Our First Attempt at Making Soap

We've wanted to make soap for the longest time.  One time I actually started making lye from firewood ashes and it was almost done, but the dog knocked over the lye and spilled it.  The soap-making project went on hold for several years.  However, we began accumulating everything you need over the years.  We had soap molds and lye.  We had plenty of tallow that we rendered when we butchered calves.  We had coconut oil and olive oil.  We have two goats in milk, so we have all the milk we need.  A couple of weeks ago, Tricia went to the store and bought measuring cups, spoons, and an immersion blender that will be dedicated to soap-making and we set this weekend to get things started.

First we froze the goat milk in ice cube trays.  For this recipe we'll use 4 ounces.

It is very important when handling lye that you use safety glasses and gloves.  She measured out 1/4 of a cup + 2 Tablespoons of lye.

Tricia poured the lye into 4 ounces of distilled water.

She stirred it up real good so that the lye crystals dissolve.  On the far left of this photograph, you'll see a quart-sized mason jar that contains the fat we're using to make the soap.  It is being warmed, so it is in a liquid state.  It is a total of 3 cups of fat (oil), which was 1 1/2 cups beef tallow (11 ounces), 3/4 cup coconut oil (5 1/2 ounces), and 3/4 cups olive oil (5 1/2 ounces). 

A chemical reaction occurs that is pretty intense.  The lye heats up the water.  It got above 200 degrees Fahrenheit for a bit.

When the temperature cooled to 90 degrees, we poured 4 ounces of the frozen goat milk into the lye/distilled water solution, bringing the total liquid to 8 ounces.  If you don't wait for it to cool, it will burn the milk and turn it brown.

Then, putting the immersion blender into the cooled lye solution jar, you slowly pour the warmed fat (oil) in while blending.

The consistency of the soap will be like that of pudding, where it holds its shape a bit.  We used a spatula to spoon it out into a soap mold that we coated with Vaseline petroleum jelly.

If we learned anything that we could do differently, next time we'll try adding a little bit more liquid as the soap was a little too thick (1/4 to 1/2 cups more liquid).

Using the spatula, we smoothed out the soap in the mold.  We'll show you in a minute why we want to add a little more liquid.

We covered with plastic wrap and you could feel the soap heat back up.  We let it sit for 48 hours.

After 48 hours, we removed from the mold.  You can see that the soap block has imperfections.  It is not pretty, but it will have to do for our first attempt.  We're thinking that if the soap used more liquid, it would flow better and fill in the voids.  Tricia marked off 1 inch increments in the 10 inch block of soap.

I first tried to cut it with dental floss, but quickly realized that it was easier and more precise to just use a knife.

At last we have 10 bars of homemade goat milk soap. 

We'll put these away for 4 to 6 weeks, turning them from time to time and allow them to cure.  Then we'll use our homemade bars of soap!  Now that we've proven to ourselves that we can do this, we're going to try to make a soap recipe using goat milk, oatmeal, honey and aloe.

Making Lye (Part 2)

Here we are four days later since our first post here in: Making Lye (Part 1) and it is time to check on our lye water that has been soaking (leaching) in our fireplace ashes. The rainwater we poured on top of the ashes has been soaking for about four days and it is time to drain it out and test it to determine if it is strong enough for soap making.  I cut the bottom out of a gallon sized vinegar jug in order to make a funnel. Then I cut an old T-shirt up and placed it inside the homemade funnel to use as a filter. Then I pulled the plug.

Pullin' the plug

I prepared myself for a rush of water mixed with ashes, but I was wrong.  Only a drip, drip, drip of tea-colored lye water emerged and I realized that this was going to be a multi-day affair. The lye water was filtering through the ashes making the progress slow, but in the process making the liquid almost clear.

Drip, drip, drip...

Since I couldn't hold the funnel for days, I did the next best thing.  I put the T-shirt filter over the clean bucket, tilted the top molasses bucket full of ashes and rainwater at an angle to speed up the dripping and just left it there for a few days to completely drip out.  The T-shirt filter caught the minimal amount of ashes that drained through the plug.

Lye dripping out slowly (Patience is a virtue!)

Since we have friends and neighbors coming to get milk and eggs, we wanted to be sure that no one touched the liquid since it is caustic and will burn you.  Tricia made a warning sign to let them know to be careful around it.  I need to correct the sign to read that it is caustic.  Lye is alkaline, the opposite of acidic, and is caustic, meaning it will cause chemical burns.

I ain't gonna lye - this liquid will burn you!

Finally the bucket stopped dripping.  The result was a somewhat clear liquid, about the color of iced tea, and you could see the bottom of the bucket.  I didn't measure it, but I assume that we yielded a little more than a couple gallons of lye water.

Lye water

I learned by checking several places on the Internet that for regular soap making (which is our goal), the way you test the strength of the lye is by putting a potato or an egg in the lye.  If either one has a quarter-sized area to float above the liquid level, the strength is perfect for soap making.  Lye gets stronger each time you leach it.  As you can see the potato floated, but NOT above the level of the liquid.  That tells us that it is not quite ready yet.  It needs to get stronger so we'll soak it again.  We want to be sure and throw this potato away!!

Potato floating in the lye - Not quite strong enough yet.

So I put the rubber plug back into the big bucket of ashes and poured the lye water back into it.  We'll let it leach for another 3 or 4 days, drain it again and then check the strength again with another potato or egg.

Same song, second verse

The clear lye water quickly became "muddy" again when mixed with the ashes.  One side note:  I wore gloves handling the lye water, but when the test showed it wasn't strong enough, I took them off and picked up the T-shirt wet with lye with my bare hands.  I could instantly feel the burn on my fingers!  I will be more careful next time.  I'm okay, but it taught me to not let my guard down.  It is not called CAUSTIC by mistake.

Check back with us next week where we'll post Part 3 in our Lye Making Experiment where we'll test the strength of the lye again.

Making Lye (Step 1)

We wanted to try and make some lye soap.  We've never done it before and we wanted to endeavor to start from scratch.  I did a lot of research and studied how to make lye, so we're going to give it a try.  In order to make lye soap, you need lye.  Lye (Caustic Potash) is known as KOH or Potassium Hydroxide.  I didn't do very well in Chemistry in high school, but fortunately you don't have to be a chemist to make it. Actually, you can make lye from the ashes of hardwood like oak.  We burn oak logs in our fireplace and this past winter when I cleaned out the fireplace, I saved all of the ashes and put them into one of the 30 gallon mineral buckets that I normally use to collect rain water.

Normally, I sprinkle this all throughout the garden.  Wood ash contains about 25% of calcium carbonate and that is a prime component in agricultural lime.  Adding wood ash to a garden will increase the soil pH and is good for your garden if your soil is acidic.  The ashes almost filled the bucket and I had set the bucket of ashes aside since February of this year until I had some time between the Spring and Fall gardens.

Ashes from the fireplace

The ashes burned clean.  There aren't many lumps of unburned wood or other debris in there.

The first thing I did was I went and retrieved another black 30 gallon bucket that our bull was in the process of pushing around the pasture.  Before he destroyed it, I got it and turned it upside down to use as a base on which to set the other bucket full of ashes.  Then I went to the local hardware store and purchased a rubber 3/4 inch plug. I put a grinding attachment on my drill and approximately 3 inches from the bottom, I drilled a hole and then inserted the rubber plug to seal it.

Plugging the hole

Along the back of the house I use molasses/mineral buckets for capturing rain water that cascades off the roof.   In order to make lye, you need soft water.  Rain water is soft and perfect for this application.  The more pure your water is, the more potassium that you'll be able to leach out of your ashes.

One of our rain collection buckets after a 1 inch rain

I poured the rain water into the large bucket of ashes and it bubbled.  The 'smoke' coming off of it makes it appear that the ashes were hot, but they've been cooled off now for 6 months or so.  The garage smelled like a fireplace.

A bubbling cauldron

Finally the bubbling stopped and that let me know that the rainwater had completely saturated the ashes.

The waiting begins

We'll just have to be patient now and wait.  We're going to let the rain water soak in the ashes for three days and then we'll check on it.  There is a way to test the strength of your lye and I'll show you that in Step 2. Once our lye is concentrated enough, we'll use it to make soap.  I'll post the Making Lye (Step 2) next week to keep you posted.  

The Next Project Waiting in the Wings

After a colder than normal winter in which we burned a whole lot of firewood, I cleaned out the fireplace. This is a job that I put off because it takes a while to do. First you scoop the ashes out and put them in a bucket, then you remove the andirons and sweep the remaining ashes in a pile and scoop them out.  Ashes fly all over the place no matter how careful you are and a fine layer of ashes coats everything in the den.

Our fireplace was full and when I finished with the task, I had almost filled up the 30 gallon container shown below.  This container is one that was originally filled with molasses and minerals for the cows, but I now use it to catch rainwater from the drip line along the roof in the back, for putting hay in to carry to the hens' nesting boxes, for putting pecans in, and also for tasks like this.

A whole lot of ashes

These are all hardwood ashes, mostly water oak and pecan and that is a good thing because my project requires hardwood ashes.  The project I'm speaking of is making lye.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust...

I ain't gonna lye (pardon the play on words), we've never done this before, but there's a first time for everything.  Our goal is to make lye from our fireplace ashes and then make our own lye soap.  Now that I've gotten the raw ingredient for making lye, the work is mostly done.

Who knew that soap started from ashes?

All I need to do now is transfer this into a different container, run rainwater over the ashes, let it sit for a few days, and drain the water out and run it through again.  The result will be a liquid called caustic potash or potassium hydroxide, also known as lye and it will be the base for making lye soap.  We'll show you step by step how we do it as we have time to get this project going.