Espresso Buzz perfected in trial #3

Cut down our 1st perfected batch of Espresso Buzz! Were loving the creamy color and swirls of Espresso grounds:) We're still loosing about 1/2 the batch due to air bubbles. Small imperfections are fine and expected because it's handmade and that's what makes it unique and reminds you that a person made this soap not a machine in a factory. We can't waste that much though... I think we could solve the problem if we cut our molds in half because the air pockets usually occur in the middle and right now the molds are around a foot long. We're going to try that with the next batch of Wino I make and see if it fixes the problem.

Currently all 4 soaps are now perfected for selling, just one more to go. Wino needs to be perfected and today I'm going to get a new round of grapes to squeeze, dehydrate, grind and brew for a batch tomorrow.

BATCH#7 Espresso Buzz Trial#2

Ok so i think I got Espresso Buzz down and it has the most fluffy white lather of them all. Again I only made a half batch so I didn't end up wasting too much if my idea to brew coffee into the soap didn't work. We also used olive, canola and castor oil in this batch leaving out the coconut oil because I ran out... and because I wanted to see if the soap would still be a pale color without it. So far it looks good and I'm super happy with the way it looks. It doesn't have the smell of espresso but the espresso seems to have covered up the oil smell that is obvious in the base soaps I've made so far.

Espresso Buzz

So we were going to make cherry but didn't take into account the orange color the palm oil would make it so we tried to counter act the orange with espresso instead thinking brown would be an easier color to achieve. Well here's what we got... not exactly what I had in mind:) Were gonna stick to basics for a while and get a color perfected before adding any "flavors" for a while.

Batch #3 saponifying in the kitchen now with olive, coconut, canola, palm & soybean oil...

First Batch of Hand-Milled Soap!

The first batch EVER for Peninsula Soap Co. is cooling in it's PCV pipe mold in the kitchen right now with 4.5 hours of dry time to go. We're starting with the hand-milling process just to get a feel for what it's like to work with soap in the melting/cooling stages and also to experiment with color, oils and dry ingredients. This weekend we'll be trying the soap making process from scratch in our garage. The first batch has ground espresso and coconut oil in it... I ground some of the espresso coarsely (to add texture and exfoliators) and some espresso more very finely (to add color). I'm thinking Espresso Buzz sounds like a good name for it. After all what's better then espresso in the morning!

All soaps will be vegan and cruelty-free plus they will have no chemical or artificial anything. All the ingredients in them will be things that are "pantry common".

Last week we formed our LLC and bought our website www.PeninsulaSoap.com
I'll have to learn how to create the website soon so we can start selling these yummy soaps!

We just did some tweets to record our progress too:)