Beginner soap recipe help

[heather84]

I would like to make soap out of ingredients I already have versus buying a bunch of ingredients that I may never use again if I decide I don't care for making soap after all. I want to make a hard, cleansing, and moisturizing bar that isn't going to take forever to cure. I'd like to use cocoa butter in this recipe as I have quite a bit of it and I'd also like to add coffee to it as well to compliment the cocoa butter. Would I use whole coffee beans, unused coffee grounds, or used coffee grounds (dry or wet)? Thanks in advance for everyone's help/suggestions!

Ingredients I have on hand:
Coconut oil
Olive oil
Canola oil
Crisco
Castor oil
Grape seed oil
Cocoa butter
Shea butter (very little)
Vitamin E oil
Beeswax

 

[Robert]

The coconut and Crisco will give you a hard product as well as saponifying quickly. If you use a high percentage of coconut you may want a little of the castor in there to mellow it out. I don't know what it is in the coffee you want in there, but my inclination would be to brew the coffee and then use that as your water.

 

[paillo]

I would definitely skip the canola and probably the grape seed, as their shelf life is shorter and I hate to risk DOS with the oils that degenerate faster, like these two, which can go rancid. The only time I use grapeseed is when it's fresh and when I've added ROE (rosemary oleoresin extract) to the whole bottle. I strictly avoid canola. You don't need Vitamin E oil or beeswax, save those for lotion bars or another use.

Whole coffee beans are fun decorations. Others who make coffee soap can give you better advice, I haven't made it in ages.

Hopefully you're gonna catch the soap bug It's extremely contagious!

 

[HorseCreek]

Coffee grounds make a wonderful very exfoliating bar that helps take odors off your hands. It's all my husband uses in the shower anymore, lol. I have used both used and fresh grounds and don't really note any difference. If you add them dry, the bar sets up really fast and you can cut them in less than a day, lol. Just using grounds doesn't really impart a coffee scent in your soap. It's more of an earthy scent. I haven't ever used brewed coffee as a liquid before.

 

[judymoody]

I would try 30% coconut oil, 15% cocoa butter, 5% castor, and 50% olive oil with a superfat of 7-8%.

If you add lye to brewed coffee (cool it down first), it will stink initially but won't smell bad in the finished soap. It won't impart any coffee scent either.

I use very finely ground beans for exfoliant (dry, unbrewed) and a faint coffee scent remains from that.

Not much of the cocoa butter scent will survive saponification either.

If you want a coffee or mocha scent that is more dominant, you should use a fragrance oil that is safe for CP soaping.

Good luck and enjoy!

 

[Robert]

Any problem with drain clogging from the coffee grounds?

 

[HorseCreek]

Not for us.

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[jenneelk]

You won't have that much going down at a time so it would be fine. I've done a few coffee and used double brewed for 2 and then my other I actually put the grounds fresh in the lye and it brewed the coffee that way. I strained them out which might not be something you'd want to do with lye but I was fully gloved to the upper arms to ok.

 

[Robert]

You won't have that much going down at a time so it would be fine.

Maybe I'm just overly tuned to clogging, considering that a week ago I had a bad hair ball clog snaked out of my bathroom sink drain, waaaay past the elbow. And the hairs didn't even look long, maybe they were from my forearms.

I've done a few coffee and used double brewed for 2 and then my other I actually put the grounds fresh in the lye and it brewed the coffee that way. I strained them out which might not be something you'd want to do with lye but I was fully gloved to the upper arms to ok.

Hmm...Dutch processed coffee?

 

[Saswede]

I've made 2 types of coffee soap - one to use in the kitchen for my hands (after chopping onions and garlic it's a lifesaver!), and the other as an exfoliating soap for the shower.

For the hand soap, I brew a really strong pot of coffee and cool it. Then I strain out the coffee grounds and use the chilled coffee to make the lye solution - it does smell a bit while the lye dissolves, but doesn't leave any nasty smell. Then at trace I add freshly ground coffee mixed into a (cooled) double espresso to max out the coffee aroma in the finished soap.

For the shower bar, I added a cooled double espresso with a small amount of freshly ground coffee at trace, and ended up with a subtle coffee aroma and mildly exfoliating bar.

So you can vary how you make coffee soap according to what you want from the final product ........


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