RIP grapefruit and orange, hello to Sweet Orange Chili Pepper

Sweet Orange Chili Pepper Soap

September 25, 2014

For some reason we've gotten on a re-batching kick. Maybe it's because fall is seriously in the air - new season, out with the old in with the new scents, you get the drift.

Many of our soaping blog posts reveal the fact that we are learning about soaping every single time we make a batch. Whether it's HP, CP, or a re-batch, we learn something.  

Today as we worked on re-batching a couple of our citrus soaps, we reviewed our notes from the days when we made those batches, we looked up questions on the Internet, we formed some hypotheses, and came up with some possible conclusions.  

One possible explanation for why our beautiful soaps seemed less than powerful in the scent department is that we simply didn't use enough essential oils or fragrance oils.

Another possibility is that the scents simply do not hold up.  We read many reviews and comments on various Web sites where soapers have written about citrus oils that either faded or disappeared during the curing or shortly thereafter.  It sounds exactly like what happened to our soaps.

The third possible reason that neither the Grapefruit nor the Orange soap had much scent is because the fragrance oil may have "flashed" off.   We weren't totally aware of flash points when we did this soap, and merrily added the scents thinking it would smell wonderful, forever and ever amen.  It didn't!  Within a couple of weeks we noticed the lack of scent. We could still smell it, ever so faintly if we REALLY tried, but for the untrained nose......no smell.  

Scent is critical to successful selling of soaps, it helps if the soap is pretty, but no smell will kill it.

Why are flash points so important?  Interesting question, and yet another one where we find a variety of answers.  Some say that if you add the fragrance or essential oil when the temperature of the batter is above the stated "flash point" on the label, your scent will flash off, or, disappear.  Of course in CP soap, the temperature rises during the gel phase once the batter is in the mold, so if that temperature rises too high, the fragrance can flash off while the soap gels and cures. 

Always, always check your flash point, preferably before your soap is made.  We now write the flash point on the bottle of each fragrance or essential oil as soon as we  take it out of the box when an order comes in.

There is another school of thought, however, that flash points do not refer to how the scent performs at what temperature, but is merely information for transportation and storage. People who handle the oils need to know how cool to keep the oils.  As the temperature of the oil rises, the vapor pressure of the oil rises.  Once it reaches is flash point, the vapor pressure could lead to combustion.  That's why when you order oils, some of them are only shipped by certain methods if they have a low flash point.

We have read some soap blogs that say they don't even worry about flash points because they don't think it applies to the soap making process, but just to the combustion point of the oil itself.  However, we are not ready to subscribe to that school of thought yet.  We are still careful to pay attention to our flash points and do all we can to be sure that our batter is below that point before we add our EOs or FOs.

All of that is just to say that our citrus essential oils did not stick, so we are taking them and turning them into something new and improved.

So RIP Grapefruit and Orange, you will be happier in your new life as Sweet Orange Chili Pepper, really you will.

After grating all 16 bars of the soaps (the Cuisinart saved 
us again), we weighed the flakes and were again almost at 6 
pounds.We added 3/4 cup of distilled water to the bag and 
tossed it around to mix the water with the flakes. 

We tried putting the bag of flakes in our giant pot of simmering water; however, it was too full of soap shavings to fit.  We went to plan B where we dumped half the flakes into the crock pot and put the bag with remaining flakes into the giant pot.

When the soap flakes heated up we noticed (again) that the boiling bag works much faster than the crock pot.  As the flakes in the bag cooked down and created more room we gradually added the flakes from the crock pot until all flakes were in the bag and had melted.

Initially we had planned to add almost 100% Grapefruit EO to this rebatch, but since the melted flakes were roughly 190 F degrees and the flash point of the EO was 142 F, we had a problem and didn't want history to repeat itself.

After ruling out Tangerine EO (flash point 114),  we headed to our scent shelf and quickly zeroed in on +Natures Garden Sweet Orange Chili Pepper FO. With a flash point of 220 F, we would not have to worry about the fragrance flashing off.

Nature's Garden describes this fragrance oil as "the sassy, saucy combination of Valencia Orange, Sparkling Bergamot, Tangerine Zest, Tart Cassis, Orange Juice, Neroli, Ground Pepper, Fiery Chili Pepper, and Sheer Musk."

We added the fragrance oil then mushed, prodded, poked, and mixed it in
 while soap was still in the roasting bag.  

Wow! The soap in the bag is still really hot. Sorry it's a blurry picture. Alison was moving fast as she mixed the scent into the soap.

Once the scent was thoroughly mixed, we pushed most of the soap to the bottom of the bag.  We cut the corner of the bag out and squeezed the soap into the 18 bar mold.  

It's amazing how fast rebatched soap hardens. We had to work quickly, and every time we touched the soap it would adhere to our fingers. Messy? Oh yes - flakes and chunks of soap everywhere.

We worked quickly and put in the dividers. For the first time we actually had to use force to push the plastic all the way to the bottom of the mold; it really was getting hard that fast.

The rebatched Sweet Orange Chili Pepper

(and yes it smells as good as it sounds - definitely 

one of Alison's favorites right now!)

If you look closely you can see bits of the Grapefruit and Orange soap flakes

Nice size bars that will be ready to use in a few days.

Goats, Butterflies and Guinea Pigs.

Butterfly Meadow (L) and Unscented Goats Milk Soap (R)

Friday, September 26, 2014

With the Foxfire Festival on the horizon, we are madly finishing up many of the soaps that people have requested during the last few shows.

Goats Milk soap has been high on the request list, so today we made another large batch of GM soap and will split it into two batches.  Alison will be working on the unscented batch, and I will work on the scented one.

The unscented batch will be pure soap, no color and no scent. Many of our customers want "old fashioned" soap without all the bells and whistles; this will be the real deal.  The other batch will be scented with Butterfly Meadows from +Natures Garden. 

We made soap using the HP method, all the oils (castor, coconut, sweet almond, avocado and sustainable palm kernel flakes) went into the crock pot then we combined the lye & distilled water and added them to the oils.  We used the stick blender to bring the mixture to a medium/heavy trace then put the lid on and let it cook on low temperature for thirty minutes.

It is so hard not to peek or stir! We have to use serious self discipline.

In the scented batch, we will use Fizzy Lemonade Mica from +Bramble Berry.  

To give the yellow in the scented soap some added depth, we used some Diamond Dust Mica from +Natures Garden.

Once we added the Diamond Mica to the Fizzy Lemonade (which had been mixed with 1 TBSP of Safflower Oil), the mixture began to shimmer.

We were transfixed by the different patterns created as we stirred.

+Natures Garden describes it as follows:   "begins with top notes of summer 

dandelion, refreshing verbena, and soft heliotrope;  followed by middle notes of 

spring meadows, lily of the valley, and weeping willow; all sitting on base notes 

of sweet pea blossoms and Kentucky blue grass."  It is quite a lovely scent.

We haven't used this scent much as it does not work well in CP soaps, in fact it seizes (turns batter into a brick before you can get it into a mold).  However in HP or in candles, it works like a champ.

We are skipping over the pictures of the soap cooking this time. We have it down to a flat 1-1/2 hours of cooking and it's done.  We don't stir for the first thirty minutes, then every fifteen minutes give it a stir until its done.  

We aren't getting cocky about cooking the soap, not by any means because we know "things" can happen. We are not always sure what those "things" might be, but we do check the soap regularly, and we don't by any stretch of the imagination take cooking soap lightly.  

We were right on schedule with this batch, and once it was finished cooking we removed the crock from the base and began adding the final ingredients.

We added in three ounces of warmed distilled water with 

1-3/4 TBSP of local honey.

We had already mixed the goats milk and placed into the freezer earlier. 

It was almost frozen, but we were able to scrape it into the soap batter 

and mix it in.  The goats milk helps lighten the soap without using titanium dioxide.

Once the honey water and the goats milk were thoroughly mixed in, Alison removed enough batter to fill a 10" silicone mold, and her side of the soap making was done.

Boy that was easy!

I partially filled the other mold with uncolored batter, then added the Fizzy Lemonade/Diamond Sparkle to the remaining batter in the crock.

Oops!

Alison burst out laughing and said, what about the scent! 

(Actually I didn't laugh until I saw the look on Kathy's face after 
I asked, "What about the scent?")

I had forgotten to add the scent! Believe me, this isn't the first time this has happened

(and sad to say, probably won't be the last).

What to do?

We grabbed a large measuring cup and dumped in all the batter.

We made sure to get every little bit, then added most of the premeasured Butterfly Meadow FO and mixed well.

We added the remaining FO to the yellow batter that was 

still in the crock, again mixing it well.

Once all the scent was mixed in, we put the white batter back into the mold, filling it about 3/4 full.

(It would have been so much better to have remembered the FO first, but oh well!)

I added a layer of yellow batter mixed with the remaining white batter to the top of the  3/4 full mold.

Using a spatula, then a knife I swirled the batter in the mold, hopefully it was swirled enough, we will see when it's unmolded.

Here is what the two batches looked like 48 hours later, just before they were unmolded.

We usually unmold after 24 hours, however weekend plans got in the way, but waiting made no difference, as the soap is already cured.

Lovely, almost pure white, unscented and uncolored Goats Milk Soap.

The white flecks are pieces of cooked soap from the side of the crock pot. We probably could have left those out rather than stir them into the batter, but 

we hate to waste a drop of soap.

Butterfly Meadow Goats Milk Soap

, The yellow swirl actually turned out quite nicely.

Both the scented and unscented soaps will be ready to use in a week.

After we finish every batch of HP soap we scrape the sides of all measuring cups and the crock. We usually wind up with a mishmash of pieces that are still pliable enough to mash together to create a really rustic piece of sample soap that we split and use.

 Yes, we are our own guinea pigs.

Goats Milk soap, two for the price of one!

September 24, 2012

Every time we do a show, customers always ask for Goats Milk Soap. We shrug and say we are going to make some soon.  Our intentions were always good ones, but somehow we'd get side tracked, or head into a different direction.  Well, the shrugging days are over. We've been churning out Goats Milk soap as fast as we can.

Today's blog is about how we created a double batch using two different scents.   Hopefully there will be enough variety in our Goats Milk to make everyone happy.

We are using minimal coloration today, so we decided to add a mica sparkle to jazz the soap up a little.  We add about a teaspoon full of the mica to the olive oil before its mixed with the other oils (coconut, palm kernel oil flakes, sweet almond, avocado, olive, and castor oils).

When the mica sparkle is mixed into the olive oil the design it makes is beautiful.

When it was added to the rest of the oils, all began to shimmer.

We added the lye/water in and mix with the stick blender.

We breezed right past light trace and head to medium/heavy trace.  

Once we reached trace, we put the lid on and let it cook for 30 minutes.

Letting the soap cook for the first 30 minutes before stirring seems to work much better for us than stirring after just 15 minutes.  At that point the batter has begun the gelling stage and is much easier to stir.  After that, we do stir every 15 minutes.

We let the soap cook for 1-1/2 hours,  and gave it a good stir.  We've made numerous batches of HP soap in the last few weeks and it seems that cooking for 1-1/2 hours gives us a perfect batch of soap.

Once the soap was done, we added the last two liquids.  Above you can see as we added honey water to the batter.  This mixture consists of 3 ounces of distilled water and 1-3/4 TBL of local honey.

We retrieved the goats milk from the freezer. 

It was almost frozen solid, but was a nice slushy mixture that we could still mix into the soap batter.

We measured out 1/2 of the batter to create two separately scented batches.

We added Green Irish Tweed (type) fragrance to one batch. It is a very clean, masculine scent described by Fragrance Buddy as a "spicy-sweet blend of Verbena and Lemon with base notes of sandalwood and Amber."      

We added a fragrance oil blend to the other batch of soap.  For this blend, we combined Cucumber Melon Cybilla and Cucumber Kiwi, both from Bramble Berry.  Our blend created a luscious fragrance of fresh, clean cucumber, sweet melon, and a hint of kiwi.

We used Enchanted Forest Mica in both batches of soap, but we used them differently.  Kathy sprinkled the mica and swirled it throughout the cucumber batch, topping it off with a light dusting for a sparkly decoration.  Alison mixed the mica with oil, colored a portion of the  Green Irish Tweed batter, then swirled it into the white portion of the soap.

Shown above is the sprinkling of mica  Kathy swirled into the Cucumber Melon Kiwi batch of soap.

Pictured above, Kathy is placing the Cucumber-Melon-Kiwi batter into the mold.

This is Kathys' batch, with Enchanted Forest Mica sprinkled throughout the batter.

We didn't get a picture of it, but she sprinkled Enchanted Forest Mica on the top.

The above photo shows the two colors we used for the Green Irish Tweed that Alison made.

And, above you can see Alison has mixed her green batter into the white for an "in the pot" swirl.

She gently mixed the two colors together. She didn't want to over mix 

because she was going for two distinct colors.

Alison filled her mold with the swirled batter.

Alison's soap is on the left, Kathy's is on the right and on the far right are two sample soaps of unscented soap.  We took out those small samples before we added any of the fragrance oils.  We wanted to see how an unscented soap would smell before we made a whole batch. (By the way, it was exactly as we had hoped - no smell!  Yay!)

Alison's Green Irish Tweed Goats Milk soap.

The Tweed soap will be ready to use in a week.

Kathy's Cucumber Kiwi Melon Goats Milk soap.

Just a hint of the Enchanted Forest Mica in this soap, it will be ready to use in a week.