Cool Soapmaking: The Smart Guide to Low-Temp Tricks for Making Soap, or How to Handle Fussy Ingredients Like Milk, Citrus, Cucumber, Pine Tar, Beer, and Wine: Smart Soap Making, #5

COOL SOAPMAKING

The Smart Guide to Low-Temp Tricks for Making Soap, or How to Handle Fussy Ingredients Like Milk, Citrus, Cucumber, Pine Tar, Beer,

and 

Wine

By Anne L. Watson

Shepard Publications

Bellingham, Washington

Text and photos copyright © 2016, 2018, 2024 by

Anne L. 

Watson

Image restorations © 2016 by Shepard Publications

Ebook Version 2.0

Special thanks to Susan Kennedy of Oregon Trail Soaps for my introduction to low-temp soapmaking.

Anne L. Watson is the first author to have introduced modern techniques of home soapmaking and lotionmaking to book readers. She has made soap under the company name Soap Tree, and before her retirement from professional life, she was a historic preservation architecture consultant. Anne and her husband, Aaron Shepard, live in Bellingham, Washington.

Soap & Lotion Books

Smart Soapmaking

~

Milk Soapmaking

~

Smart Lotionmaking

~

Castile Soapmaking

~

Cool Soapmaking

~ Smart Soapmaking Around

the 

Year

Cookie Molds

Baking with Cookie Molds

~ Cookie Molds Around the Year ~ Crafting with Cookie Molds

Homemaking

Smart Housekeeping ~ Smart Housekeeping Around

the 

Year

Lifestyle

Living Apart 

Together

Children’s Books

The Mice Before Christmas ~ The Secret of Gingerbread Village ~ On Christmas Eve ~ Katie Mouse and the Christmas Door ~ Katie Mouse and the Perfect Wedding ~ If Wishes Were Fishes ~ Skeeter and the Weasels (illustrator) ~ Many Fingers, One Hand (illustrator)

Novels

Skeeter: A Cat Tale

~

Pacific Avenue

~ Joy ~ Flight ~

Cassie’s Castaways

~

Willow’s Crystal

~

Benecia’s Mirror

~

A Chambered Nautilus

~ Departure

For updates and more resources,

visit Anne’s

Soapmaking Page

at

www.annelwatson.com/‌soapmaking

Getting Started

From High-Temp Soapmaking

to 

Low

From the beginning of soapmaking, people have made it hot. In fact, professional soapmakers used to be called soap boilers and shared a patron saint with firefighters.

As far as I can tell, the kind of soapmaking now called hot process was the rule for both family and commercial soapmaking all the way up to around 1940. At that time, companies that manufactured lye began to market it for home soapmaking, which was falling out of fashion. The new method came to be known as cold process —

a term

I’ve found from as early as that same period, in a lye company pamphlet.

Though in cold process the soap mixture isn’t cooked, it isn’t really cold either, as its temperature usually falls somewhere between room temperature and 110°F (43°C). Still, cold process seemed simpler, possibly safer, and was less intimidating to beginners. So, as craft soapmaking became popular, cold process was the technique favored in many books.

More recently, soapmakers adding milk to their soaps have come up with a version of cold process that truly does involve lower temperatures. In my book Milk Soapmaking,

I called

it Cool Technique. It uses frozen liquid to counteract the heat generated by the dissolving lye.