For years we’ve lathered up with Dr. Bronner’s Baby-Mild Liquid Castile Soap. Mikah uses it for his primary soap — ever since we figured out that his sensitive eczema-prone skin needs mild cleansers. And Jeff uses it for shaving and washing. It is a wonderfully mild, fragrance free (yet great great smelling) soap. We used to use the bars of it, too, before I started making my own bar soap.
Bearing a price tag of about $35 per gallon, the liquid soap is worth it, in my opinion. But since I make our bar soap, I think it is time to make our liquid soap, too. Even though I haven’t calculated the savings yet, I’m fairly confident it won’t cost me $35 to generate a gallon of liquid soap.
Making liquid soap requires Potassium Hydroxide, rather than the Sodium Hydroxide that bar soap needs. I found it online from The Soap Dish, one of the few places online that carries this liquid soap making caustic. After I placed my order last week, I received the sweetest email from the owner. I love doing business with kind people. She shipped my order right away and it arrived yesterday.
I have never made liquid soap before. It is somewhat of a different process than making bar soap, although the beginning steps are similar. But liquid soap “cooks” much longer, resulting in a paste, which must then be diluted and neutralized with boric acid or borax. I searched this morning for more details regarding the process and found a great tutorial. I will be following the procedure shared in this tutorial, but using the oils I usually use in castile soap — olive, almond, castor, coconut, palm kernel and/or grapeseed. I ran the oils through a lye calculator to make sure I am using the right amount of lye for these oils.
I’ll be back to let you know how it goes…
Picture courtesy of The Vitamin Shoppe.
I would love to know how it turns out. I made liquid soap years and years ago. So long that I’m not sure I remember anything about it, I’d have to dig up my recipes. But I do hope yours turns out well.
Well… it’s definitely different! It took 30 minutes to trace. It was like curds & whey and then all of a sudden it was solid and started bubbling over in the crockpot. I’m keeping a close eye on it. I also almost burned out my stick blender; it got so hot I had to use a hot pad to hold it! I’m hoping for the best… I’ll let you know! If you have a castile soap recipe, I’d love it if you’d share. Love, Wardeh
I admire people who make their own soap. That is one thing I’d rather not do. Wouldn’t mind helping someone do it, though.
If you were only here, I would love the help! Love, Wardeh
Hi Wardeh!
I thought I remembered you sharing on GNOWFGLINS that you made liquid soap so I began searching for your post on it. I notice that the post is rather old, do you still make your own liquid castile? This is something I’d like to try sometime. I have only made bar soap…cold process. I haven’t tried the hot process for that yet and perhaps that should come first…I am not so sure that my crockpot (5 quart) is big enough though. I purchased your video for the hot process and hope to try that soon. If you are making the liquid castile, does it seem much easier now and do you have any refresher ideas/thoughts on making it?
Thanks so much!
Blessings,
Toni
Toni — I do make liquid castile but I haven’t written out any instructions yet. Your crockpot will be big enough for the crockpot soap I showed. I’m sorry I don’t have better instructions for you on the liquid. If you follow the links up there you’ll see the overall process and you can use my same basic recipe to make liquid instead. Just use potassium hydroxide instead of sodium hydroxide.