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.

Ready to Pour!

Poured the molds after 1 hour this time instead of almost 2 like the last 3 batches. Also this time we followed the directions in the book closer and didn't stir throughout the process, just at the end after the entire batch saponified. It melted from the outside in just like it said it would in the book creating an "island" in the center until it was completely done.

For the mols this time we're trying our luck at lining one with wax paper as suggested in the book. The other we're doing the same with just a little wipe down of olive oil. We haven't had much luck with it not sticking to the molds so hopefully the wax paper works. We should know by tomorrow and I'll update then.

Cutting OLIVE BAR

This morning we cut down the Olive Bar and found that with our molds about 1 inch sections are 4oz. We also found that to be more accurate we need to build a cutter. More on that later... but we did take a trip to Home Depot to find these yellow plastic caps for the ends of our PCV pipe molds that will work much better then wax paper and rubber bands:)

We also found this rubber piece that is supposed to be used in toilet tanks and a metal dowel that when combined make a nice tamper! Very lucky we found pieces that were so exact in size! Now next time our soap should be smoother around the edges without air pockets.

First Batch of Home-Made Soap!!

OLIVE BAR #1 was born in our kitchen this afternoon!

We used the slow cooker method... so we mixed the lye & water let it cool to 100 degrees and also at the same time heated the olive oil in the crock pot to 100 degrees. I expected it to be really smelly but it wasn't so bad at all pretty mild smell. The vinegar & water solution for safety smelled stronger. We combined the lye/water solution & olive oil and stirred it for about 10 minutes with the immersion blender. It then took about an hour and 45 minutes of cook time for it to get totally saponified.

Then we cut our PCV pipe down to 1 foot sections and covered one end of each with wax paper... securing it with multiple rubber bands. Then we poured the saponified soap into the molds. We cut down 3 molds and only filled about 1 and a half. It said to let cool for 4-6 hours then possibly cure for 2 weeks. I guess the curing for 2 weeks makes the soap lather more. It starts to cool and harden fast so when we were done pouring it into the molds we used a little excess to wash our hands and it lathered... not real well but it was white and soapy:)

It doesn't smell like olive oil but it does have a mild scent but It doesn't smell like anything in particular.