Friday, October 10, 2014
After yesterday's activity overload, today was a great day for some wine. Unfortunately, we were not sitting on the porch slowly sipping a nice glass, but we were enjoying it nonetheless.
On November 1, Soap Lily will be at the Unicoi Wine Festival in Sautee Nacoochee. We think that having soap made with wine is just the thing for a wine festival. The last time we made wine soap, the Blackberry Sage was such a hit that it completely sold out. We decided to make another batch of it for the upcoming festival.
We don't have six weeks to wait for a CP soap to cure, so this batch will be HP. We have almost decided that we have become the HP Queens. Wait, that title - Queen - has already been taken. The HP Soaperistas - no that sounds a little bit stupidista. The HP Babes - um, no. Yuck! The HP Masters - nah. Won't claim that yet. Okay, so we don't really have a title, but we are getting pretty darn good at HP soap making (in our humble opinion).
The soap we made today not only has wine, but it also has added silk. The silk seems to give soap a shinier look and a, well, silkier feel. Pictured below you can see the pile of silk after we cut the fibers into tiny pieces.
We really loved making soap with wine that was made personally by one of Alison's friends,
but we were out of it today and decided to go ahead and use something we had on hand. Using wine gives the soap a naturally deep, rich color, plus, the sugars in the wine help create a creamier, bubblier lather.
Oh how we wish the wine itself could fragrance the soap, but so far after about 7 batches of wine soap, we have not experienced a time when the fragrance survived. So, we add fragrance oil to make the soap as pleasing to the nose as it is to the skin. We do try to keep the FOs in the "wine family." Today we used Blackberry Sage from Rustic Escentuals.
Because the first batch was such a hit, we copied the coloring as well as the scent on the second batch. We did another "in the pot swirl" because it is a technique that works very well with HP soap, and it always ends with an interesting blend of colors.
The picture above shows the Desert Sunbeam mica from Rustic Escentuals after we mixed it with safflower oil.
Ever safety conscious, especially after the goggle splatter with lye this week, we have taken an idea that Kathy saw another soaper use. When we are wearing short sleeves, we cover our arms with socks. Of course we did have to cut the toes out, but they make handy dandy arm protectors.
We froze the wine the night before. Wines, like milks, need to be frozen or at the very least slushy before adding lye. The sugars in the liquid can really over react to the lye if the liquid is too warm. We added the silk to the wine slushy then slowly added the lye, a bit at a time, stirring in between additions. Before long, all of the silk and the lye were dissolved. We won't "lie" and tell you that it was a pleasant smell. The chemical reaction did not create a lovely perfume, but we knew the final outcome would be exactly what we want.
Once the lye and silk dissolved, we added the mixture to the oils in the crock pot, then blended with the stick blender.
It took a few minutes, but when the mixture reached trace it got very thick. We put the lid on the crock pot and set the timer for 30 minutes.
When 30 minutes had passed, the batter had begun to gel. We stirred it, replaced the lid and set the timer for 15 minutes. From this point on, we stirred the batter every 15 minutes until the mixture had cooked for 1 1/2 hours. Again, for us this seems to be the magic number. After 1 1/2 hours we did the Ph strip test, then the zap test, and the soap was done.
The FO we used today has a relatively low flash point, we had to let the soap cool for quite a while before we could add the fragrance. With HP soap, letting it cool can be a very fine balancing act. The cooler the soap gets, the harder it gets thus making it more difficult to get it into the mold.
As it began to cool, we added the couple of ounces of water that we had reserved, and slowly stirred it into the soap.
We are just not very patient women. It is sooooo hard to wait for the soap to cool down!
We decided to go ahead and take out the portion of the soap that we would color with the mica. Taking out part of the soap did help it to cool down faster.
Above you can see the mica colored portion. It adds a layer of luster to the soap that we really like.
Finally, the soap was cool enough for the fragrance oil, so we divided it into two parts, some for the portion still in the crock pot and some for the portion that we had colored with mica. We took the time to stir carefully and completely to ensure that the fragrance oil was mixed evenly throughout the soap.
We then added the mica colored portion back into the crock pot.
We carefully swirled the two portions together.
Then we plopped the soap into the mold a spoonful at a time. We stopped several times to slam the mold onto the counter the pack the soap into the mold and get rid of air bubbles.
We really packed the soap into the mold.
This is what it looked like when we had it ready to put in the curing room to harden as it finished cooling. It may not look as pretty here as some other soaps, but oh the aroma! Just wait until you see the "after" pictures.
After 24 hours we were ready to take the soap out of the mold and cut it into slices. Granted, the above photo still doesn't look gorgeous, but don't judge the soap by its cover.
Ta Da!
Doesn't the swirl of wine colors look marvelous?
It smells just as wonderful.
Blackberry Sage HP soap made with Cabernet Sauvingon and silk.
It will be ready to use by Oct. 18.
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