81 North Blog

After making soap, I thought I would put together a list of supplies I needed to order for next week’s batches. I thought about making something with Babassu oil in it - but couldn’t for the life of me, remember what the main component i this oil was. Was it lauric or oleic? Or Myristic? Darn, who knew?

I ended up searching via Google and came across Anne Watson’s site. I had read through some of her soapmaking journal entries when I purchased her book "Smart Soapmaking." I stopped searching and decided to read through some of the newer stuff and came across a little gem of an idea.

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This week is "soapmaking" week. We were completely out of my soap and had to order 4 bars online last week, to get through. The bars I received were small! Very thin, and they are going to be used up quickly.

My favorite soap, and I share this opinion with my better half, my MIL and assorted relatives, is French Clay with Lavender, Rosemary, Thyme and Clary. So I made a 20 pound batch of that (using 105 temps for fats and lye water) and let it go through gel and cool down. Then I sliced it into manageable pieces then shredded it all. Once shredded, I re-batched it in the oven, adding just a tiny amount of milk to help it melt down more quickly. It stayed in there for about 4 hours, after which I added the essentials oils and globbed it back into a slab mold. Although a bit softer than it will be in a few weeks, it’s ready for us to use right away. Big relief. And by re-batching like this, I don’t loose the low flashpoint EO’s.

Today, I created a new recipe, because I still had 8 ounces of Majestic Mountain Sage’s coffee butter. That’s coffee bean oil blended with soybean oil. Smells delicious so I wanted to use it. I decided to create a recipe using some leftovers, so I weighed everything out, wrote down what I had, then went to the computer and calculated the lye and water. I also calculated the INS value and to my surprise, it was 151.4. I couldn’t have been more pleased.

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I’ve been making homemade soap, shampoo, creams, salves & balms and powder for more than a decade - is it 12 years now? It’s really quite impossible to use anything from a store shelf, once you’ve experienced the real thing. Continue Reading »