This is a common FAQ that plagues soap -makers like me. Over the years at farmer’s market and soap-making classes I have been asked to explain myself many times. People wonder why I would bother to make natural organic soap with caustic lye as an ingredient. For example: Customer: “Hello! I just bought your soap and now I see on the label there’s lye in the ingredient list and lye is bad so does that mean I can’t use it now?!” Me: “Uhm…(wondering why we didn’t notice ingredient list on the webpage but also understanding that unless we are a chemistry nerd we probably don’t know about saponification). "Of course you can still use it! I love to make caustic products that will simultaneously burn your skin off and coat you with coconut oil!” (Pounding head on table.) Okay, so I'm being a little dramatic and perhaps a bit crass, but the question does pop up a lot. "Why are you making soap with lye?!" If I was more like my sister who is not afraid to tell people where the bear came through the buckwheat I might spice up the conversation a bit. Sadly, I am not her. I do try to be patient because I love what I do and it would be a bummer to get sued for sarcasm. ( Seriously though, ya never know these days.) Honestly though, since I am deeply concerned about the products I use and their impact on our health and the environment, I get it. Lye sounds scary. And it is…in raw form. But the fact is, there is no such thing as soap made without Lye. I think the best way to answer why I use lye in soapmaking is to go back to the basics, and explain what soap is. Your “soap” is not soap, but my soap is soap.After thousands of years of humankind making soap using lye and oil, the facts are in. Real soap is really good stuff. It’s interesting to note how although this method has been used since the Babylonian ages, the concept and science behind making soap this way barely survived industrialization. Big corporations and their powerful marketing ploys for products that are cheap, easy to mass produce, and not actually soap have been successful. But the truth is, if it isn’t made with lye, it isn’t soap. How do you make soap without lye?But wait, you say, " I am 100% sure I saw soap at Walmart the other day and IT didn’t have lye in it.” There are many types of soap that boast a label free of sodium hydroxide lye, but it is important to understand that these imposters are one of two things: 1. A derivative of the soap making process (i.e. glycerin melt-and-pour) and therefore a byproduct of the saponification of...lye and oil. I distinctly remember a fellow crafter who was 3 times my age at a bazaar one year bragging about how her melt and pour soap was better “cuz mine isn’t made with lye.” Just like that, I could feel the camaraderie for a fellow vendor building between us. Maybe it was the adverse reaction of being chilled to the bone on a rainy Washington November day with 0 sales to show for it, but my head wanted to explode. DUDE. You literally just took a bar of my soap and melted it, mixed in flowers and stuck it in a mold. Tell me how that's better. But me, being me, actually said: “WOOOW THAT IS SO COOL! GOOD FOR YOU HON! 😉 My point is, you won’t see lye on the label of glycerin-based products, because the process of saponification has already been completed for you. Melt-and-pour is a fantastic option if you prefer not to mess with lye or want to make soap with kids! But understand that your finished product is much the same chemically as an old-fashioned cold process bar of soap. 2. A Syndet bar (synthetic detergent) of pressed chemicals. These are produced by combining a variety of surfactants and detergents. Dove, for instance, boasts a super low pH, which might be good in some instances and for some people. It is a good example of why chemicals can be natural and not necessarily toxic or harmful. But truthfully, it is not really soap. So then, what is lye?Now that we have that cleared up, lets talk about lye. Lye was traditionally made by your great great great great grandmother by soaking hardwood ashes in water, and straining to use in tallow soap making. Today, commercially produced lye is safer and purer, and simplifies soaping by producing consistent results. Lye is commonly used in the food industry as well. Commercially produced lye has a pH of 14, whilst homemade concoctions can vary. Unless you have a faulty recipe or scale, your fully saponified soap should have a pH of around 7-10, which is not only safe, but far superior to any skin “surfacant bars” on the market. Lye is also on the USDA’s list of approved organic materials, just FYI. what is saponification?It may surprise you, but making soap is nothing like baking a cake. When lye is mixed with oils, a chemical transformation known as "saponification" is taking place. If your recipe is correct, every last bead or flake of lye will be “eaten up” by the oils, leaving no trace of it's former identity. However, if your recipe is incorrect, there could be a biiiggg problem, I.e. undissolved lye. (Yes, this is totally the reason you regret buying that burning block of lavender hell from the lady who crochets coasters and makes soy candles out of baby food jars at the Santa bazaar.) If you don't want to risk a bad experience, buy soap from people who know what they're doing. Be sure to test the pH of your soap and know the signs of a lye-heavy batch if you are a maker yourself. what is superfat?Most recipes include what is called “superfat”, a buffer of extra oils that will remain as oil in the bar of soap. This makes the bar extra conditioning and also works as a safety buffer. For instance, most recipes have a 5% superfat, which means 5% of the oils in the batch are not converted to soap by the lye. I like to use high superfat for my Shampoo Bar, for a good balance of conditioning and cleansing. I wanted to have at least one Vegan bar soap option for my customers as well, so I make this one with herbal tea instead of sheep milk. Using a high fat liquid like milk or cream will also raise your superfat, since milk has fat in it. I remember how some of my very first soap making recipes were incredibly disappointing, because I was using sheep milk in recipes that called for water or goat milk and that already had a decent superfat percentage. Sheep milk is incredibly high in fat and solids, (more so than goat or cow) so my soap was sticky and never took shape. I probably cried, since I was like 12 and bought all the supplies with my lawnmowing money. Soap can only handle so much superfat before it becomes a block of oily goop. Yum. It can be helpful to lower the superfat if you are in the same boat as 12 year old me, using a recipe was too high as well as a high fat liquid. It's great if you want your soap to harden quickly and to to be a powerful cleanser, like in the case of our coconut oil Laundry Soap Recipe. Take care when tweaking superfat percentages though, this really is an "advanced" course and isn't usually necessary with all the good recipes available out there. It can screw up your entire batch and make soap too soft and slow to harden, or adversely, accelerate and explode into a soap volcano faster than you can say "crud muffins!" Hopefully this answered all of the questions you never knew you had about lye and why I use it, and also gave you a laugh or two. We all need one these days!
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Here on the farm, and in a home with a toddler and a husband who works with greasy things, we know all about stains. Back when I was young and had time to worry about such things, I used a stain stick. Eventually, I got lazy and busy and old and just let stains happen. Nice shirts turned to work shirts really fast. Which was ok, because in 2020, we don't go places where other people are, right? Even before Corona...only the sheep see me most days.
But then...I happened upon a pin (thanks, Pinterest) for a home made stain stick recipe, and decided to give it a go. I wanted to use the materials I already had available for soap making, so decided to create my own recipe using soapcalc.com. LOVE THAT SITE. And they don't pay me to say so. But they should, because you'll hear about it in every soap making class I teach and probably lots of blog posts. Superfat and chemical properties that lay the groundwork for a "cleansing" bar (as opposed to a conditioning one) is a topic for another day, but soap calc explains this nicely for you if you can't wait for me to get my act together and write about it. Plug this recipe into the site, and you'll se what I mean. This bar is beyond cleansing, not something you want to be using on your hands regularly like a bar soap. Anyway... I am going to give you this creation of mine...a magical recipe for economical and eco-friendly stain removal wonderfulness. And if you decide you'd rather just buy it from me, good on you. It'll save you some time. And I have plenty to share ;-) But first, a few tips on usage: Step one: Wet your stain with hot water Step two: scrub stain with bar, let set until next wash cycle. Step three: Wash as usual. Wow. Super complicated. You'll be happy to know, this stain stick is THE BOMB for removing makeup from cloth masks. You can make a pre-soak solution by shaving off a bit of the bar and dissolving in hot water, but I like to use this directly on the makeup smudges and then hand wash. Just so you know, this recipe uses lye. And no, this stain stick does not contain lye per say because of the chemical change it undergoes when combined with coconut oil. Again, topic for another day.) All this to say, this concoction will be very alkaline when first created, and will need to sit and cure for a bit to let the pH come down. So, get going on this sooner than later my friend, and try not to spill anything on yourself for a few weeks. :-) 80 oz coconut oil 27.5 oz water 13.9 oz lye Treat this recipe just as you would a bar soap recipe and prepare yourself with all of the necessary protective gear and proper supplies such as rubber gloves, eye protection, long sleeves, vinegar in a spray bottle (to neutralize any spills) a stainless steel pot for mixing, stick blender, silicone spatula, molds, etc. Very carefully add the lye to your water, stir, and let cool until between 120-130 degrees. Warm up coconut oil to between 120-130 degrees, and combine with lye mixture, Stick blend until soap comes to a trace, pour into molds, and watch carefully for gelling/overheating. It's not bad for this to happen, as long as it doesn't become a soap volcano and overflow your molds. Do not insulate molds for this reason! Once hardened, cut into sticks (use gloves while doing this) and let cure for 3-4 weeks. If you have questions, feel free to contact me! I have been so excited to share this, I can hardly stand it! We've jumped on one of the latest bar-soap fads...yep...DISH SOAP. Bar dish soap. I know it sounds weird, but hear me out. Bar soap is more environmentally friendly than liquid, both for the way it is made, what it is made with, and how it is packaged. Bar soap boasts no harmful preservatives or expensive plastic bottle packaging. Also, you have to figure that much of your bottled dish soap is actually water. That means, you are wasting $$ paying for water to wash your dishes, and you will struggle to use a limited amount because it squeezes quickly and easily from a bottle. Yep, that's clever marketing right there.
Bar dish soap is sounding much better already, isn't it?! But wait, there's more! Ours isn't any 'ol bar dish soap...it's FELTED with naturally antimicrobial wool.. You are now free to toss the yucky bacteria-growing sponge sitting on your sink because THIS soap comes with a built-in washcloth that will never allow bacterial growth and can even continue to be used as a scrubby once the bar soap has been completely used up. This, folks, is FELTED BAR DISH SOAP with Orange Essential Oil and it's da bomb. But wait, there's...just kidding, I'll stop lol Now you have sparkly dishes, softer hands, saved money, promoted a family business, and saved the world all with less than an Andrew Jackson. |
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HELLOI'm Lydia. Mom to one wild barefoot fluffy headed toddler, a herd of cows, flock of sheep, a group of too many chickens and a neglected garden that against all odds, survives. Married to a wonderful husband with an equal number of titles and jobs...Dad, bro, (also as in, "bro, get over here gimme a hug") hydro-electric power plant mechanic, volunteer firefighter, fixer of all things with wheels and engines. (Ya, I'm proud of him.) Farm life, family, coffee, and Jesus make my world go round. Archives
August 2023
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