAFTED WITH CARE IN RURAL OREGON .
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