Learning How to Make Soap at Home
I learned to make soap about 18 years ago and for the past seven or more years have made all the soaps that my family uses. This includes soap for bathing, shampoo bars, laundry soap, soap for washing dishes, gentle soap for babies, and pet shampoo bars containing essential oils that help deter fleas and ticks. The photo shows soaps I’ve made in my home business, which makes and sells goat milk soaps.
In our one day course on soap making, we teach many of the things we have learned as soap makers. You’ll learn through hands-on training how to make soaps using the hot process and cold process methods. Hot process soaps are usually made from tallow, which you’ll learn how to render. Cold process soaps are most often made from vegetable oils. You’ll learn about the advantages of each method, and at the end of the day, you’ll take home your own soap mold full of soap that you have made in the class. Half of the batch will be hot process soap and the other half will be cold process, goat’s milk soap. After your soap has cooled and after you’ve cut, shaped, and aged the bars, they’ll be ready for you to use.
We have plenty of time in our soap making class for your questions, and we often cover topics like
- “How can I make laundry soap?”
- “Can I actually make all the different soaps that my family needs and uses?”
- “What about homemade lye?”
We have several books available for purchase at each class so that you can further your soap making skills. The books cover how to make shampoo bars, molded oval soap, herbal soap, and various other types of soap.