Exciting Experiments Continue

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Today we made another test batch of soap for Krupa, owner of Roots 'N Remedies in Clarkesville.   We used natural and organic ingredients from her store.  It is so much fun trying new things, and it is interesting to see how different elements combine to create a soothing and skin-healthy soap.

The soap that we made today was a Chamomile/Rose Petal/Vanilla Bean soap.  Let's all say it together, "OOOOOOOH!!  AHHHHHHH!"

For the past week we have been infusing olive oil

with Krupa's rose petals.  We should have a really

nice infusion after a week in the sunshine.

        

Roots 'N Remedies Chamomile Loose Leaf Tea brewed in distilled water.

We made a small test batch of tea, so it only

required a small amount of distilled water.

The loose Chamomile smells so good!

We strained the tea leaves out using cheese cloth.

Here is something really cool!  

The liquid in the bowl is the chamomile tea.  

But see what happens when we added the lye?

The tea turned bright yellow.

It darkened a little bit as we completely

mixed in the lye, but it kept the interesting color.

While the tea/lye mixture was cooling a bit, we got the vanilla bean ready.

 We sliced the pod open lengthwise.

Then using the edge of the knife blade,

 we scraped the vanilla beans out of the pod.

We decided that we would use the spatula to stir in the beans,

so it would be a good place to put them until we were ready to use them.

We got a lot of beans out of this pod.

Here is a closeup shot.  Looks a bit like caviar, doesn't it?

This is what gives vanilla bean ice cream that wonderful

speckled appearance and vanilla flavor.

When the palm and coconut oils had melted in the crock pot, we added the rose petal infused olive oil. Then we were ready to add the lye/chamomile tea mixture.

The above photo shows us adding the last of the lye/chamomile tea mixture to our 

tiny tester crock pot.

We stick blended until the liquids were evenly combined.

Then we were ready to add our vanilla beans.

We scraped all of the vanilla off the spatula

and continued to blend until the beans were evenly mixed.

We mixed until we were at a thick trace, then put the lid on the crock pot and set the timer for 30 minutes.

While it was cooking, we got the fragrance oil ready.  Again, because this is a test batch, we selected a fragrance that we felt would go with the blend of elements in the soap.  We used scent in only half of the test batch, so we only needed about 1 1/2 tsp of the fragrance oil.  

This Chamomile fragrance oil is from +Natures Garden who describes it as a "wonderful aroma of freshly picked chamomile flowers with hints of fresh green herbs."  We must say that we agree with their description.

After 30 minutes, the mixture had reached full gel.

After 1 1/2 hours, we tested the soap with Ph strips and conducted the zap test.  The Ph strip was really close, almost too close to call.  When we zap tested, at first we thought, "Hey!  It's done!"  But after we spit out the tiny bit that had stuck to our tongues, we noticed a bit of a tingle.  It wasn't a zap or a shock, but it was a tingly feeling.  We decided it would be best to let it cook a bit longer.

After another 15 minutes, we were satisfied with both the Ph strip result and the zap test.  The soap was done.  We scooped all of it into a small measuring cup to see exactly how much we had.  Then we put half of it back into the crock pot to stay warm while we put the other half into the mold.

The first half to go into the mold was the part that we left unscented.  

We then turned back to the crock pot and stirred the FO into the remaining soap.  When we had it mixed evenly, we were ready to put the scented soap into the mold.

Just like the first test batch, the unscented soap (on the left) stayed in the gel phase a bit longer than the soap to which we added FO.

We moved the mold to the curing room to cool and harden for 24 hours.

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Friday, Oct. 31, 2014 - Happy Halloween!

The soap was ready to remove from the mold.  It really looks quite pretty with the specks of vanilla bean mixed evenly throughout.  Visually, the two are very hard to tell apart.