Flash back to 1997. Tony Blairs storms into government and ‘Cool Britannia’ is at its height. It’s alcopops, wall to wall indie bands, Spice Girls, Playstations, pickled sharks. Yet, nobody is buying soap. It has become uncool and something that square parents use while the new generation are all over ‘widdit’ and ‘appenin’ shower gels.
Brian Molko from Placebo doesn’t use soap, he uses Radox shower gel to freshen up before a Top of The Pops appearance. Does Carol Smillie use coal-tar soap to clean her Scottish body before an episode of Changing Rooms? No, she’s a famous user of Dove shower cream.
And then there were the infamous adverts for Original Source shower gels with Gary from Reef lathering himself up singing about ‘putting your hands on’ while that guitarist from Ocean Colour Scene stood in the corner of the cubicle knocking out some killer riffs on a union-flag branded guitar. Sadly, these adverts were banned after two teenagers were electrocuted in copycat incidents.
Soap was something used by loser politicians like John Major (Pear’s soap), or uncool rockstars like Jon Bon-Jovi (Palmolive).
But then Lush happened. Lush made soap cool again. No, not the band, the olfactory high-street assault weapon.
And Fight Club happened, showing how you could make soap out of human fat.
Millennials flocked back to soap and shower gels became a thing of history, sitting on the dusty shelf of obscurity alongside the Amstrad emailer, Netscape and Stoppit & Tidyup.
And now you can make your own soap at home!
I’ve been making soap for the last 5-6 years, at first out of curiosity at what it’d turn out like, but after discovering that properly made soap at home is far nicer and luxurious than shop-bought brands, I’ve made 3-4 batches every October to ensure it’s ready to give it out as Christmas presents, and keep us in soap for a whole year.
I can't overstate how much better homemade soap is. If you make it correctly then it won't leave your hands feeling dry like the shop-bought equivalent. It admittedly isn't as cheap as what you can buy from the shops, but it feels like a luxury. If you've ever bought an expensive slab of soap from Lush and thought how good it was, then homemade soap will give you that same feeling.
As you are completely in control of what goes into the soap then you can ensure it has the fragrance you want, is the shape you want and is environmentally and ethically sound (if that's what you require).
However, it is dangerous so a bit of care is required. Soap is produced by a chemical reaction - the saponification process. If you mix oils with a 'lye' then soap will be produced. Though we heat the oils, we don't really go to a high enough temperature to cause burns/fires - the main danger lies in the lye. The lye most commonly used is sodium hydroxide, also known as caustic soda. This stuff is evil and can cause horrible chemical burns so you should ALWAYS wear gloves - and preferably goggles - when dealing with the stuff. If you take the appropriate precautions you'll be fine, I'm an idiot and have been making this stuff for many years without even the slightest risk of an accident. Just take care like you would with any corrosive chemical you have in the house. And keep kids and pets far away when making your own soap.
It's easy to cobble together your own recipes for soap by calculating how much lye is required to saponify an amount of fat - there are calculators all over the internet, but to start with you should follow the recipe below, taken from this excellent book, which contains plenty of recipes but also explains how different oils produce different soaps. I've also got some kinda cool and unusual recipes if you want to contact me.
Right, on we go...oh, hang on, one final thing to note: when mixing the soap you may find yourself singing 'Dream Of Saponification' to the tune Californication by the execrable Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Although this may cause understandable distress the finished soap should be worth the hardship that has gone into making it.
What you’ll need
 |
| Ingredients |
A stainless steel cooking pot
3 plastic jugs/bowls (1ltr minimum)
1-2 flexible moulded loaf tins
2 thermometers
Rubber gloves
Eye protectors
Accurate scales, accurate to 1g.
Big plastic spoon
And for this recipe…
100g sodium hydroxide crystals
268g natural spring water
235g coconut oil
200g palm oil
350g olive oil
52g avocado oil
10 drops of grapefruit seed extract
5-10ml tangerine essential oil
5-10ml mandarin essential oil
5-10ml sweet orange essential oil
1tbsp ground turmeric
And where do I get all this from?
Thermometers can be picked up from most homeware stores. Mine were bought from Wilkinson’s, they can be found in the homebrew paraphernalia.
The spring water, olive oil and turmeric can obviously be found in all old supermarket, but the other oils are a bit more specialist.
Coconut oil can be bought in some supermarkets, but is fairly cheap online. As is avocado oil. Essential oils can be found in places like Holland & Barrett or aromatherapy shops, yet are far cheaper online. Ebay is chockablock with essential oils and they vary in cost for 10ml from around £1 to £4, depending on how fancy the fragrance is. Ebay is the place for grapefruit seed extract too.
Palm oil is environmentally horrendous so I use RSPO sustainable palm-oil only. Again, this can easily be found on ebay and although it is a bit more expensive than oil that is destroying the world, it’s worth it. Don’t buy the other stuff! It’ll make your soap smell of dead orang-utan babies.
The last and most dangerous ingredient is caustic soda. This you can buy from shops and you’ll find it amongst the bleaches, toilet and sink unblockers. I bought mine from Wilkinson’s though the thing to bear in mind here is that you need pure sodium hydroxide. Many caustic sodas that you can buy have other chemicals added in, if you get these your soap will never, ever set. So check on the back that’s it’s the pure, 100% NaOH, dissolve a body in a bathtub, caustic soda.
Method
- Using the scales, accurately measure out the olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil and palm oil. You can use the same jug for each but take extra care to ensure each oil is measured to the exact gram. If you’re slapdash in your measuring then your soap will either be too wet and oily (too much oil) or alkaline and will burn your hands (too little oil). After measuring each oil, add it to the cooking pot and return the jug to the scales. Remember to zero the scales again – on several occasions I’ve almost forgotten this and added too little oil because the weight of the jug has been included. Leave the oil aside for later.
Oil measured out and added to pot - Don the rubber gloves and in a second jug measure out 100g of caustic soda crystals. Again, be accurate to 1g with this.
- In the third jug (I use a small bowl – see picture), add the water. Again, accuracy!
Oil and caustic soda measured out - Find somewhere well ventilated and, wearing the gloves and goggles, add the caustic soda to the water. Pop the thermometer in the jug/bowl and stir thoroughly to ensure the crystals are fully dissolved. This is the most dangerous part of the process so ensure you don’t splash any of the liquid on your body/clothes and don’t spill any too. If you look at the picture you’ll notice I do this outdoors. The reaction of water and NaOH produces a lot of heat and irritating gas. As we need to cool the mixture once mixed, having it outdoors also causes the temperature to drop quickly. Congratulations, you have now created your lye.
The lye gets very hot - While the lye cools down, preferably outdoors and where nobody will go near it, you can heat the oils up. Turn the heat on your cooker very low and gently heat the oils to about 40-45 degrees centigrade. As soon as the solid fats have dissolved, turn the heat off. Use the second thermometer for this, don’t share with the one that is still resting in your lye.
Melting fats - The reason we did the lye first is that we need to mix that with the oils when both are around 35-40 degree centigrade. The lye zoomed up to about 80 degrees, the fats just over 40, so you obviously need to cool the lye far quicker. Hence, why it’s good to have it outdoors. When the right temperature is reached (you can warm the oil up very carefully again if it’s dropped too much), ensuring you still have the gloves and goggles on, add the lye to the oils.
- Instantly the liquid should start to go cloudy. Mix it all together with the plastic spoon, stirring thoroughly. This is the stage when you should start singing ‘dream of saponification’. Saponification can take ages, with some recipes it can happen in 10-20 minutes but this one took 4 hours last Saturday. 4 hours! You, of course, don’t have to stir non-stop for four hours but keep an eye on it.
Upon mixing the liquid should go cloudy - Eventually it’ll thicken more and start to resemble a deadly custard. You’ll know it’s ready when it starts to trace – if you scoop a bit out with the spoon and dribble it back into the pot it’ll leave a ‘trace’ on the surface before sinking back in. We’re almost there!
Trace reached with thickening soap mixture - When trace has been reached, add the turmeric, grapefruit seed extract and essential oils, stirring all the time. Smells nice doesn’t it? Essential oils can irritate the skin so try not to put too much in, I added about 7ml of the three oils to the mixture. That’ll be fine.
turmeric turns it orange - Ensuring you’re wearing your gloves, empty the pot into a clean jug. The mixture is still very alkaline here so be very careful. Pour the mixture from the jug into your mould, cover with a piece of cardboard and leave somewhere warm and where it is unlikely to be disturbed.
ready to pour - After a few days the soap will become hard. At this stage it is still slightly alkaline so wear your gloves while you pop the soap out of the mould and slice it into bar sized pieces. Lay the pieces on a paper covered baking tray and leave somewhere warm.
soap in mould 
leftover soap can be put into cupcake moulds to make small slices - After about a month (from the day you made it) the soap will be fully usable. Wrap it, make it look pretty and give it away as presents. Test some first though, you don’t want to give someone some soap that’ll dissolve their hands.
Problems
Tracing taking forever – It can take ages, I’ve had some soap hit trace within 10 minutes before, but more often than not it takes a long time. I tend to make soap while I’m pottering around, half-watching football scores come in. You don’t have to keep an eye on it every second but don’t leave it 30 minutes and then come back to find a gigantic block of school custard in the pan.
My soap isn’t hardening – You may have added too much oil to it. If it isn’t hardening after 2-3 weeks then you may need to chuck it away. Or, if it’s not too bad, use a very oily soap.
There’s crystals in my soap – Chuck it away! You’ve either not dissolved the caustic soda properly or have put too much in. This soap is dangerous, lob it in the bin.
Soap doesn’t smell enough – Next time you could try adding more essential oils, or use stronger ones.
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