Wake Up And "Smell" The Coffee

[SoapMakingTommy]

Hey everyone just your friendly soap maker here, Got a question for the soap that will most likely be made tonight. It will be a real delight it i can pull it off correctly and i wanted to see what experience you ladys and gentlemen have and what your opinions are.

This soap in the works is the "The Coffee Cocoa Express".
I will be using fresh brewed coffee 3x strength and cocoa beans freshly ground and extracted in one liquid to mix with my lye.
I will be saving some of the extracted liquid and replacing it with water to add after saponification.
This soap will most likely have some fresh grounds that have not been cooked
And will not have any essential oils.

So thats the majority of it i might of left something out, But What do you guys think of my plan?

The questions i have would be mostly about the smell, And as you read i dont have any coffee or cocoa absolute/essential oils.
For me adding the new coffee and cocoa grounds and saving some portion of the extracted liquid is my way of trying to retain as much smell as possible.

I have some cocoa tincture ive been making from cocoa beans with everclear and im wondering how that would work with my soap? If the alcohol content would be too high or if it would be the same thing as the extract i made with the coffee,cocoa?
I have 1oz Of cinnamon essential oil (madagascar), Its a very little, i wanted to know if the smell comes threw my soap, will i be bale to use 1oz of cinnamon eo to a 5lb batch to try and bring out the coffee smell out more or is this a bad idea?

Any tips or help is much appreciated as you can see im kind of all jumbled up, i think i drank a little to much coffee. :-D

 

[green soap]

I am having coffee too.

The coffee scent will not transfer to the soap, sorry. You need to use either a FO or an absolute here.

Better news on the cocoa. If you use a high % undeodorized cocoa butter as part of your soap formula, you can get a faint cocoa scent in your soap. I get this in one of my shave soaps, which is over 70% cocoa butter.

Bad idea to put any alcohol in soap. Alcohol can accelerate trace. I boil off the alcohol from my beer when I make beer soap, and the beer I use is only about 5% alcohol.

Also, you might want to consider using poppy seeds instead of coffee grounds, they are less scratchy.

The cinnamon EO would probably be nice in your combo.

 

[boyago]

There was a pretty good thread just a little while ago about coffee here. The coffee soap I did was a pretty big hit at xmass. I wouldn't use the tincture as the alcohal can cause problems in your batter. But someone else probably knows better than me. Your not too far from your own EO though. Unfortunately after you distill it down I think the weight ratio for most EOs to plant matter by wheight can be around 99/1. So your gonna need some more coaco beans... and a still. My coffee soaps never came through with the coffee scent but I'd be interested to know if your cinnamon works.

 

[SoapMakingTommy]

Thanks for the answers guys, thanks for the link boyago, i read a few coffee threads i missed that one.
It seems that no one really has any luck with pulling off the coffee smell without using fragrance oils.
I dont know how the cocoa would do, it does have a chocolaty smell but its not heaven, personally i think the coffee has a better smell. I wonder why the coffee smell does not pull threw?
I do have a bunch of cocoa butter natural, but lol not enough to just put 70%.
I will try and make a recipe using more cocoa butter, But if it makes little difference then it probably wont stress over it.
How will alcohol effect my trace? I wouldn't mind increasing trace in some of my recipe's.
The problem is 1oz of cinnamon is not very much i think i read the recommended amount was .4oz lb , so i only have enough for 2lb max.

 

[soap_rat]

Is it cinnamon leaf or cinnamon bark? They have different limits for safe use. When you say a 5lb batch, is that 5lb of oils, or the total weight?

 

[boyago]

The problem is 1oz of cinnamon is not very much i think i read the recommended amount was .4oz lb , so i only have enough for 2lb max.

Yeah the only thing more depressing than watching yourself pour all that EO into your soap is paying for it.

I've tried infusing my base oils as a means of scenting and the only thing that has come through at all was clove. Though I have allot more experimenting to do with that.

 

[SoapMakingTommy]

It is cinnamon bark soap_rat.
Lol bayago when i used essential oils for first time i bought it in my farmers market it was sooo expensive, i dident know better at the time. I used it in my soap with limited knowledge and wasted it. Lesson learned

I was just playing with my essential oils i had on hand and i made a choice, I said patcholi is the only thing thats strong yet not to floral, I mixed the patcholi with some cinnamon and i liked ti but cinnamon is very strong, It might have a chance if i can anchor it with patcholi.
I then mixed patcholi with cedar wood and i must say its not cinnamon but its got a cinnamon hint to it.
So i might use one of these blends i just came up with, i duno know wether or not i will use the cinnamon bark eo.

What do you think?

 

[soap_rat]

SMT, cinnamon BARK EOs have a really high amount of cinnamic aldehyde in them, which is a contact allergen. So there's a really, really small amount you can use before you go over the limit and cause skin reactions in people. Like, 3mL or less, depending on the species of your oil, and on whether you're talking 5lbs of oils or 5lbs total batch. If it's 5lb total batch you can use even less.

Cinnamon LEAF EO has a lower amount of that ingredient, so you can actually use enough to get some scent into your soaps. (But leaf EO is higher in another regulated chemical, Eugenol, so if you were using 5lbs of oils you'd still be limited to using 15mL or less of the EO)

(Note: I taught myself how to use the IFRA standards and determine the limits in soap, so if anyone also experienced with their spreadhseets thinks I'm doing it wrong, I want to know)

 

[SoapMakingTommy]

Wake up and smell the coffee everyone.
Last night I did as I wanted and made my soap, I wanted to use some essential oils but when I mixed all 3 I wanted to use together it created a unpleasant smell so I decided to make unscented.
I wake up this morning to cup my soap and to my surprise I think the soap smells like mocha. Not much coffee or chocolate but seems to be a blend of some natural mocah smell, I really want this to cure so I can try out.
I upped the sf on this one just test something out so it should be interesting.
O, something odd the eo I blended last night. Thinking I would use, the one that smelled bad , smelled good this morning, what's up with that?
Here are some pictures enjoy.

 

[SoapMakingTommy]

Who do i have to send a bar to to make a believer out of? lol
Just wanted to bump this back to to top, see what all you thoughts are.

 

[AngelMomma]

You don't have to convince me. I make an unscented Mocha soap that has a light smell. Not like a FO but its nice.

I use a strong coffee, coffee infused olive oil, melted dark unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder are all included in my soap. Some here like it with the coffee grounds, but I like it better with the poppy seeds that are less scratchy.

 

[Seawolfe]

That is a really pretty bar of soap! I wonder if it will hold any of the natural scent over time?

 

[CaraCara]

I made a coffee soap with Turkish coffee last year and the smell was there for about a month (faint, but there). I'm not sure if the coffee contributed at all but the bar is quite hard, long lasting and very bubbly.