October 1: International Coffee Day!!!

[ResolvableOwl]

Got a slightly spammy newsletter mail from my brewery supplier. It said that today, October 1, is the International Coffee Day!

First, AFAIK coffee has little to do with beer (they struggled epicly to get themselves out: with a bold connection between the froth of Guinness and Cappuccino ) Secondly, I myself am totally not a coffee drinker. But all was lost anyway: my subconsciousness decided to celebrate this with a coffee soap (also a nod to @JoyfulSudz over at Coffee soap benefits? – might repeat the garlic experiment). Also a good opportunity to make use of an oil blend that's been sitting on the shelf for an embarrassing amount of time already.

My idea is a rather simple hanger or spoon swirl design. A (thicker) bottom layer with added ground coffee (not a consumer, but there must be a way to procure some spent coffee), and soluble instant coffee added to the batter for a more intense matrix colour. On top of this, a layer with a bit of TD to increase contrast.

Here (CEST time zone), 2021-10-01 will end in just about 8 hours. I'll give you these 8 hours of time to dissuade me from this plan. PLEASE distract me!

 

[Peachy Clean Soap]

We'll I'm looking forward to seeing your Coffee Soap. Cheers even though you're not a coffee lover
cheers .

 

[earlene]

Obtaining spent coffee grounds if no one in your household drinks coffee is going to be interesting. I can just imagine the Owl winging it over to the next-door neighbor, Pyrex measuring cup in hand, pecking on the door and asking, 'Can I borrow a cup of used coffee grounds?' The sidelong looks, the chuckles, the expletives and speculations that may come out of the mouths of your neighbors would be quite interesting as well.

Or you could toddle over to the nearest coffee shop to beg for their leavings, whereupon you'd probably be told, 'What are you crazy? We don't have time to save used coffee grounds for crackpots!' Then I can sort of see you surreptitiously routing through their trash receptacles out behind the establishment and getting arrested for 'theft of garbage' or some such.

Honestly, unless someone in your close proximity (a nearby dear dear friend or family) drinks coffee, you just may be taking your life into your own hands in trying to procure used coffee grounds!

You're better off going to a store & buying the smalled bag of sampling of coffee grounds as possible & using fresh coffee as opposed to used grounds. I mean, after all the only reason to use used grounds is to not waste the new stuff, but for a non-coffee drinking why should that matter?

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Something seems wrong with this community . So helpful and assistive otherwise, you don't appear very supportive in discouraging others from making soap.

@earlene I appreciate your imagination (some very good ideas!). But luckily for me (though, unluckily for the amusement of my surroundings), I already had the opportunity to secure some spent coffee grounds (clandestinely pulled out of the waste bin, from someone who satisfies caffeinism with the brown bean powder). If it isn't enough, I could just as well prey some fresh coffee.

 

[Feelin' Soapy]

Your carefully thought-out plan and determination in procuring the necessary ingredients bode well for a successful outcome. I'm sure your soap will turn out to be a thing of beauty, but I am far more interested in the outcome of another garlic experiment. Good science requires repeat experimentation. I hope you will have no problem procuring plenty of fresh pungent garlic to carry it out. I await your results.

 

[Peachy Clean Soap]

Something seems wrong with this community . So helpful and assistive otherwise, you don't appear very supportive in discouraging others from making soap.

@earlene I appreciate your imagination (some very good ideas!). But luckily for me (though, unluckily for the amusement of my surroundings), I already had the opportunity to secure some spent coffee grounds (clandestinely pulled out of the waste bin, from someone who satisfies caffeinism with the brown bean powder). If it isn't enough, I could just as well prey some fresh coffee.

We'll I refuse to drink "instant coffee" i've got coffee standards to uphold & its magical bean's.
I do think it will be great for coloring your soap, looking forward to viewing & reading your results. Careful!! just don't burn the coffee w/ the lye, can get stinky... ( hmm how do I know this.) ? .

 

[Johnez]

(also a nod to @JoyfulSudz over at Coffee soap benefits? – might repeat the garlic experiment).

Whaaaaaaatttt? I have to go find this now lol!

With this talk of beer thrown in you are playing with fire now, a nice coffee stout soap in the making? Oops I should be dissuading you haha.

 

[earlene]

What, beer, too, You certainly are not dissuading! You are adding new experimentation! And who's ready to jump on a new experiment more that the Owl? Not that many of us aren't, for sure, but the Owl already does so many it's downright staggering. Beer & Coffee in the same soap? That would have to be sent to the brewery in question and of course they would have to take the blame for contributing to such shenanigans.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Don't make it worse than it already is!
Coffee first. I'll give the four types of malt in my basement another few months until they might have to sacrifice a bit for soapy things. Won't be International Beer Day until August, 5 next year.

ETA: Sorry, it's not four, but nine types of malt down there. Not Doing Things by Halves.™

 

[maryloucb]

Starbucks gives away used coffee grounds for use in your garden, but you could certainly use them in your soap!!
https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2015/starbucks-coffee-grounds-for-the-garden/

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Oof. All is too late. Not revealing details yet but these two thingies: 1. expect that I lied to you, and 2. for CPOPing, I'm recycling waste heat from this non-soapy project (that might go well along with a cup of a hot beverage of choice):

More tomorrow. Bed time now.

 

[Tara_H]

Something seems wrong with this community . So helpful and assistive otherwise, you don't appear very supportive in discouraging others from making soap.

Um, have you met this community? think 'enablers' rather than supporters

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Serving the International Coffee day on its last minutes on UTC-12 (Baker Island Time):

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Now that the rush is over, some annotations:

1. expect that I lied to you

The lye already mixed, is the best moment to spontaneous change one's mind and abandon hanger swirl in favour of One-Pot Wonder instead! Or, rather, I had planned to wait how well-behaved trace was, and then decide spontaneously.
OPW obviously stole the show, and in the spirit of the May challenge, here is my in-the-pot shot:

Like in May, I again ran into false trace issues. Geez, my own fault when I refuse to learn from my mistakes wrt false trace, lol!


Technical blah-blah:
Lye concentration: 30% (4% lye discount), plus 1% citric acid (compensated) and sorbitol (lye diluted from masterbatch )
White batter: with 0.45%TOW TD
Brown batter: with 10%TOW of (wet) spent coffee grounds + 1.2%TOW instant coffee
Oils: canola & HO sunflower (soft) + canola wax & palm stearin (hard) + castor, coconut, japan wax, beeswax, ROE, HL sunflower, fluid lecithin (the “it's complicated” parade)
Lengthy CPOP placed in a hot water bath (pot with lid on, initial temperature 60°C), then in the oven. I didn't specifically aim for glycerin rivers, so I'm not terribly sad they hadn't shown up in a noticeable way; it's another data point in my struggle towards understanding when I get them and when not. Something weird happened to the white – it seems as if I got some soda ash, but it's actually just properly coloured soap, while the central portions of the “milk froth” appear yellowish and waxy-translucent.

Some words on the coffee: It's gotten pretty dark, it probably would've been okay if I left out the instant coffee altogether. Dunno. When I added the grounds to the lye, it turned bright yellow, probably due to chlorogenic acid freaking out (like with sunflower seed extract). Maybe worth a try to aim for a green hue with coffee extract (better over there)?
The coffee smell was remarkably weak, not unpleasant (except for some ammonia), somewhat sweet, vanilla-like, and totally unlike coffee itself. And not at all similar to the soda-alkaline instant coffee that I'm used to as B/W photographic developer (that's the actual reason why I'm having instant coffee at hand in the first place. Don't worry about my bad taste, coffee aficionados!) – a smell that my subconsciousness has inseparably associated with the darkroom long ago.
11 hours in, after unmoulding/cutting, not much of this scent was left.
I expected the patttern to be mostly solid brown, with just a latte-art-like topping of light batter. It is intended to be a coffee bar in the end. (Now that I'm writing this up, it comes to my mind that this fits well into Design for dark&dull base batter – Swirl suggestions ). I actually split the batter in half (brown/white), and you can judge by the amount of white batter less than brown how much actually kept stuck in the OPW pitcher thanks to false trace . It went perfectly fluid again after blitzing it in the microwave.


Unfortunate for the wash-hands-after-processing-huge-pot-of-garlic experiment, I have missed out on a control soap w/o coffee! It was to expect that I wouldn't get all of the dark soap out, to have pure white, coffee-free batter left for a blind-test bar. So I didn't even try. (Another option would have been to branch off worth of one the tiny sunflower moulds before the OPW, but I came up with that only afterwards…)
BUT instead, I've made something much better out of the remaining, tan-coloured batter with a few coffee specks in it, than a dumb placebo soap: “Aglio-ccino”, the Coffee & Garlic Soap!


With some 5% abs. of finely grated garlic stirred into the residual batter. It developed tiny bubbles all over the surface during CPOP – maybe the heat remaining from the croissants was a tad too much, and it started boiling? Or the garlic developed fumes?
Anyway, as you can imagine, these bars have a very special scent to them. It's garlic-y, yes, but in a surprisingly pleasant way, very sweet and warm, balsamic, malty, even honey-like, and with hints of frankincense and caramel. And only remotely that offensive pungent stink that garlic is (in)famous for in the kitchen. I'm VERY curious how this will behave over time! (and keep you updated of course!)

 

[earlene]

Everytime I see you use 'TOW' I have to stop and figure out what it means. It was even worse when you were using 'TOM'. Now you're using 'TOW' and it just throws me. One of these days my brain might stop that 'huh, what, wait a minute, something isn't right here, stop and figure it out, you can't move on until you do' process it goes through when the eye-brain connection while reading kicks in. Maybe then I might be able to move through the narrative smoothly, but it's not looking good, given that I have NEVER been able to move smoothly through many wonderful Steinbeck novels, wherein his characters words are spelled as they are spoken. Even though I thoroughly enjoy the stories, my brain ALWAYS has to hesitate, decipher, visualize the correct spelling before it can move on. When my brain does that, it diminishes my enjoyment or understanding of what I am reading, which is a shame, because it can lead to glossing over or skimming and sometimes downright avoidance.

P.S. This dilemma brings to mind this thread from a brand new soapmaker who made a legitimate request.
Incidentally, TOW does not appear in The Acronym and Abbreviation Definition Thread...

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Update (53 hours into cure)
Curiosity went through with me, and I tested a bar. Still a bit soft (like medium-aged cheese), but not mushy, and zero zap. I know that this is way short of the 4 weeks line past which the most noticeable part of cure is done – but I just had to know!
And, oh boi, that ground coffee has become a sandpaper without equal! I usually tend to use too much pressure when lathering up a bar of soap – but not with this bar… already some agreeable lather, but dearly bought
Easy to imagine that it cuts through any stinky garlic layer on skin, or, rather grinds through it.

ETA: Had a second first test right now. Spilled a drop of vetiver EO over my hand. My best idea was to give this super-smell-removal soap a test – and what should I say? It did work! No comparative test yet, but it might be worth a try to (ab)use some EO/FO to test soap cleansing power (without the risk that you had to eat a pound of garlic afterwards, and in case it doesn't work well, the smell is pleasant at least).