Making Your Own Soap from Scratch

 

Making pure, healthy soap for your family from scratch is not that difficult. It's no harder than making clothes detergent or a different recipe for dinner. You can do it in your kitchen with utensils you have on hand. It's a simple process and doesn't take that long to make, if you keep it simple.  

Plain, healthy soap with no special scent and colour for family use, is quick and easy to make. You don't need the fancy oils and butters and creams that some soap makers add to soap they plan to sell. Plain tallow or lard makes a good, very hard soap. It's important to use hard fats for at least half the fat in the soap. This keeps the bars hard enough that they don't disappear too quickly. A bar of soap make with all oil will be gone very quickly. I like to use half and half, oil that I have infused with herbs and hard fat, but I have made soap with all hard fat and I like it too. Shortening, like Crisco, makes good soap, as well. The palm oil in it makes good lather. Using a little coconut oil will make good lather, but only use up to 5% of the total fat. Too much coconut oil will make it drying. 

The next thing you need is the lye. No lye, no soap. When you mix the lye with the animal fats or oils, in a specific temperature range, and emulsify it well with a blender, it changes the molecules of both the lye and the fat into one, the soap molecule. There's no more lye in the soap, provided you have used the right amount of fat to "saponify" all the lye. "Saponification" is the act of turning fat and lye into soap.  

While making soap is not difficult, or that time consuming, you do have to follow a specific recipe exactly. You will need a digital scale to make soap. Nothing else it specific enough. You will also need a good thermometer, as the fat and the lye both have to be a specific temperature when mixed together. (I use a temperature gun but you can use a meat thermometer too.) Most of the time spent in making soap is spent in trying to get both parts to the same, exact temperature. If you mix the lye crystals with water (which is part of the process, a specific weight of water) in a plastic container, it's easier to adjust the temperature. You can use the microwave to warm it or set it in icy cold water to cool it off. If you melt the fats in a stainless pot, you can cool it down in a sink of icy cold water or heat it up on the stove top. Glass is not recommended for the lye as it will, over time, scratch and weaken it. DO NOT put lye in an aluminum pot. It will react with it immediately and you will have a problem. You can use most plastic containers or stainless steel for either.

There are a lot of soap recipes on the internet but I find that most of them include some fancy oils and butters and other ingredients that you don't need. All you need to make plain, healthy soap is animal fat and/or vegetable oils, water, lye. You can, of course, add a variety of other things to it, but none of them are necessary. If you want moisturizing soap, add a bit more fat than the recipe calls for. This way not all of the fat will be turned into soap by the lye, so there will be a little left in the soap to moisturize.

I use an online soap calculator to make the recipes that I use. I simply fill in the weight of the various fats I have and it tells me how much lye and water I will need to go with the fats. There are a few online soap calculators. I have used this one for about 20 years and have never had a problem: https://www.the-sage.com/lyecalc/ 

It's important to include all the fats you have and not to change them after you get the recipe. They are NOT interchangeable. Each type of fat will saponify a different amount of lye. If you want to change the fat used, you will need a new recipe. 

Once you have your fats, lye, water and recipe, you are ready to make soap!

I mix the lye and water in a small plastic container first, before doing the fats. Then I sit it in icy cold water in the sink. Make sure it's securely sitting on the bottom and not floating around. 

Then I measure each fat carefully and add them to the large stainless pot on the stove. Turn it to LOW and watch them melt together. Keep stirring it so they don't scorch. There's no way to rescue burned soap.  I cut the hard fat into little pieces and use the hand blender to make it all liquid, so it heats evenly. 

Use the thermometer to measure the temperature of the fats and the temperature of the lye. I like a temperature gun because I don't need to clean it between the lye and the fat. If you use a thermometer that you stick into the fat, you will need to wipe it off clean before you put it into the lye/water mix. Also, the lye will, eventually ruin it. Both the fats and the lye should be 110-112 when mixed together. If the mix is too cool, it won't make into soap. You will check it the next day and it will be solid, but that will be the hard fat solidifying and you will have pockets of liquid lye in it. It won't be soap. If this happens, you can always put it all into the pot again and heat it up to 110, blender it and mold it again. Make sure both reach 110F before using the blender and pouring it into the mold. If its too warm, it will make soap but it might separate. It will come back together as it cools down to about 110. You will have to keep stirring it and watching it to get it into the mold before it gets too hard in the pot. 

All said, it's always better to bring each of the two containers to 110-112F before you mix them together. At that point you will need to blender it for a few minutes. Then pour it into a mold. 

A mold can be any container, even a small cardboard box, if it's lined with parchment or waxed paper. If it's silicone, you won't need to line it. You will, however, need to grease it a little. Use either mineral oil or vaseline to grease a mold. If you use animal or veg fats, the soap will absorb it and be soft on the outside edges. You can wipe off the block of soap before cutting it, if necessary. I also very lightly grease the paper I'm lining the mold with so it doesn't stick to the soap and have to be scraped off. If you don't use a pliable mold and you don't line it with paper, you will never get the hard soap out of it. 

After it's been in the mold for about 24 hours, it should be hard enough to take out and slice into bars. After it's cut, put it out of the way in a place where the bars can get some air circulation. They will need to age and dry for about 3-4 weeks. It's fine to use after about three weeks, but it will be better soap, drier with better lather, if you wait 4 weeks before using it. 

Essential oils and other additives are not necessary to make a healthy soap, however, when you put the lye/water and the fat together and blend them for a minute or so, you can add essential oils that you like, especially ones with healing properties. The scent won't last, unfortunately. It usually fades over time. 

If you want to make soap with milk or goat's milk, use it for half the water you mix with the lye. Mix the lye in only the half amount of water. Put the milk in with the fat. If you put lye in the milk, it will cook it immediately, turning it a bright orange and the soap brown. It will still be good soap to use but the colour will be brown and it may have a bit of an unpleasant smell. 

If you want to add fancy butters, like shea, and other oils and moisturizers, you will need to use those as part of the fats in the recipe. You have to put them into the online soap calculator along with your main fat, to make your recipe. They need to be counted. You can add a little extra of any fat to make your soap more moisturizing. Tallow is very good for your skin. A little more tallow than the recipe calls for will make a healthy, moisturizing soap. 

It sounds complicated, but it's not really. If all goes well and you are careful to follow the guidelines exactly, it only takes a few minutes to put it together. It will be much healthier for your family than using commercial detergent "soap" bars!