A few months back I turned over a bottle of shampoo to read the ingredients. It was a shock to see all the chemicals in the soap! I started researching them to find out most serve an industrial purpose contrary to what is good for our health. If you too are skeptical about commercial soaps then this is the place for you. Read on and create your first batch of soap with me.

Researching soap

I called some friends. One had been making lye soap as well as shampoo for a while. He spoke of it like a life changing experience. However, didn’t know the precise science behind it. I called another friend of mine who has a degree in chemical engineering and worked on food as well as hygiene products. This friend explained to me there’s numerous ingredients in soap that make it more appealing to the consumer as well as easier to produce and extend shelf life. Many of these “industrial” ingredients as I call them may make the soap easier to use but mostly there to improve profit at the expense of our health. I set out on a mission to create my own shampoo, lotion, and bar soap.

Lotion: The lotion was simple so far, I just use Lanolin oil. Some people laughed at me and said, “Nipple cream?”. Yes it’s marketed as nipple cream to nursing women but it’s an amazing lotion! Lanolin is from sheep wool, aka wool wax. Unlike petroleum jelly or other commercial lotions it’s full of healthy substances. I’ve been using it for some time and will report back but so far I love my lanolin oil. Making soap I found tallow is also a great lotion base, as well as coconut oil but I’ve not the chance to experiment much with them yet as I love lanolin oil so much.

Shampoo: Then there’s the shampoo which is a complex topic. I’ve been researching it for about 6 months. All I can report is about nearly all commercial soaps, lotions, and especially shampoos are detrimental to your health. I fear that hair loss as well as greying maybe provoked or exacerbated by commercial shampoos.

I started out massaging an egg into my scalp and rinsing it out with no shampoo. I’ve since moved onto baking soda w/ vitamin cocktail in a water solution. It’s a little easier to work with and less expensive than eggs. Both however, have worked unexpectedly well comparted to commercial shampoo! I’m still experimenting though and will have to write my thoughts on shampoo in a separate article.

Bar Soap: Lastly, the bar soap we came here to talk about. This was so easy to formulate and light years better than anything commercially available. My mother had a skin issue a year back and dermatologist recommended pharmaceuticals to help. We suspect was a reaction to “commercial” soaps as my aunt gifted her some homemade soap and it went away! Enough of my rambling let’s move onto lye soap!

What is Lye soap?

Lye soap has been around for generations. It’s been replaced by what I call commercial soap, in the mid 1900’s? Given I’m not much of a chemist, lye soap is made from lye, which you’ll have to delve into deeper. Lye is a somewhat unforgiving substance that if not handled carefully can burn you when working with it so reader beware. It’s getting harder to find lye due to our modern “safety culture”. However, you can still purchase it marketed as “drain cleaner” at your local hardware store. Make sure it says “100% lye” on the bottle. Next you’ll need an oil which will be dissolved in the lye water solution and you’re off to the races making lye soap!

What do you need to make lye soap?

Well as we said above you need lye, fat / oil, and water. Some people add fragrances and exfoliants. I personally wanted to avoid the fragrances as many of them stimulate estrogen production among other controversial side effects. For my first recipe I used the following ingredients:

Ingredients:

• 20 oz beef tallow (don’t use lard)
• 10 oz coconut oil
• 4.37 oz 100% pure lye
• 9 oz water

Supplies

You’ll need a few things to make up your soap. I purchased an immersion blender. It’s nice to have one with two speeds and definitely want a removable mixer head so you can wash it afterwards. Next you’ll need a good food scale as ingredients are measured by weight and not volume. A couple large pots (one to mix lye solution and second to melt oils). A food thermometer (or temperature gun) can be helpful as well. Safety gear is a must have as well. Below is a compete list of what I used:

Tools

• Immersion blender with two speeds and removable head
• Silicon soap molds
• Digital food scale
• Slow cooker (used to melt oils) could use pot on stove
• Pot to mix lye solution
• Miscellaneous kitchen supplies

Safety

Lye can be dangerous. During this process you carefully add the lye to the water (not the water to the lye!). This will create a strong chemical reaction and the pot will get HOT! You want to avoid any of this getting on your skin. It will also put an odor into the air. Somewhat like a cleaning solution has. You’ll need to do this in a well ventilated area. I did it on my stove with the vent fan on. Here’s some additional safety items:

• Chemistry safety glasses (to completely shield eyes if not entire face)
• Rubber gloves
• Wear long sleeve shirt and pants

Making your soap

STEP 1 MELT OILS: Measure out all the ingredients per above by weight. Place the oils into the slow cooker and put on high until it melts. Then you can put on low or turn off (more in zap test section).

STEP 2 LYE SOLUTION: Put on your safety gear and cover up any exposed skin. Make sure you’re in a well ventilated area. Place your water into a pot. ***Slowly add the LYE TO THE WATER let me tell you again NOT THE WATER TO THE LYE. Read that again to make sure you do it right!*** You’ll use a whisk to carefully mix the lye into the water until it completely dissolved.

STEP 3 MIX LYE SOLUTION INTO OIL: This is where things start getting technical. I noticed some people only add the lye to the oil once the lye solution has cooled down a bit. I believe I waited for mine to get to 120F; by immersing bottom of pot in ice water and using a temperature gun to monitor. I didn’t get too precise but seemed like a good idea to avoid an aggressive chemical reaction.

Then I slowly added the lye solution to the oil in the slow cooker. I also added my chosen exfoliant coffee grounds. Once it was in I took my immersion blender and mixed the two together on slow then high speed making sure not to splash the mixture. It can still give you a chemical burn at this point!

You mix to a point where the solution has reached what soap people call “trace”. It’s quite obvious once you’ve reached “trace” as the soap starts to behave less like a water solution and more like a gelatinous goop. You’ll raise the mixer up and the surface of the mixture will leave impressions (not flowing out like water would). This takes only about a minute of mixing. Mixing too much won’t hurt anything either but you’ll want to move onto next step.

You have soap! Well not quite yet, the lye hasn’t completed it’s reaction even though you’ve got the right consistency to add to your soap molds. You can do something I’ll discuss later on, or you can simply add this solution straight to your molds.

STEP 4 PLACE SOAP SOLUION IN MOLDS: pour your solution into soap molds. Let set overnight. Some people get very concerned with temperature control at this point. They go so far as to place in a insulated drink cooler (so won’t cool to fast). I just let mine setup in the molds for a couple days and took it out.

If you followed my steps above, then you’ll want to put your soap in a cardboard box, separated by parchment paper and leave on the shelf for a month. This ensures the lye / chemical reaction has fully exhausted itself before you use the soap.

I was impatient so I did the “Zap” test. This worked, however, my soap nearly setup in the slow cooker so be warned about getting the zap test right! Timing is crucial if you do this…

Use the zap test if you want to use your soap sooner

The recipe I followed said you could use the soap in less than two weeks if you use the zap test. I am a rebel, I used mine two days later! The Zap test accelerates the lye / chemical reaction to exhaust it in the slow cooker instead of on the shelf in the aging process.

When mixing your soap in STEP 3 turn the slow cooker onto low. You can sit and wait for 15 to 30 minutes but this is where I got into trouble. You don’t know exactly when that reaction will be exhausting itself and when it does, you have hard soap with in a few minutes. Timing the reaction precisely is critical!

ZAP STEP 1 cook soap solution: Mix your soap solution per STEP 3 above. Keep slow cooker on low for say 15 minutes after trace then…

ZAP STEP 2 test soap solution: take a spoon and just touch the soap solution so you get a minuscule amount of it on the back of the spoon. Touch the spoon with soap solution to the tip of your tongue. Don’t worry you’ll be fine but you’ll feel a distinct zap. Almost like the tongue test for a 9v battery.

ZAP STEP 3 chemical reaction complete: Continue testing the solution with your tongue. I’d do it in 5 min increments, keeping in mind if you go too long you’ll be carving your soap out of the slow cooker. You will be able to feel on your tongue when the zap becomes less pronounced, indicating the chemical reaction is exhausting itself. At this point you want to get that soap into the molds before it sets up.

I waited too long and my soap actually started to setup in the slow cooker! I had to mix it again with the immersion blender and it barely came out into the molds. The bars looked really bad but the soap was AWESOME. Honestly, it wasn’t a big deal as the slow cooker just had some awesome soap on it already and was really easy to clean.

Making your first batch

This likely seems overwhelming. I spent a few weeks thinking about it. Called my 96 year old grandma who told me it’s the best soap ever. Apparently my great grandma made it all the time but grandma’s advice was, “Don’t do it, it’s dangerous!”. Unfortunately, we’ve lost the culture of doing such things. People are “hopeless” and need to buy everything off the shelf even if they risk their health, wealth, & traditions in doing so.

I recommend you watch a handful of YouTube videos on making lye soap. There’s literally thousands of them. Get to understand the overlying process; (1) lye solution, (2) oils, (3) combination, and (4) aging soap. Don’t get caught up in what they add to their recipes. Honestly, much of the fragrances they like and other ingredients may actually be detrimental to your health. I follow the KISS method, “Keep it simple stupid!”

I’d love to see us rekindle that culture of hearty, healthy, and wise communities like the one our ancestors came from. Soap seemed like a silly thing only girls make but has felt like a flashback to the past! Once you make your first batch you’ll realize how easy to make and incredibly rewarding homemade soap is. The soap feels and works so much better than commercial soaps

My notes after making first batch of soap

Lanolin oil: For my next batch I want to incorporate lanolin oil. Lanolin oil has lots of healthy cholesterol in it. There’s currently a war against cholesterol despite it’s a vital building block for hormones in our body. Lanolin also feels great but is a bit hard to apply by itself. I think it may go well in the soap and perhaps some of that healthy oil could be absorbed yet?

Coffee Grounds: the coffee grounds worked awesome. They did add a very subtle fragrance but were fantastic for exfoliating. They served a 3rd purpose though, caffeine. Caffeine I read is good for simulating the thyroid hormone and I’ve seen a couple studies on where it helps promote healthy skin and hair growth.

Tallow: the hardest part of this project was finding Tallow. I had to render my own which was a somewhat time consuming process (I went through several renders to filter it down). You can buy it but not anywhere locally. It’s specifically oil from beef fat. I chose beef fat for a reason DO NOT USE LARD. Livestock feed is pumped full of industrial junk I complain about. These industrial toxins, poisons, chemicals; without getting to specific, are stored in the fat we need to make soap. However, cows have four stomachs and tend to break more of them down / store less “industrial toxins” in their fat. Pigs on the other hand do not. If you use lard you have make sure it comes from pasture raised pigs with natural feed (not industrial). That’s a mission a bit hard for me to tackle so I simply chose tallow.

Lye: I’d love to make my own lye. My friend who runs the hardware store I shop at sold me the lye. He told me a story about his mother and father in law. The lived in Italy during WWII and had no soap. They had to use the ashes from their oven to wash the cloths. They always raved how that was the best soap they ever had. I looked further into that. You can make your own lye from ashes! I’d love to try that someday.

Sugar: aka carbohydrate is an essential part of our diet despite it’s commonly demonized . I’ve been experimenting with it in shampoo a bit; specifically I used apple juice for a while (also high in vitamin B). Carbohydrates are not only anti inflammatory but also aid in absorption of water. Long story short maybe fun to make a sugar soap of some kind to see if improves skin health.