Author: Veronica

Soap, man. SOAP.

I’ve decided soap is going to do what soap is going to do.

So there’s a process after you pour the soap called gelling. It’s an exothermic chemical reaction whereupon the soap batter hardens, heats up, turns into a gel like consistency and then cools down. It helps to harden your soap and it changes the texture, colours and smell a bit.

You can prevent gel by sticking freshly poured soap in the fridge or freezer for 24 hours. Or you can alternately promote gel by insulating your soap with towels to keep it warm.

Science, yo.

I mostly gel my soaps. It makes them harder, brightens the colours and makes them easier to unmould.

But I wanted to experiment with some ungelled soap. Mostly to compare textures, but also to compare longevity, bubbles and fragrance hold.

I made a gelled castile (1oo% olive oil), which went hard, plasticky feeling and cut easily after a day in the mould. I made the identical soap, refridgerated it to prevent gel, and then waited to cut.

The cutting window was so small, I’m pretty sure it came and went overnight. Probably around 2am.

I went to bed with soap too soft to cut, and woke up to a brick. A crumbling brick. Thankful for a big knife, I forced the cuts, watching my soap crumble around the edges.

Ungelled soaps 1. Veronica 0.

Ruling it a castile problem, I moved on to my regular recipe, but avoiding gel.

The second soap was gorgeous once I got it out of the mould. Until I tried to cut it. Everything crumbled. The soap itself was nearing too hard to cut and I was worried about it ending up like my castile.

Part of the problem was the round mould. A round soap is tricker to cut because there’s less surface area at the base to diffuse the pressure.

I should have left it alone for another day. Hindsight is a beautiful thing. After two hours of fiddling, I ended up with a bowl full of beautifully smelling soap crumbles I was forced to melt down in a rebatch.

Ungelled soaps 2. Veronica 0.

The next batch was an orange cream soap. I carefully poured and put it in the fridge. After 24 hours it was hard enough to unmould, but not hard enough to cut. The first slice crumbled briefly and I set it aside in the soap curing cupboard to wait a few days.

I am perpetually impatient. This causes problems for me.

It was a sunny day and the room was warm. Soapmakers will see where this was going. My ungelled soap warmed up a little bit, got all excited and tried to gel itself belatedly.

I hadn’t left it in the fridge long enough, clearly. See above, re impatience.

I realised it was going all liquidy in the middle before anything horrible happened, like the entire soap melting over my cupboard. Shoved it into my mould, and carefully popped it into the oven for three hours at 60C, forcing gel phase upon it.

You want gel? I’ll give you gel! ALL THE HEAT.

It turned into a lovely soap (I cut it this morning) with a beautiful orange fragrance. But it nearly didn’t work.

Ungelled soaps 3. Veronica 0.

So I decided, no more avoiding gel. I’m too impatient, I don’t have enough moulds and I like the ease of gelling. It’s only a personal preference thing after all, and I quite like the idea of my soaps being a little harder thanks to gel phase.

This morning, I made soap. “Reindeer Poo” scented. The website describes it as “Reindeer Poo begins with top notes of apples and pears; followed by middle notes of eucalyptus, pine, and geranium; and well-balanced with base notes of vanilla, cedarwood, and patchouli.

I found it strongly pine scented, and carefully I wrapped my soap with towels to keep it warm for gel phase. I tucked it in. I practically sung it a lullaby, hoping that gel phase would soften the pine scent.

You know what’s going to happen here don’t you?

The bastard thing didn’t gel.

All that insulation. All the care. All the careful primping and hoping and wishing and NADA.

Soaps 4. Veronica 0.

It’s Murphy’s law really. I want a gel, and it doesn’t happen. I try to avoid it, and everything goes to hell.

I’m hoping this week has been the last week of chaos in the soap making kitchen. I did get some good batches out of it. The crumbly castile feels lovely, and will make a great soap for me. The orange soap has a wonderful smell which may have been different if I’d successfully kept it opaque and soft. The champagne pomegranate rebatch has a lovely marbled pattern which I’m a big fan of.

And the Reindeer Poo soap?

Well I’m not sure. I’m leaving it alone overnight, in case it changes its mind and heats up.

I’m not holding out too much hope.

Some times, days just go as planned. Today was one of those days.

First I made another Castile soap – 100% olive oil, unscented, uncoloured – and put it in the fridge to prevent gel. It’s an identical recipe to the Castile I made on Sunday, only Sunday’s soap was insulated to encourage a fast saponification.

The differences between gelling and not gelling are endlessly interesting. Sunday’s soap hardened within two hours, gelled within six and was unmoulded and cut within 10 hours.

Today’s soap has been in the fridge for seven hours now and is still thickened liquid, similar to lotion or partially whipped cream. It took five hours before it was stiff enough to pattern the top with a chopstick and have the pattern hold.

It’s not a concern – it’s possible it will have to stay in its mould for a week before the chemical reaction has advanced enough to make everything hard enough and safe enough to handle.

I’m keeping notes. The plan was to compare the texture of an ungelled soap with a gelled soap so I know which I prefer. So far most of my soaps have gelled, now I need a control batch so I can choose.

I also probably need another half a dozen moulds and postage/couriers to be faster, but details.

Secondly, I made lip balm.

I know. BOW DOWN.

It was awesome.

I only made a small test batch, around 3 teaspoons worth, but I think I’m in love. It feels so lovely on my lips and I can’t wait to add colours and flavours and see how that changes things.

Beeswax though, man, that stuff. Nathan has been given a job as the official beeswax-hacker-into-pieces-er. It is hard stuff to hack away at. I’m glad I only needed a little bit to melt and sieve, not great chunks of it.

My beeswax is a creamy white, unlike the bright yellows of the beeswax I see for sale online. Further research (and a quick email to the Tasmanian Beekeepers Society where the wax originated from) confirmed the whiter wax is a byproduct of the flowers the bees were collecting from at the time.

Big relief. I worried for a (very short amount of) time that the wax had been chemically filtered. No.

So, soap and lip balm. All around it was a good day.

I’ve been tossing around the idea of adding lip balms to my soapy mix. Amy adores lip gloss, I’m rather a fan of good quality balms and they just look fun to make.

But first I had to source some beeswax. I wanted Tasmanian wax if I could get it – both for label appeal and lowering of my costs/product miles. Luckily, a neighbour of Frogpondsrock had begun keeping bees. We asked. Could I possibly buy some beeswax?

No. Absolutely not. He wouldn’t accept a cent for it – but he’d love some soap as a swap.

DONE.

Then today, Natasha up at 3 Window Gallery in Oatlands gave me 8kg of Tasmanian beeswax. I’m pretty sure this is just because she’s awesome.

Now I’m sitting here, smelling the beeswax on the table behind me and plotting how I can use all the wax in all the products.

Tasmanian people are amazing when you’re getting your feet underneath you. Kind, and generous, and all around pretty amazing people.

Nathan put up a new shelf in the hallway for curing soaps to sit in the warm dry air. I filled it up immediately, emptying the linen cupboard of its soap, ready for more making. Evelyn ran around my feet, requesting to smell all the soaps and nodding wisely at the smells.

Isaac smells the soaps too. Picks his favourites. Turns up his nose at a lot. He’s a fan of the essential oil blend soaps, not the stronger fragrance oil soaps. Amy doesn’t care, she loves them all. My favourite is a honey lemon and oat soap which Isaac says smells like biscuits, screwing up his nose in disgust. It’s funny, I thought he liked biscuits. I have to keep stopping to smell it I like it that much.

I made a castile soap yesterday. 100% olive oil, it was luxurious to work with. I set it to gel, watching while it went rock hard faster than I believed possible. The top looks like plastic now, and I’m glad I’ve got recipe notes, because it was unexpected and interesting and amazing.

I wanted to recreate the soap today, instead preventing gel. A slower process of saponification, I wanted to compare the results. But then my soap making bowl fell off the bathroom counter, cracking. It was empty, thankfully. No more larger batches of soap until I get to the second hand shop to shop for plastic mixing bowls and old saucepans. I’ve got 8kg of beeswax to melt and sieve free of bees legs and there’s no way I’m using my regular cooking pots for that.

This week is lip balm testing week while I pin down the ratios I like best. My bathroom is full of oils. I found a bulk supplier of coconut oil for less than half of what I’d been paying – Tasmanian based as a bonus. We’re doing this thing, in our tiny house, in our tiny kitchen, with our non-existent start up budget.

It’s so much fun.

Nathan shakes his head at me as I obsessively talk about soaps and oils and labels and things I want to do and try. I spent a day at Salamanca market, reading ingredient lists, scratching my head and trying to work out the disingenuous marketing. No one wants to talk about their products. No one wants to talk about ingredients. I asked at one stall, which oils had been used to make a carpet scrubbing soap. It felt like palm and coconut, but I wanted to be certain. She wouldn’t tell me.

It’s odd. I don’t want to be like that. I want people to know what’s in my soap, to see the processes, to know why I choose the way I do. I don’t like secrecy, or trying to hide products. I want to be open, honest. I want to be proud enough of my products to believe in every single ingredient, standing behind the choices I make.

I also am determined to be palm oil free. I won’t buy soap if it contains palm and I don’t intend to start using it in my recipes ever – no matter how people extol the virtues. I can get the same virtues elsewhere thank you, and without the guilt.

Soap making is addictive.

People keep asking when I’m going to start selling soap. Firstly, I need to make sure my recipes hold up under a number of conditions. This takes months, not weeks. Secondly, there’s Government red tape to wade through. Making soap to sell is considered chemical manufacturing and I need a license and accreditation. I need to be accountable.

This isn’t a fast process and I don’t plan on hurrying it up. There’s testing and checking and rejigging and more testing to happen.

But I truly hope you’ll read along while I do it, because I don’t think there’s anything to gain by hiding what my processes are.