Last summer, while I was enthusiastically purchasing handcrafted soap but hadn’t yet considered making it myself, I had an interesting conversation with a local crafter. She sells at several of the farmers markets in the area and appears to have a sizeable business. She makes goat milk soap using fresh milk from her own goats, and I think it’s a full-time occupation for her and her family.
She was friendly enough, and it seems like she knows what she’s doing. (I was very amused when a customer asked her whether her soap is “pH balanced,” and I overheard her answer, “Yes, it’s balanced to a pH of 10!”) She said various other things that lead me to believe she has a solid grasp of soap-making chemistry.
Based on the appearance of the soap – texture, swirls, etc. – I’m pretty sure it’s cold process. But when I asked her how long she cured it, she said she uses a “proprietary process” that allows her soap to be ready for sale/use in as little as 24 hours. At the time I knew very little about soap-making, and had no idea how preposterous that sounded, so of course I was very impressed. She said it’s a technique she’s developed over time, but she obviously didn’t want to say more, and I didn’t press her. She told me a story about how a local specialty hotel that uses her soap had some sort of inventory emergency, and she was able to make and deliver the soap that very day. I’m familiar with the hotel, and the other details of her story were totally believable, so I’m not sure what to think.
I’ve been wondering about it every since. What could she possibly be doing?! The swirls are too wispy and the soap is too smooth for it to be HP, and besides, HP needs to cure just like CP. It’s not MP. I don’t think she was lying, and everything else she said to me that day has turned out to be true, but I just cannot see how it’s possible to instantly cure CP.
There aren’t very many things that only ONE person has thought of, and considering how many people have been making soap for how many years, I would think that if such a process existed, other people would have “discovered” it, too. (Has anybody here tried putting fresh CP in an industrial dehydrator?)
What do you all think? Does she have a magical trick, or is she blowing smoke?
She did say one thing that seemed odd in retrospect. I bought a bunch of her soap, and when I asked her about storing it, she said it would keep indefinitely, except that the scent might fade. To preserve the scent, she recommended storing them in plastic bags or saran wrap. Yikes! I cut up some of the bars stored them in various ways: unwrapped, paper-wrapped, cloth-wrapped, saran-wrapped, plastic-bagged, Glad Cling-Wrapped, wax paper-wrapped, parchment paper-wrapped, and Food Saver-sealed in airtight plastic. Eventually I’ll open them up to evaluate their condition and report back.
I ultimately wasn’t crazy about her soap when I used it. It didn’t have a great lather, it dried out my skin, it smelled “goat-y” to me, and her other ingredients struck me as very cheap. But that’s all personal preference. Objectively her soap seems just fine, and lots of people appear to like it.
She was friendly enough, and it seems like she knows what she’s doing. (I was very amused when a customer asked her whether her soap is “pH balanced,” and I overheard her answer, “Yes, it’s balanced to a pH of 10!”) She said various other things that lead me to believe she has a solid grasp of soap-making chemistry.
Based on the appearance of the soap – texture, swirls, etc. – I’m pretty sure it’s cold process. But when I asked her how long she cured it, she said she uses a “proprietary process” that allows her soap to be ready for sale/use in as little as 24 hours. At the time I knew very little about soap-making, and had no idea how preposterous that sounded, so of course I was very impressed. She said it’s a technique she’s developed over time, but she obviously didn’t want to say more, and I didn’t press her. She told me a story about how a local specialty hotel that uses her soap had some sort of inventory emergency, and she was able to make and deliver the soap that very day. I’m familiar with the hotel, and the other details of her story were totally believable, so I’m not sure what to think.
I’ve been wondering about it every since. What could she possibly be doing?! The swirls are too wispy and the soap is too smooth for it to be HP, and besides, HP needs to cure just like CP. It’s not MP. I don’t think she was lying, and everything else she said to me that day has turned out to be true, but I just cannot see how it’s possible to instantly cure CP.
There aren’t very many things that only ONE person has thought of, and considering how many people have been making soap for how many years, I would think that if such a process existed, other people would have “discovered” it, too. (Has anybody here tried putting fresh CP in an industrial dehydrator?)
What do you all think? Does she have a magical trick, or is she blowing smoke?
She did say one thing that seemed odd in retrospect. I bought a bunch of her soap, and when I asked her about storing it, she said it would keep indefinitely, except that the scent might fade. To preserve the scent, she recommended storing them in plastic bags or saran wrap. Yikes! I cut up some of the bars stored them in various ways: unwrapped, paper-wrapped, cloth-wrapped, saran-wrapped, plastic-bagged, Glad Cling-Wrapped, wax paper-wrapped, parchment paper-wrapped, and Food Saver-sealed in airtight plastic. Eventually I’ll open them up to evaluate their condition and report back.
I ultimately wasn’t crazy about her soap when I used it. It didn’t have a great lather, it dried out my skin, it smelled “goat-y” to me, and her other ingredients struck me as very cheap. But that’s all personal preference. Objectively her soap seems just fine, and lots of people appear to like it.
