Basic Cold Process Soap Making

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Amber from Am Happy soap. And I am going to teach you how to make cold process as opposed to melt and pour. With cold process We are starting at the very beginning. It's kinda like making soap from scratch. You're going to make a lye and water solution and mix it with oil. If you were doing melted pour, all of that has all been done for you and you would just melt it and pour it in a mold. WIth this we are going to start way at the beginning and you'll be able to get much different texture and feel to your soap and also be able to control your ingredients. 2. Supplies: So safety gear, gloves, and goggles. You'll need to wear long sleeves. You'll need, a digital scale. You will need a stick blender or an immersion blender. You will need a digital thermometer. You can use something like a candy thermometer, but this is much easier and you don't need to clean a chemical off of your thermometer. You will also need a plastic picture to measure your lye. You will also need an assortment of bowls and spoons and a mold. This is the mold that I'm going to use today for a two pound batch. You can use anything. You could use a box or a tupperware. But this is what I'm getting to use today. 3. Ingredients: Ingredients are distilled water. Lye. This is palm oil, coconut oil, or olive oil. This is sweet almond oil, castor oil, rose clay, kaolin clay. And this is the fragrance we're going to use. 4. Lye Solution: So disposable gloves. And goggles. Ok, we are making a 2 pound batch of soap. That means two pounds of oils, which will mean your actual poundage of what we're making stay is a little bit more. But if you see a recipe that says two pounds or four pounds, that means the oil mixture. So we're going to start by measuring our distilled water. So place a plastic picture on your scale. And zero it. And we're going to use nine ounces we are going to use 4.56 ounces of lye. We're going to very carefully mix our lye into our water. You're going to stir it until it is mostly dissolved. And then I set it aside in an ice water bath. This part makes fumes, so don't breathe it in. This is just ice water. I place the whole thing here. This is going to get really hot. 5. Melting Hard Oils: Okay, now we're going to melt our hard oils. Going to melt our coconut oil and palm oil, we need 9.6 ounces of coconut oil. And now we're going to do 6.4 ounces of palm oil. Then I just melt in my microwave in 30 second increments until it is all melted. Next we are going to measure our liquid oils. 6. Measuring Liquid Oils: 1.6 ounces of castor oil, and then 1.6 ounces of sweet almond oil. 7. Temperatures and Mixing Oils: So and you can mix your liquid oils and your melted hard oils together. at this point going to want to take your temperature, your oil mixture, and your lye solution. You want them both to be 80 to 90 degrees. They can be 80 to 90 degrees up to about 120, but they need to be within ten degrees of each other. So you're alive and you're oils need to be pretty close and temperature, but they can range from 80 degrees to 120 degrees. My favorite is 80 to 90. 8. Blending Lye Solution + Oils: I'm going to measure fragrance oil, I'm going to use two ounces. Next, we're going to stir our clays into our oils with the stick blender to get all of the lumps out. Do about two tablespoons of kaolin clay. And then this is not necessary but one teaspoon of rose clay. Mix it with the stick blender, Stick blender in on an angle. and burp it, you won't get as many air bubbles in your batter. Make sure you have your goggles on. We are going to mix our lye into our oil You're going to stick blend this until it reaches trace, which is when you lift up your blender you can see a little bit of batter sitting right on top of the other batter. It can take five minutes, or it can take 30 seconds. This is very close. This is when I like to add, my fragrance oil or essential oil if you're using them. 9. Pour + Cut + Cure: We're gonna pour it into the mold. And now if you'd like, you can texture the top. Place it under a box for 24 hours. 24 hours later, you can Take off the box. You don't need gloves anymore. It's totally safe to touch. It's kind You can cut with a soap cutter like this that has measurements or you can just use case kitchen knife and a cutting board. After you have cut your soap, you're going to want to set it somewhere to cure for four to six weeks. It will get a lot harder and all the rest of the water will evaporate out. So you'll have a nice long lasting bar of soap. Thank you for joining me! I hope that you learned how to make this basic bar of soap.