Goats Milk Soap

The benefits of drinking goats milk are very widely publicised but have you tried it in soap? As I mentioned in my January post I wanted to experiment with some new products this year and an opportunity arose to try Goats milk soap again.

A lot of people love goats milk soaps and have had success when using it to relieve symptoms of problematic and sensitive skin.

Goats milk is a beautiful creamy shade of white – sounds like something on a paint chart!

What shall we make?

So the next part of the journey was to decide which base oils to use, everybody has favourites and preferences when it comes to the choice of hard and soft oils. Should I go Palm oil free?. Should I include extra butter to give the soap a creamy moisturizing finish? So after a lot of deliberation the base recipe would be made up of Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, and Shea butter.

Which scents to choose – fragrance or essential oils?

Not a difficult choice here – I went for essential oils, the difficult part was the selection and combinations. Weeks later and I came up with my choice, my husband has never smelt so good as he had all the oils on his socks!

A few favourites, Lavender, Lime and Patchouli but also a few different touches with Vanilla, Vettiver and Fennel. I also tried some different combinations of additives settling on turmeric for it healing properties and activated charcoal for its cleansing power.

Into the Workshop

So once I had settled on my new recipes I sent these off to be checked by a chartered chemist and get the legal cosmetic safety assessment which is required to sell soap in the EU.

So with certificate in hand it was down to the workshop and a week later I had produced the first batch of each soap.

The soaps are now having their obligatory 6 week cure so watch this space for a picture when they wake up.