FROM THE FARM

Add Ba-ah to Your Bath

Goat milk soap is worth the eff ort to make at home. Goat milk is packed with essential nutrients and vitamins, which feed the skin and leave it silk soft. Th e benefi ts range from helping clear up acne to soothing damaged skin. It is relatively simple to make if you follow the directions and use lye safely.

MATERIALS LIST

Here’s what you will need to make soap—in addition to the ingredients in the soap, which will depend on your chosen recipe. Th ese tools should be dedicated to soap making and not used for food purposes:

Stainless stockpot (small to medium-sized) Stainless or glass mixing bowl (medium-sized) Sink or plastic tub that will hold the mixing bowl over ice Stove or electric burner Wooden mixing spoons Silicone spatulas Glass measuring cup(s) Long-stemmed food use thermometer Motorized electric stick blender Kitchen scale that measures in grams and ounces (digital) Waxed paper disposable cups for measuring lye Soap mold (loaf or tray style) and liners or waxed paper Safety goggles Safety gloves (nitrile gloves) Paper towels and a trash bag for “oops” patrol Plastic, sealable sandwich bags or ice cube trays for freezing milk Soap bar cutter (orfe)

Lye is a necessary component of soap making as it acts as the base in the soap while the oils act as the acid. Combined carefully, the two undergo a process known as saponifi cation, creating the soap. Lye, also known as sodium hydroxide, is an incredibly caustic substance. A little powder on your skin will itch and burn, as will a splash of raw soap mix. Wear long sleeves and safety goggles, as well as gloves, every time you work with lye. Inhaling lye powder can cause respiratory burns, so consider wearing a mask while you measure your lye, or at least measure gently. Never add water or liquid to lye. Th is can cause a violent reaction. Always add lye, a little at a time, to your liquid and fully incorporate what you add before adding more.

Find (or create, once you have some experience) a good recipe. Websites such as SoapQueen.com have many tested recipes. Once you have a few batches under your belt and have researched types of oils and the traits they add to soap (such as softness or hardness of bar, lather, moisturizing), you can fi nd a lye calculator, such as the one off ered on Th eSage.com, and create your own recipes. A calculator is good to have, as lye must be precisely measured to keep the soap safe.

Chose a mold size that will work for the volume of soap you will be making. Real soap needs to stay together to saponify (turn into soap), and you need a tray or loaf mold, somewhere between 2 and 5 pounds, to start. Most recipes will specify a mold size. A shoebox lined with waxed paper will work for a test batch; the bars just won’t be as pretty.

Once you have a recipe and mold, you can add ingredients such as scents to your soap. Th ese scents are provided by essential oils. You can purchase essential oils from many local natural food stores or online.

Cover your counter with a vinyl tablecloth to prevent damage. Th en pre-measure and freeze milk in sealable plastic sandwich bags or ice cube trays the day before making soap. You can also use an ice cream maker to make the milk slushy if you do not want to freeze the night prior. Th is will prevent the soap from overheating.

Measure milk (slushy) and place it in a large glass bowl and set inside a sink or tub full of ice. If the milk is frozen, break it up a bit and let it sit in the glass bowl, as the lye will melt your milk.

Measure out the essential oils and warm them on the stove in a pot to the proper temperature according to the recipe.

Put on gloves and safety goggles for this step. Cover a common kitchen scale with plastic wrap, place a paper cup on the scale and zero the scale out and make sure to measure in the correct units. Slowly pour the lye into the cup until the right amount is reached.

With a wooden spoon in one hand, sprinkle a small amount of the lye over the milk and squish the frozen milk pieces around until they being to melt. Once the initial lye is dissolved, sprinkle in a little more. Th e milk will turn to slush and will then start to yellow. Th is is the lye causing heat to build up in the milk. If you have your bowl over ice, your milk should not overheat, but keep stirring as the lye melts your milk. Check the temperature of your milk and follow the recipe’s directions on what temperature your milk and lye must be before you mix them. Your lye mixture will not get cooler, so check it from the slush point on and continue to monitor your oil temperature. Never add the milk to the lye; it will foam over violently. Always add the lye to the liquid.

When the lye and oil mixtures are the right temperature according to the recipe, slowly hand-stir the lye mixture into the oil mixture. Set your spoon on paper towels over a protective surface because the raw soap batter will be caustic. Th en use the electric stick blender on the bottom of the pot on low setting to mix the mixtures. Turn the mixer off after about 10 seconds and stir by hand. Repeat. Look for the mixture to “trace,” which means the liquid soap begins to coat the head of the stick blender and trails of soap from the blender sit for a moment on top before sinking back in. If you don’t stop the mixer and stir by hand, you will get a “false trace” from the pudding consistency created when the mixer whips air into the soap. Soap that has reached a true trace will be the consistency of thin pudding.

Once “trace” has been reached, add essential oils and color. Make sure to fully incorporate oils in the mixture with the mixer. Some oils will accelerate the trace, meaning the soap will gel and solidify quickly.

Once the essential oils and colors have been incorporated into the mixture, use a spatula to scrape the soap into the mold. Be careful and wear gloves. If soap sets up in the bowl, leave it. It can be shredded and melted down later into your mold.

Cover the molds with a towel and allow to set for at least 24 hours. As the soap sets you should see it “gel.” Th e soap will start to look translucent in the center. Once the soap gels, you can remove the towel.

Once the soap has set for at least 24 hours, remove it and cut it into bars, placing them on cardboard or milk crates. It will be the consistency of cheese. Wear protective gloves while handling the soap as it will irritate your skin until it has cured.

Soap needs to cure for 4 to 6 weeks. Once it is cured, it will be fi rm.

Erin Hall and her husband, Corey, have been urban homesteaders since 2005. They enjoy gardening and raising urban livestock and have even made syrup from their own maple trees. Members of the American Dairy Goat Association and the Nigerian Dwarf Goat Association, the Halls provide a local resource for miniature dairy goats and goat-related products and information.