It smells like a brewery in here...

That's what I was thinking to myself when I was making one of my latest soaps - my entire apartment smelled like a brewery! Might I add, not the most pleasant of smells in the world.

I got three days off in a row from work, so I figured, what better to do than make it a three-day soap weekend? I've had so many ideas of things I want to make floating around in my head, why not just do them all? I haven't spent every waking hour making soap, I've been busy keeping it tidy for the potential roommates I have coming over [somebody really needs to move in like tomorrow!] but I've also been doing a lot of research on things like soap molds. I am just tired of my cheap-o dollar-store plastic drawer organizers, they are a big fat pain,  and the sides are not straight, and I've found that Pringles cans are a one-shot deal, and I just don't want to eat that many chips! So what am I doing about it? Why, asking for soap molds for my birthday, of course! Now I know my birthday is pretty far away [end of September] but I am going to be moving in a couple months and my soaping days from now until then are pretty numbered anyways. No use spending money on a soap mold just to have it get here when I can't soap anymore and then have to move it, when I can just ask for a right fancy one for my birthday!

Getting back to the topic at hand, I have made two batches of soap in the past two days - I know, it doesn't seem like a lot, but there's the whole keeping the apartment tidy thing to worry about. One of those soaps just happens to be made with none other than Guinness.

Simmering Guinness - look at that head! 

You all should know by now that I just love making soap out of unconventional things - bonus if it actually turns out! The first step to any soap with alcohol is to cook it all out! That's right, no alcohol left in the end soap - sorry guys! Alcohol + Soap = Seize!! They don't get along. I also had to make sure the beer was nice and flat so simmering the beer = two birds + one stone.

This is actually a shaving soap that I'm going to mail to my dad for Father's Day - it's got plenty of castor for the bubble, a nice heaping scoop of bentonite clay for slip, and good ol' fashioned lard to make it nice and hard. This was actually my first time soaping with lard, I don't really have any opinion on it right now - the soap is still too new to try out. The soap calc numbers looked great though. Hard, conditioning, with lots of bubbly and creamy lather. I'm interested to find out what the beer adds to that aspect.

Cut 2-3oz rounds

I allowed this soap to fully gel, I don't normally but I wanted it to get nice and dark like the beer itself, and I wasn't sure what kind of color would be produced since the bentonite clay is green, so the darker the better. Can I just say, even though it stunk my house up to cook down the beer, this soap smells AMAZING. It's got this nutty-ness about it, like an almond cake! I'm pretty sure this smell isn't going to last, but it's good enough to eat right now! I can't stop smelling it! It's crazy what ingredients give certain smells to soap. Guinness almond cake.. yum!

Since this was going to be a Father's Day gift [in addition to an fun experiment!] I thought I'd make one extra fancy. I got the bowl at Cost Plus for about $2 and just scooped the soap batter right into it. It's going to take forever to run out, too, because there's probably 6-8oz of soap in there. I didn't weight the bowl while it was empty so there's really no way to know - but that's my guess just comparing it to my little 2-3oz rounds. You may notice the top isn't really all that pretty. I should have just left it along, it looked fine just from scooping it in, but I tried to do something fancy, decided I hated it, then tried to smooth it out - but it was kind of too late and I just ended up smashing it down. When it was all set up I got it wet and smoothed it out some and it looks better. This will just have to be a lesson to just leave things alone.


Until next time!
Peace · Love · Soap