Beer Soap

I’m a regular on a soap forum and was reading posts from people who were making soap using beer. This was interesting, as I’m sure if my husband was still alive he’d ‘boo boo’ that idea, as beer was for drinking, not soaping!

I researched more and decided that beer soap would be a great idea for Father’s Day … so decided it was time to give it a go.

A friend gave me bottles of beer that were brewed by her husband. First I took the lids off two bottles and poured them into a jug. Then left it in the fridge for a few days, so that it would go completely flat. Next I put it in the freezer for a few hours and used it when it was half frozen. The reason for this, is that the lye heats liquid quickly and the lye would ‘burn’ the beer if it wasn’t at least chilled. Apparently the smell of ‘burned’ beer is disgusting! Making sure the beer is flat is also important, as otherwise the lye and beer could result in a volcano. So it’s important to be a little more careful when making soap using beer.

Beer does not add any fragrance, so you need to add some EO’s or FO’s or a mix of both. In my soap I use Bramble Berry’s Oatmeal Stout FO and added a little oat bran for some soothing qualities.

Beery Oats – freshly out of the moulds


Home brewed beer that was used for this soap

Beery Oats – 48 hours after unmoulding


Beery Oats – after a few weeks of curing! Love the colour!

Wordle

Found this interesting program being use on Celine's blog 'I am Handmade'.

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

Soap philosophies can change

I started buying homemade soap many years ago and as a purest I only bought soap fragranced with essential oils.

When I started making soap it was important to me to follow my philosophy of using only essential oils, natural colourings, no animal products and no palm oil, even if it’s from a sustainable source.

These ideals lasted for about a year, the ‘no animal products’ and ‘no palm oil’ haven’t changed, but I kept seeing pictures of beautiful soaps with amazing colours and read about some amazing fragrances … and these helped me to experience with colours and fragrances.

Soaping is loads more fun now that my ‘no no’ list has reduced and my soap is as good if not better than it was when I followed the ‘no no’ list.

Blue Wave ... just out of the moulds

Dragon's Spirit

Made with olive, coconut, rice bran and castor oils and cocoa butter. These soaps have Dragon Blood fragrant oil and colourings.

A mysterious, alluring blend with warming notes of amber, incense, Madagascar vanilla and patchouli. Followed by the romantic notes of rose, jasmine and lilac. Finally this blend is topped off with light touches of blood orange and grapefruit.

This soap will continue to darken in colour due to the vanilla in the fragrance.

Nature's Bloom

Made with olive, coconut, rice bran and castor oils and cocoa butter.  These soaps have Nature's Blush fragrant oil and colourings.

This floral fragrance has hints of rose petals, peony blossoms and lilac.  There is also a faint presence of fir balsam entwined with ylang ylang.

I used two micas and a liquid soap dye to colour this soap.  The colour is achieved by a simple 'in the post swirl' and saving most of the colour to decorate the top. 

A sprinkling of 'faerie dust' (soap glitter) has been added to the top for some *bling*.