Complete Beginners Guide to Soapmaking

Hi, my name is Katie from the Block Arts Content Farmhouse, and today I wanted to do a video explaining how to make whole process soap at home for someone who is an absolute beginner and has no experience with this whatsoever. So we are going to go over safety tips, all the tools and ingredients you will need, and then a little bit about the science of soap making. And once we go through all that, I am going to show you on video, step-by-step, how to make a really basic bar of soap at home. And if you ever want to see the recipe or get links to the ingredients and tools that I use, just look down at the description box and I'll have everything linked for you there and put the recipe there as well. So the first thing you need to know about whole process soap is that soap is the byproduct of a chemical reaction between two things, lye, which is sodium hydroxide, and oil. So any oil, when it combines with lye, will form soap. Anything from butter to the oils on your skin to more refined oils like coconut oil and almond oil that we're going to be using today. A third ingredient that you're going to need for every homemade bar of soap is water. That simply activates the lye in a lye solution and makes it able to combine more easily with the oils. So of course, the actual process of making it is a little bit more complicated than just mixing together lye, water, and oils. There is a process that you need to follow and we will get into that. So I said that technically any oil can be used in soap making and that is true, but there are three that are sort of considered the most popular, most common oils in soap making. They are coconut oil, olive oil, and palm oil. Palm oil is a little bit controversial because there are some environmental concerns. So that is something, if that concerns you, you're going to need to look into that yourself. I got sustainably sourced palm oil. Some people are still not comfortable with that, but that is going to be totally up to you. So coconut oil and palm oil are both solid at room temperature. This is how palm oil comes and I get it in a seven pound bag. I buy coconut oil in bulk, so this is my coconut oil. It's way too heavy for me to pick up. It's a five gallon bucket and it weighed 35 pounds when it was full. When you're looking for coconut oil, make sure you look for one that is not food grade because there's going to be a huge price savings. When you're looking to source these oils, you really want to get them from a soap making supply store. Amazon doesn't have the best prices because most everything they carry is food grade and that raises the prices quite a bit. Now for the olive oil, I do just use Costco cooking olive oil just because I don't want to have two different kinds of olive oil, but it is cheaper, again, to buy that from a soap making supply store and buy a non-food olive oil. So that is the oils that you will need. So I said that the three main oils are coconut, palm, and olive. We're also going to add one more in this recipe, which is, nope, we're going to add one more in this recipe, which is almond oil. It's another inexpensive oil that just helps this bar be a little bit extra moisturizing. The next important ingredient we need is lye and it is going to come in a container similar to this. You'll see that it is marked danger, corrosive, poison, and that is true. Lye is what scares a lot of people about soap making and that's because it is poisonous. So there are a lot of safety concerns when you work with lye. We are going to get into that. You have to know is that it's an absolutely essential ingredient. You cannot make soap without lye. If you don't, you're just going to have a pot of melted oils. Nothing is going to happen. It is 100% essential for soap making. So if you're not comfortable working with lye, soap making is not for you. And then you have optional ingredients. There are colors that you can use, there's fragrances. We are going to do, I'm going to do a fragrance today just so I can show you the process of adding it. We're going to skip colors just because I want this to be a very simple beginner bar and I did not want to introduce any more complications. If it's your first time, you may even want to skip the fragrance. So you have all these ingredients and now what tools do we need to make a bar of soap? The first thing is going to be a mold. There are all different kinds of molds that you can buy. When you mix the lye water and the oils together, it's going to be basically a batter. So you have to pour it into something that's going to hold its shape. That batter is going to firm up and become a hard soap. So there's loaf molds like this, where you pour the whole thing in and then you slice it after it hardens. And then there are individual bar molds. So this is just a plain rectangle bar mold. You can also get bar molds that have designs so that when you pop your soap out, it will have like an imprint on the top and you can get bar molds that have shapes and designs. So there's a lot of different choices. If you're just starting out, obviously the most versatile is going to be one of these. The bar molds are a little bit easier because you don't have to worry about cutting it. It's just one last step. So we will use this one today. You also are going to need a stick blender. So to combine the lye water and the melted oils, you can try to mix it by hand. Sometimes it will work, but a lot of times they won't be adequately blended. So you're going to want a stick blender like this. They are very inexpensive, available on Amazon. I'll link the one that I use. It's not expensive and it works just fine. The next thing you're going to need is a digital scale. This is another essential ingredient. You're going to want one that measures in ounces because most soap recipes that you find are going to be in ounces. Almost any one that you buy, you're going to be able to toggle between grams, ounces, pounds, things like that. And this is, again, totally essential. You can't measure things by volume. They're not going to be exact enough. Soap making is really like science. So everything has to be precise and a scale will help you do that. Okay. So you know that you need oils, you need water, you need lye, you need all these tools. How do we put all of this together in a recipe that makes sense to you? Well, there are a couple of ways to do this. You can just follow a recipe exactly, and that will work fine. Or you can create your own. If you want to create your own soap formula, what you need to know is that every oil that you use brings a different property to the finished bar of soap. So this is something I actually have a free ebook you can download about this, where I go into the different properties of different oils. But just as a basic for right now, coconut oil is very cleansing, but it's also a little bit drying. Palm oil helps create good lather and helps harden the bar. Olive oil is very moisturizing, but it can lead to a softer bar. So all three of these, that's why these are considered the three main oils because they balance each other so well. And then we're going to do just a little bit of this almond oil just for like a little bit of extra moisture. So that is like a very basic way to calculate a soap recipe. You want to think about what property each oil has and how do I balance out its negative aspects with another oil. This is confusing to you. You don't need to worry about it. You just follow the recipe and you don't have to know any of the science behind it. So we have our supplies. We have our oils, we have our recipe, and now we are ready to make it. So before we begin the process, I want to go over some safety considerations. This is something that I am very down on and I get lots of comments about, um, but you have to have, um, so lye is a poison. It's very caustic, which is the opposite of acidic, but it's going to function basically like an acid. If it touches your skin, it will burn through it. Um, it can also damage your countertops. I've seen it change the color, like I have, um, dish towels that touches that it will change the color. So it's going to react with a lot of things, um, in ways that you probably won't be happy with. So if it, the most important thing though, is if it gets in your eyes, it can cause blindness. So at the very, very least you need to wear safety goggles. Um, it's because when you're mixing these things together, there is a high risk of them splashing. And if it gets in your eye, either as lye water, like the lye or as a raw soap batter, it really can blind you. It has happened. So at the minimum safety goggles, another thing you're going to need are gloves. I don't even own suitable gloves for soap making. Um, and to be perfectly honest, I have gotten raw soap batter on my hand and it does sting and it itches for a while and then it dries your skin out, but it didn't kill me or anything. But obviously I would not recommend soaping without gloves. You should still have them. Um, you're also going to want long sleeves and when you mix the lye with the water, it's going to give off fumes. So if you have, so you should technically wear a mask or do this outside, um, or at least by an open window, if you have something like asthma, I would really talk to your doctor and see if it's even something safe for you because the fumes are very, very strong. So enough talking about it. If it seems fuzzy to you now, it will all seem clear. Um, nothing teaches like an example. So let's go ahead and get started and hopefully it will all seem very simple to you once you see this. So we want to start by measuring out our lye and our water. We are going to measure them out separately. So, um, I'm going to need a container to measure the water in. That can just be any old container because you're just measuring in it. We want 5.72 ounces of lye and we want anywhere from 10 to 15 ounces of water. Water is one ingredient in a soap recipe that is flexible, um, if you aren't, so you're going to get a range. Like here I got 10 to 15. I normally just go for the middle, so I'm going to go for around 12 ounces of water. So we're going to use the scale, we're going to go ahead and put this cup on the scale and then you want to turn it on and your scale should say something like tear or zero. You hit that and it will bring it to zero. So it's basically saying it's negating the weight of this cup and then we can measure out the lye. We set that aside. We are then going to put a separate cup on here. You're going to want to use old cups, um, for the one that you're putting the lye in just in case there's a trace of it after you wash it out. You don't want to be drinking that, obviously. So we put the cup on the scale, zero it out by hitting tear, and then we measure the lye. So 5.72 ounces, again, there might be like dust particles and you shake it out. Be really careful not to let those touch you or to breathe on them, but there's no need to freak out. You're going to be okay. Just don't breathe it. So these two are measured. And now in order to combine them, we add the lye to the water, never the other way around. The way that I remember this is the thing, snow floats on the lake. That's just a good little reminder. So you pour the lye into the water, stir it up, it's going to shoot way up in temperature. And now we set this aside to cool. So this has to cool out of the way. If you just leave this as a glass sitting on the counter somewhere and someone comes along and drinks it, it could be fatal. If someone splashes it, it's going to ruin your counters and it will ruin your floors and burn the skin of whoever touches it. And if a child does it, puts it on top of themselves, it could blind them. So that sounds scary. I don't want you to be scared. I just want you to take it seriously, put it up out of the way, like in a windowsill with the window open, outside where you know someone will touch it. Just be aware and respect this stage of the process because it can be dangerous. So while that is cooling, we are now going to measure out our oils. Technically, you should measure these out in separate containers and then combine them. I don't do that. I just pour them right into the pot. And then after each one, I zero out my scale and start over and just go really slowly so that you don't go over. Then we melt the oils. So remember the why. Water is shooting up in temperature all on its own as a result of a chemical reaction. The oils, they have to heat up. So just on the stove, on low, you want them to be about 140 to 160 degrees and fully melted. Just stir them. And then once they're melted and they've heated up, turn off the stove, remove them from the heat, let them cool. The cooling process for this takes about two hours. So once that's done, we will come back and we will combine them into this. Two hours later, you are going to have your can of cooled, of cooled melted oils. You're going to have your cup of cooled lye water. You want, ideally, their temperatures to be very, very close together. The range you're looking for is around 100 to 120 degrees. Anything hotter than that, they're going to react a little bit too much. 110 is ideal. So you pour your cup of lye water into the pot of oils. And like I said, you are going to need a stick blender to blend these two things. Now, what we are looking for when we blend them is something called trace. This is a really important term in soap making. When you first start blending, you'll see that it's just pools of oil. And as you keep blending, those little spots of oil are going to disappear and it's going to turn into more of a batter. That's good. But what we're really looking for, like I said, is called trace. And that is when the batter thickens slightly and it no longer looks like just a pure liquid. And the way to test that is to lift up your stick blender, kind of like drizzle it on top of the batter. And you're looking for trails that rest on top of this soap batter instead of just sinking right down. Once you've reached that, you know that it has been blended enough and you can set your stick blender aside. At that stage, you are going to go ahead and add the fragrance. So each fragrance is going to have a recommendation for how much, how many tablespoons of fragrance you add per pound of oils. But this is really going to be a range and a lot of it is personal preference. So this is a little bit over a three pound recipe. And I'm going to go ahead and add three tablespoons of this fragrance. I'm going to do one tablespoon per pound. And once the trace has been reached and you add the fragrance, you want to just stir that by hand. You don't want to turn the stick blender on, but you can still use it just to mix the fragrance up. So once you start combining these things, it's the reaction is beginning and it's starting to turn into soap. So you have to move fast. You can't like set it aside, go get a snack and then start pouring it into the mold because it will all set up and turn into a giant bar of soap inside the pot. So you have to be ready to go right away. So you just pour everything into the mold, smooth out the top with your spatula. So when it's curing, you want it to be at an even heat. You don't want it to get cold and get hot and get cold again because it's going to affect the finished product. So what I like to do is wrap this up in old blankets. It's going to give off heat as it cures and not just the blankets, just help it keep its own heat so that it all cures at one even temperature. 24 hours after you pour it, it's going to be ready to unmold. At this stage, it can still really dry your skin out. If it's not totally finished curing, it can still have some of that like raw soap burning aspect. You just want to pop it out of the mold really easy and then put it on like an old tea towel and let it dry out. Just in a tucked away place where it's not going to get too hot. I'm going to let it cure for about three weeks just to make sure that the water finishes evaporating from it and that it's totally ready to go. So that's pretty much it. You can get really, really fancy with soap. You can do swirls and fragrance and layers and embed all different kinds of things. I don't do any of that. I keep it really basic, but I hope that this helped you to see that it is not that complicated. Once you see the process, it's not that much different than, you know, baking or something like that. As long as you can respect your ingredients and get the tools that you need, it's something that you can easily do at home as well. So in the description, like I said, I'm going to put the instructions, the recipe and links to all of the supplies that I use. If you have any questions, just let me know. And I hope this is helpful for anyone who is just getting started or curious about making soap at home. So thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a good day.