Sunday, August 18, 2013

What is hot process soap and how does it differ from the typical cold process method of soap making?

 What is Hot Process Soap?



Hot Process Soap Vs. Cold Process Soap

We make our olive oil and shea butter soaps by the hot process method.  What is hot process soap?  It's like cold process soap in the beginning, but differs once the oils and sodium hydroxide (lye) water mixture are mixed to trace (a soft pudding consistency).  We heat the soap mixture in a crockpot until it's turned fully into soap (saponified) and the lye is gone.



With hot process soap, instead of having to wait 4 to 6 weeks for a cold process soap to cure and be ready to purchase, our soaps are ready to use as soon as they're cooled.  There is no active lye left and no water left that has to cure and dry out since it was evaporated during the cooking process.  They are mild and not caustic.  Our bars are designed to be fairly hard right away but will do best if it hardens for a few days to a week once it's made to harden just a little more.  Hot process soaps have a more rustic, handmade look to them as opposed to cold process soaps and different designs can be achieved.  We personally love not having to wait so long to use our soaps and you just can't beat the feel of a truly from scratch bar of soap where you control all the ingredients that go into it and we love the instant gratification of having made immediately usable soap (we can use the scrapings from the crockpot right away) from start to finish in a little over an hour.  The next day, we can unmold our soaps, slice them, let them dry a few days to a week and package them for sale!



You can check out some of our Youtube videos showing how me make soap the hot process way on our Ginger Grey Soaps Youtube page.

Thanks for stopping by!
Melissa
Ginger Grey Soaps

2 comments:

  1. What colorant did you use to get the pink color? It's beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, I used Brambleberry liquid lab colors, but now I use only micas and natural colorings.

      Delete