So we do these little medieval craft swap thingies in my local group twice a year. So far I've made some clothing (duh,) drink syrups, and painted an icon in return for a lovely handcrafted wooden box with my coat of arms on it, some Roman-style jewelry, and a fantastic Byzantine hat. This round appears to be trickier, since it has a theme, spring or camping. I picked camping, but the recipient of my gift picked spring, and she likes the 16th Century and "useful things." Well, nothing screams more medieval and useful in the spring than stuff you need for your annual bath. :lulz:
(Trufax: They bathed more than once a year. More like once a month in the winter and once a week or more in the summer.)
Contrary to popular belief, soap was known to exist for a while, and although the Romans were aware of the cleansing properties of using oils to deter dirt from the skin and pores using a strigel, they washed wool with lye, good old fashioned sodium hydroxide, a natural byproduct of wood ash and rainwater, which is dozens times more caustic than baking soda. The lye reacted with the lanolin on the wool, and it got bubbly and low and behold, removed dirt. So prior to the 11th Century, some soaps, primarily used as laundry detergent not people detergent, because they didn't quite have the mix right and people were getting caustic burns...was made with tallow (lard) and lye. Sometime during the 11th/12th Century, the Spanish got smart and tried olive oil. This resulted in a gentler soap, and is still made today in the form of Castile soap, which I am about to try my hand at making. I'm also going to see if I can collect enough bacon grease to make soap that way also.
What I am about to achieve is 100% pure fucking SCIENCE. My measurements have to be pretty sharp. But first, I need something to scent the soap: Essential oil. I cannot legally distill my own oils, so I'm infusing olive oil with lavender for 12 days, replacing the flowers every 3 days per a document I found from the 1500s. I'm also going to make another batch to be used as a perfume, which I'm going to blend with water and grain alcohol.
So far, the fun stuff has been ordered. :lulz: I should be able to make the soap next week. I found an Excel worksheet that does all the scary math for me, so all I need now are the ingredients and good food scale.
Here's my recipe:
32oz of Olive Oil
4oz of Lye
10oz of Water
I'm making a 2lb batch to start with, if in the event I fuck it up, it's not a real heavy loss of materials and I can start over. I'll make sure the husbandthing is home to take pictures of this, because I have a feeling it's going to be hysterical.
I've made soap a couple times. Works better with rendered beef fat, IME.
I definitely want to try it with rendered fats as well. I figured the Castile soap would be good for the gift, but since I had to buy a decent amount of lye, I'll be doing my own experimentation.
This is going to be so cool!
The lye came in today! Now I just need the mold and it's soap time!
Quote from: The Suu on March 03, 2014, 06:40:57 PM
The lye came in today! Now I just need the mold and it's soap time!
Have fun! By the way, I have heard cooking lard works wonders for soap making. It might be worth trying out.
Everything else is in today. I've decided on the documentation presented by a friend of mine to go with hot process instead of cold. This is the colonial method (only now we use a crockpot instead of a cast iron kettle over fire outside...which I could do if it wasn't 25 degrees.) which means it could also be conjecturally medieval, since it produces a useable soap in hours instead of weeks of curing. Which, considering the nature of consumables, is key. Cold process just doesn't seem feasible for a regular business model.
I will be going to get my olive oil and pH testing strips today and making the soap tomorrow. Today I'm going to be making the lip balm and brewing a batch of mead. New mead recipes will be posted in the Brewer's Cadre thread.
Lip balm has happened!
This is the base recipe I followed:
1/2 oz beeswax (approx. 3 tsp)
1 oz coconut oil (approx. 6 tsp)
1/4 oz cocoa butter (approx. 1 1/2 tsp)
1 1/2 tsp lanolin
3/4 tsp vitamin E
1 tsp liquid honey
3/4 tsp peppermint essential oil
In a small pot over low heat melt beeswax, coconut oil, cocoa butter, lanolin and vitamin E. Use a longish stick or small whisk to stir (a chopstick is perfect).
Remove from heat and add honey and peppermint essential oil. Whisk well and try to distribute oil throughout the mixture - this is tricky. When you make it you'll see what I mean, there are little oil pockets that are hard to stir in.
Pour quickly into tins or jars. Stirring mixture as you do so the oil doesn't separate. Let cool on counter till hard.
I think I underestimated the cocoa butter the first time around, and it was too...goopy and oily. So I just remelted it, and added more cocoa butter and beeswax. It's cooling on my counter, but this is what it looked like after the first batch was poured:
(http://i.imgur.com/gO7AKHf.jpg)
I did use some of the first batch as a hand moisturizer to see how it did, and it was quite nice. We'll see how the remelt works once this batch hardens, and it already looks MUCH harder than my first try.
Suu's face lube!
good luck!
It's hard to get the proportions just right... I usually eyeball it and some batches come out harder, some softer. I save the hard ones for summer use usually.
Worst. Soup. Ever.
Quote from: Nigel on March 07, 2014, 12:14:58 AM
It's hard to get the proportions just right... I usually eyeball it and some batches come out harder, some softer. I save the hard ones for summer use usually.
Yeah, it's still way too greasy. Urgh. I wonder if I should skip the coconut oil.
I may have to scratch this batch and try again. It's not like it takes that much stuff to make it anyway.
Third time's a charm.
I reduced the coconut oil to 2 teaspoons and got a more solid product. It still has the honey and the mint, though the mint is very light and only giving me a tiny bit of a coolness. I primarily taste the cocoa butter, but instead of the grease that you get when you use cocoa butter alone on your lips the beeswax and lanolin made it more creamy and dense, so it's really sticking well. The next go around I'll use more mint and maybe a packet of stevia to sweeten it up, but for now, I have 9 jars of this stuff to work through. For me, that's 9 weeks. I have a lip balm problem, hence why I'm starting to make my own.
(http://i.imgur.com/zzxTOnHl.jpg)
The previous batch proved to make a serious business hand salve, so I melted it down and put it in another jar with lavender flowers I had soaking in oil for fragrance. My hands feel divine!
Lanolin is a good addition, it increases the viscosity. I should think about adding lanolin to mine.
Quote from: Nigel on March 07, 2014, 04:19:17 AM
Lanolin is a good addition, it increases the viscosity. I should think about adding lanolin to mine.
It kinda smells like sheep, but I swear by it on my hands this time of year.
Bitches, I just made FUCKING SOAP.
(http://i.imgur.com/KSTsSW9l.jpg) Safety first!
(http://i.imgur.com/eBvKF1Ml.jpg) This was by FAR the worst part, adding the lye to the water. Next time: This happens outside no matter how fucking cold it is.
(http://i.imgur.com/smlKm5Bl.jpg) The olive oil in the crockpot.
(http://i.imgur.com/rjHGubrl.jpg) Mixing the lye solution with the oil to reach "trace."
(http://i.imgur.com/OPBEBBkl.jpg) Once trace was achieved, I added some dried lavender for pretties.
(http://i.imgur.com/uKRsRuLl.jpg) Heating in the crockpot to hurry saponification. I was talked into doing hot process instead of cold process, as hot process makes a bar of soap faster, AND it's arguably more medieval period, and definitely colonial (sans crockpot.) A consumer market can't wait for cold process. It takes months when this takes days. Plus it needs to be delivered to the recipient by May 1.
More pics as it saponifies and gets into the mold.
Quote from: The Suu on March 07, 2014, 01:04:15 PM
Quote from: Nigel on March 07, 2014, 04:19:17 AM
Lanolin is a good addition, it increases the viscosity. I should think about adding lanolin to mine.
It kinda smells like sheep, but I swear by it on my hands this time of year.
The denatured stuff is much less sheep-y. I like Lansinoh, but it's pretty expensive.
Wooooo soap!
(http://i.imgur.com/VgnDtbcl.jpg) At saponification point.
(http://i.imgur.com/35v8glSl.jpg) In the mold it goes.