Black soap?

Sboylan2012 · Sep 25, 2013

How do I make black soap? I'm lost. I have a friend that wants me to make it because she buys it on eBay and wants to get it from me but I have no idea of the process. Right now I'm doing only hot process soap but would love to venture out. Please help with recipes!!! Thanks!

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paillo · Sep 25, 2013

Depends on what your friend means by black soap. You could make a black soap using activated charcoal (a lot if you want it to be truly black - warning, it will have black suds).

If she means African black soap, that's a whole different animal. Here's one description. http://www.treehugger.com/style/what-is-black-soap.html

juliab86 · Sep 25, 2013

Do you mean soap colored black, or the soap from Ghana?

If it's color, I've never done it before, but I've seen black charcoal soaps. There are probably also synthetic colorants.

As far as the Ghana soap, there have been several threads on this forum regarding that. I haven't seen a hard and fast recipe for it. I think the real recipe might vary from group to group in Ghana. I've also heard there are a lot of imitations of these soaps.

djk17 · Sep 26, 2013

If you're not talking about the Ghanaian soap, but rather the charcoal soap--I've made it and I love it. The last little sliver is in the shower right now. I'm curled up in bed ATM so I don't remember exactly but I think it was 1/2 Tbsp ppo and that gave a deep gorgeous black but the lather was grey in the hand but white when used with a shower pouffe. I used anise e.o. for black licorice soap, and made it in big cubes à la Savon de Marseilles.
It lasts forever too.

Pawpaw · Dec 23, 2013

I presume you're talking about the Ghanaian soap. Traditionally that involves burning plantain leaves and cocoa pods and using ashes with rain water to make own lye water. The tricky thing though is getting the lye to sap values right. Bit tricky. I make a pseudo black soap using a high value of Shea butter, I like it.