Our hand and body wash differs from commercially made products in two important ways. First, it is made by hand and not by machine; and second, it contains only the most basic ingredients needed to make liquid soap – six in total. As indicated elsewhere, this means it contains no preservatives, colourants, fixatives, or palm oil – which, if you have watched the video of Leonardo di Caprio flying over palm plantations in Indonesia, is an ethically questionable ingredient given the large-scale decimation of indigenous forests to make way for palm plantations.
We make our liquid soap as follows.
- Measure out the ingredients needed for the soap: oils; and the lye solution. Soap is formed through the process of saponification, which is achieved through mixing acid and alkaline solutions.
- Heat the oils (coconut, castor and jojoba oil) in a slow cooker.
- Make the lye solution by adding potassium hydroxide to water and stirring it until well dissolved.
- Pour the lye solution into the slow cooker and stir in.
- Using a stick blender on a low setting, blend the new solution until it reaches trace (the effect achieved when you drizzle a small amount of the solution off the back of a spoon onto the solution and it leaves a raised residual trail across the top of the solution).
- Once the solution has reached trace, cook it in the slow cooker until its pH is safe for human use. This can take anything up to three hours. Test the pH by pouring a tiny amount of phenolphthalein onto a half-teaspoon of the jelly-like solution. If the pH is above 8.2 the jelly solution will turn bright pink; below 8.2 – which is what you want – it will remain colourless.
- Once the correct pH has been reached, spoon the jelly into a large pot and add water. Bring the pot to the boil and let it simmer for an hour. Then stir the solution until all the jelly has dissolved.
- Add essential oil (EO). We make hand and body wash in two fragrances: lemon verbena; and lavender. To make Leminuisce we add lemon verbena EO; to make Lavinuisce we add Lavandin EO. Stir the mixture until the EO has been fully integrated into it.
- Put the lid on the pot and let it stand for 48 hours.
- Remove the lid, and skim off the superfatted cream-coloured layer on the the top of the soap with a spoon, being careful not to mix any of the superfat into the solution. This process takes at least half an hour.
- Once as much of the superfat has been removed as possible, filter the soap by passing it through a very fine sieve to remove the remaining superfat. Repeat this filtering process twice more. By this stage the soap solution should be a clear golden colour with only the faintest, or preferably no, traces of superfat.
- Bottle the soap in pre-labelled glass bottles.
That’s what we mean by hand-made soap.