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Saturday, January 10, 2009

Soap making adventure


Today I finally got a batch of soap done. Hubby helped me(touch of sarcasm). This is the first time I've ever used right from the cow, un skimmed milk. The milk scalded, but the rest of the process went the way it was supposed to more or less. I also added a 1/2 ounce of wildflower fragrance at the very end, it smells like store bought soap now, not what I was going for but it'll be okay. The soap will have to cure before I know if the scalding ruined it or not. It traced like it was supposed to, just looks a bit more orange than it should. Now I have to clean up the mess...

5 comments:

  1. MM, I have been reading a lot about milk based soaps latley. If I can ever get milk from my goat I plan to make soap and lotion and cheese from it. I read in a book titled Milk-Based Soaps by Casey Makela, that the secret to using milk from any animal in a soap receipe is that you have to first pasteurize, then freeze it and then thaw it before you use it in your soap. I just thought I would mention that since I am reading very much about the subject now. I hope yours turns out ok. Just my 2 cents worth. You sure have been busy over there I see. Keep it up.

    Your friend,

    Chris

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  2. Thanks for stopping in Chris! Isn't pasteurizing cow milk heating and holding the milk at 140 degrees for 20 minutes? I'm thinking that thawing and refreezing the milk a couple of times when I had too much to do and ran out of time for the soap didn't help the milk much. It's setting up like it's supposed to, maybe it's going to be just fine?
    Isn't goat milk pasteurized out of the goat?

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  3. MM, from what I'm reading here in this book, to pasteruize milk, slowly heat to 155F and hold for 1 minute, cover with a plate and let cool. Freezing helps to stabilize the moleculs in the milk somewhat. As for the goats milk, it's naturally homogenized. Like I say this is just what I'm reading. I hope your soap does just fine and it may be even better. Can't wait to hear more about how it goes.

    Chris

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  4. well son of a gun, if it's that simple, why would anyone pay that crazy amount of money for one of those tiny pasteurizer machines? I read somewhere it was 20 minutes... Thanks for helping me on the goat milk thing, I knew I read somewhere it was "something" right out of the goat ;) Maybe the fat separated when i froze it and that's why it looked like it did?

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  5. Hey, that's great! I love to see people DOING stuff!

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Comments always welcome