Teach Soap

I've become enamored with soap making after buying many lovely handmade bars on etsy and I've like to start myself. Are there any excellent beginner resources you'd recommend? I plan on picking up copies of the Soapmaker's Companion and that book by Alicia Grosso as well.

I want to learn to do cold process, but am a little intimidated from what I've read so far. I also homebrew, but the most dangerous thing you deal with there is large amounts of boiling water. Is melt and pour a good way to start learning soap making and then later start to try CP?

I have no children, but I do have a Ragdoll cat. Is CP too dangerous to do with pets? We keep our cat safely away in another part of our home while we are homebrewing, could I do this when making soap as well? As you can probably guess, I don't know a thing about soap making currently, but I am willing to carefully learn. I work in education, so I obviously have a lot of downtime starting around this time of year.

You are on the right path with getting books and info before diving in!
The books you mentioned are great. I would check out some videos as well. We have some here;

Starting with Melt and Pour is a good idea. This will get you used to the basics of soap and how to work with fragrances and colorants. Lotion is fun as well... this can get you into dealing with oils and butters and melting, weighing and mixing.

The cat should be fine. Just keep him/her in a different room if you are concerned and make sure that the lye is well ventilated. You do not want yourself or the cat (or anyone else!) breathing those fumes in.

Have fun with it and keep us updated as to how it goes!

Oh - Welcome to the Forum!!!

Welcome!
There is a lot of info on this forum, so I would start reading.
MP is an easy way to get your feet wet, so to speak. Once you feel comfortable, start playing around with cold process recipes on a lye calculator and make small batches, so you don't waste ingredients in case it doesn't work out.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Hi Chrysee,
Welcome to the forum. I am new to the group as well, but not new to soapmaking. I have a homebrewing/soap story to tell...

Many years ago, my friend Steve complained how people are always around to drink his beer, but never there to help brew it. I quickly piped in that I would love to learn to brew beer. So a couple months later, Steve called me with the news that he would be spending a "day with beer". That meant he was planning on brewing some batches and also had some that were ready for bottling, so I could learn all aspects. He went over crushing the grains, the hops, the water and then made the "beer". We also bottled and he shared a couple cases of bottles for me to use for my first batch. A couple weeks later, I went off to the hombrew store for supplies to make my first batch. After wandering around the store not seeing exactly what I was looking for, I asked the clerk. He pointed me to a package of syrup - said boil this with water, add hops, cool and add your yeast. I looked at him not quite comprehending. No... I need malted barley (grains) to make beer. His jaw hit the ground. "You made all-grain beer??? I've been brewing for years and I haven't graduated to all-grain brewing yet!" I stood my ground and bought all sorts of grains to start brewing with and made some wonderful beers! (there were also some "gushers" in there, before I bought a hydrometer)

Then my friend Laurie asked if I wanted to spend the day making soap. Since I already had too many hobbies, I initally declined. The thought kept nagging at me. Finally, one day, I called her up and asked what supplies I needed to stock up on to make soap. After necessary supplies arrived we made soap. HOW COOL! I LOVE watching the change from disparate ingredients to "soap"! Again, I never new there was something else out there that others might have thought would be a precurser to making CP soap.

With both of these processes, by themselves, they are not hard. There are just some shortcuts that allow you to get to an end result faster. In the case of homebrewing, there is a huge time savings component for the brew day (fermentation was still the same amount of time). There is also a customization trade-off. If I relied on extracts for brewing, I probably wouldn't have been able to make my Belgian Saison beer (I created my own recipe and cultured yeast off a bottle of Chimay ale).

Not sure what kind of soaps you purchased in the past. MP are great for expanding creativity. There are clear and opaque soaps that can be manipulated is so many ways! CP can also be very creative (there are ARTISTS out there!), but for the most part, they tend to be more utilitarian.

I wouldn't worry about lye and the cat. Take the proper precautions. Lye is easily statically charged, so errant crystals need to be kept in check - that is the part the worries me most. If you ahve a friend that can teach you, that is the best! otherwise in addition to books there are also videos on the web that really help to visualize the process.

Sorry for the long post...
Petra

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Petra