Friday, October 24, 2014
We are so excited to be working on some test soaps for one of our local customers. Krupa, owner of Roots 'N Remedies on the square in Clarkesville, has some wonderful products in her store, all selected with healthy bodies and healthy lives in mind. Over the next few weeks we will be using some of her products to test and develop a line of soaps for Roots 'N Remedies.
Today, Friday (10-24-14), we started with the first soap - Hibiscus/Rose/Lavender. Actually, we started a few days ago, because we used Roots 'N Remedies rose petals, rose hips, and lavender buds to make an infusion with the olive oil that we will use in the soap. We infused the oil in the sun for 48 hours.
We started an infusion for another soap at the same time. By the time we test that soap, the oil will have been infusing for much longer. We anticipate a better herbal outcome with the second oil. For future soaps, we will allow a longer time for sun infusion or we will heat infuse.
This is a small amount of oil/herbs because we are only making
a small test batch.
We brewed Hibiscus Tea from Roots 'N Remedies
to use as the water portion of our recipe. The smell and the color of the tea, make this
an interesting choice for soap-making. We can't wait to see how it comes out.
Hibiscus tea has many health benefits, but we will leave that discussion to Krupa.
The tea is a beautiful deep magenta color.
But unfortunately, that exact color did not survive the addition of the lye.
There is nothing we can do about that. We cannot make soap without using lye, so the chemical changes are simply a part of the process that we must work with.
When we first added the lye to the tea, the liquid turned a milky green color and then as the liquid cooled, the rosy color came back a bit.
We added the tea/lye mixture to the oils that we had measured out.
You will notice a few specks in the oils above. We strained the infused olive oil through cheesecloth before adding it to the oil mixture, but a few specks of the herbs made it through. We knew that we were going to add some ground herbs to the soap anyway, so we did not worry about the stragglers.
This test soap recipe is very small so we are using a mini crock pot (thanks to Alison's mom who donated hers to the cause). Today's oils include olive (that we had infused), palm, and coconut. If we decide that we like this recipe and if Krupa likes it, we will also use Castor in the final recipe to give the soap some nice bubbles. Ingredients are expensive, and as we are ever on a budget, we try to be as cost effective as possible.
The oils just after adding the lye/Hibiscus tea mixture
A photo for perspective to show the small size of the crock pot and the batch of soap.
We had not yet begun to mix the batter.
We were a bit worried that the stick blender would not work
in such a small batch, but it worked just fine. We brought the
batter to a medium trace. (In the background you can see the
olive oil that we are infusing for a future test soap.)
While Kathy was blending the batter to a medium trace, Alison
took the herbs that we strained out of the olive oil and ground
them finely in the Cuisinart.
We added a little over 2 tsp. of the finely ground herbs to the
batter and then continued to blend until we reached thick trace. The herbs include
rose hips, rose petals, and lavender buds.
Once we reached thick trace, we put the lid on the crock and let it cook.
We set the timer for 30 minutes, as usual, but we checked it after 15 because we
couldn't be sure how the tea/herbs/lye would react together as they began to cook and we'd never used the mini crock before.
The above photo shows the cooking process. The batter had begun to gel around the outside and was working its way in toward the center. We put the lid back on and let it cook for 15 more minutes.
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After 30 minutes we had reached full gel, so we gave the batter a good stir, then put the lid back on and let it continue to cook, stirring in 15 minute increments.
Further into the cooking process we were seeing the gel begin to phase into soap. YAY!
We both really love soaps that have a great smell. Part of the pleasure of using a great soap is luxuriating in the fragrance. We selected a Rosewood and Musk from +Natures Garden. We felt it would work well with the herbs in this soap.
Rosewood & Musk is described as "fresh cut rosewood and musk that comes together making this a clean peppery aroma. Top notes are Bergamot, Tea, Orange and Lemon. Middle notes are Black Pepper and Ginger and Base notes are Guicawood, Vetiver, Rosewood and Cedarwood."
As we develop the final soap, our customer may decide on the unscented version, or she may have an essential oil that she prefers, but for testing purposes, we started with this. We only scented 1/2 of the batch, though. We wanted to see and smell the difference between scented and unscented.
In the upper portion of the photo, you can see the 8 squares that we left unscented. Interestingly, the unscented portion stayed in the gel phase longer. We think that perhaps adding the FO cooled the scented portion of the batter a bit faster.
Here Kathy is placing the scented test squares in the mold.
And here they are in the mold together. Unscented on the left, scented on the right.
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Fast forward to Monday, Oct. 27, 2014
The test batch has cooled and hardened. You can see the specks of the rose hips, rose petals, and lavender buds.
The unscented squares are a smidge bit lighter and have no scent at all. The scented soap does have a nice, warm, earthy smell and is a tad darker in color.
We can't wait to take these to Roots 'N Remedies and see how they like them!
