Category: soap

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Holiday Update – 7 December 2019

Another Facebook post from last week…

I have a friend who stays constantly angry at me that I don’t keep my posts here up-to-date. And for good reason. It’s really bad manners!

I poured soaps again all day today. I continue to update the online store, post new inventory, and new images. Will start getting some backed up orders out next week too.

I have a new Peppermint soap with bentonite clay that is really cool. It’s gorgeous, and it smells great!

I got the scent worked out on the Hemp soap, so those bars are good to go. They really look cool, and they’re good soap.

Many of our bars are larger this year, and/or the prices have come down. I have kind of been going against the grain of what some believe is the trend and have actually been working on lowering our prices – not raising them.

I added a new bar to the line-up, Playful Plum. I hope you will like it. It’s a pretty bar. It’s colored with ground madder root, something that has been used for millennia to achieve a gorgeous burgundy color in fabrics. I try to mostly use natural colorants.

I worked on a special bar for an old friend to go along with his product line and the pour turned out to be a disaster – laugh! Will have to revisit that one.

We have continued to add regular customers for the Alma-Clean, our highly effective laundry booster and all natural disinfectant, and I am really thankful for that. We have plenty labeled and ready to go.

Oh, I made like 40-50 lbs of lavender bath salts too, although I haven’t gotten them posted to the site yet. I have been making them forever but thought there wasn’t any interest in them until recently. Almost no one bathes anymore!

Running late to be somewhere… as usual!
❤️

John

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A Holiday Collection

I was going through a bunch of soap pictures I had taken while trying to get a decent “group” photo. There was one in the middle which was plainly taken by accident, and this is it. It was the only one that didn’t look staged.

We’ve got a Soothing Sandalwood, surrounded by Heavenly Hemp, Ancient Ocean, some pink thing I haven’t named yet, a Kashmir Goat Milk, Leinie for your Heinie, Black Cashmere with Charcoal, a Lemony Lemongrass, and some Awesome Orange.

Holiday Collection “oops” photo

Wish you could smell it all.
— John

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We have added a Surprise! bar

I have added a Surprise! bar to the line-up. I did this originally so that I could run some Shopping Cart and Checkout processes on the website without skewing our inventory. Technically, this SKU (product) is not an inventory item, so there is no inventory to mess up by running transactions against it. After setting it up I decided to make it a part of our official offering.

It is not unusual to hear a friend say, “Just send me ten of your best soaps, and let me know what I owe you.” This is that item — the item to purchase if you simply want a quantity of great soaps at the best price. These are all first-rate soaps, not seconds or duds. We want you to come back and buy again!

We do lots of test pours — trying some new scent, process, or ingredient. These are often great soaps, just that for whatever reason we don’t immediately list them for sale here to the online store. We may be waiting to hear what our testers say, or how well a scent holds… something like that. These are regularly added to orders that leave here, in hopes of receiving feedback, and these are soaps that may be included here.

In short, these may be any size bar, in any base formula.
More to come!

John

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Lavender in Soap

Let us talk a little bit about lavender, specifically lavender essential oil. Lavender is one of the most versatile of all essential oils, and one of the most well-loved. It is calming, and balancing. The word itself is derived from the Latin lavare: to wash. The plant is a member of the mint family. It’s botanical name is Lavandula angustifolia.

I was surprised how much there was to know about the essential oil. There are many different grades and varieties.

There is a standardized version, referred to in the industry as 40/42, which specifies the required levels of linalool and linalyl acetate that must be present. These are the main constituents in lavender essential oil, and are what make up much of its scent. Standardizing keeps it consistent, but also commercializes it, depriving it of any real character.

Like the grapes used in wine, lavender derives much of its character from where it is grown. There is French lavender, Spanish, South African, and more, each having a distinct scent. The highest quality lavender essential oil comes from Bulgaria, and that is the oil we use. It is also the most expensive, especially when buying organic.

Besides the essential oils there are also lavender fragrances. We use plenty of fragrance oils, to be sure, but most of the lavender ones smell noticeably fake to me. I certainly have no plans to use lavender fragrance oil in our soap.

All this to give you a little insight into what makes our lavender soap smell so wonderful, and why it costs just a little more. One of my great pleasures is to watch someone pick up a bar of soap, draw in its scent, and close their eyes in quiet satisfaction. If you like the smell of lavender, you will love the smell of our lavender soaps.

Thank you for your business!

John

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Soap Notes — 22 April, 2017

Some recent soap notes for anyone who is interested. I place them here in an effort to keep the product pages themselves clean and simple.

Coconut Lily – No.09
We have not poured this one in a while, and it is scheduled for the next round of pours. The inclusion of calendula petals requires that we pour these as slabs and hand-cut the bars. I will list the size on the product page as soon as that is done, but it should approximate the size of our regular bar. I will also update the image at that time.

As a fun note, I poured a large batch of this “Lily” fragrance for last Christmas in base No.35 (a mild base that I have since retired). They all sold immediately (except for 2 that I hid). No one cares what the base is if they really love the scent. (Is there a lesson here?)

Coconut Coconut
I played with calling this “Coconut Squared,” but then wondered whether I would be the only one to find any fun in that.

I always enjoy pointing out that testers who agree to know nothing about the soaps before they test them are often surprised to learn that this soap is made only from coconut oil and coconut milk. It has often tested at or near the top in every category. If pouring soaps solely in coconut oil did not present its own set of challenges I might wonder why we poured anything else.

These bars were originally poured in a coconut fragrance that probably would have sold better on the beach than in the Midwest (plainly we are not near a traditional beach).  I will update this product page as soon as one or more fragrances have been decided on, but wanted to leave this here for you to know about… and also as a reminder to me.

Peppermint!
Bars available in No.28, and No.88 for now… and probably No.10 in the future.

It appears that all of the peppermint bars we have in No.28 were made with coconut milk, and probably that will become standard. A number of the bars have macadamia nut oil as well, but this addition did not really seem to improve the formula, so coming pours will not incorporate it.

Future batches will be in Base Nos. 10 and 28, with perhaps the No.88 shampoo bar if it sells well. No.28 bars will continue to be made with coconut milk, while No.10 bars (still to be poured) will not, although they will probably include some clay.

The No.88 bars presently available are regular size, with a few “Tub” size. The tub size are hefty and average 6-7 oz. each. The regular bars were made with green tea, while the Tub bars were not. Sorry for the confusion, we were still experimenting.

Peppermint Silk No.170 with Coconut Milk
I have really gone back and forth on whether to keep pouring No.170. It is a great formula and utilizes high quality oils in good proportion, but it has not tested better than the original No.08 which is what it was designed to do. Even at 170 batches poured there was still a lot to learn (and there always will be).

I will probably retire this formula, or tweak it some in the weeks and months ahead when I get anxious to experiment again. I already know where I would change it. The thing is that we already have so many great bars that we really don’t need another formula, and no one’s complaining. So maybe it’s time to just sit back and enjoy life for awhile.

Sandalwood Chamomile
A little history… This bar was first poured in base No.10, adding green tea and ground chamomile. The ground chamomile turned out to be kind of scratchy, and we worried that it would cause this bar to be designated hand soap only. As it turned out however, most people were not only fine with the slight abrasiveness of the bar, but found it desirable, along with the highly appealing sandalwood fragrance. This has turned out to be one of our all around best sellers.

Yogurt Lavender Calendula
This bar is presently out of stock, but will be available again next month (May). The bar size will probably change a little bit, and I will post new images at that time.

Now to share something that I thought was interesting (I think lots of stuff is interesting). During testing last year I poured many trial batches with yogurt, and many with cream. I was curious to see how they would compare. Although I didn’t care one way or the other, I assumed that the cream would be the winner. Surprisingly, it turned out to be the opposite. And this is totally why we do blind testing!

That’s it! Thanks for visiting Alma Soap Co. today.

John

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Pre-Holiday Update

We are pouring bunches of great new soaps, and it’s a good thing too — If you have visited the website recently it looks like we are out of almost everything! Let me tell you a little of what’s going on…

We are making a bunch of new coffee soap in our shea butter recipe (No.10), and lots of different mint soaps that are almost to die for.

We have updated our “Ginger” soap to formula No.10, have made a few loaves so far of Almond-Oatmeal, and are pouring a new scent that we haven’t even given a name to yet. We’ve got Tuberose in a new Q formula, and of course are pouring lots and lots of both Sandalwood and Goat Milk soaps, two of our best sellers. Oh, and lots of Lemongrass!

We are trying to offer a choice of bar size in more soaps, so that you can make your own decision on that, and will be simplifying the number of offerings on the website, working on that while soaps cure.

We were thrilled this summer to receive the last of Claire Hall’s calendula petals, grown right here in Wabasha, Minnesota. They are so much more vibrant and alive than the ones we would normally use, and look like petals of orange gold in each bar of No.08 with Calendula, of which we are pouring many slabs in the next few days.

I have personally been hiding a few pounds of expensive lavender essential oil for a special occasion, large glass bottles of Bulgarian and French oils, some organic… and you have never truly smelled lavender until you smell these. I think that all the lavender No.08s and No.170s we are about to pour will use these oils, just in time for Christmas. I think we will use it in the No.11s with yogurt that will be poured too.

That’s just some of what we are working on, and we will be posting new pictures to the website as soaps get cured and prepped. We also happen to make outstanding lotions, by the way, and bath salts too. We simply have not gotten to marketing those yet. They have certainly been tested. (smile)

Sorry for this long post. I started to write just a few sentences, and the more I wrote the more excited I got!

Thanks to all of you who have been so supportive this year, and helped us prosper. Our soaps really do continue to get better and better, with your help, and it is a fact that we would not exist without you. Thank you especially for your patience when it takes an extra day or so to get orders out, or when the website doesn’t seem to be working right, or when one of us fails to respond promptly to your comments or suggestions. You are much appreciated, and you have blessed us with your kindness.

Have a great weekend!
John

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On Testing Batches — S-No.s170 Cananga Silk

from behind the curtain…
By the time I mixed batch # 170 I was sure that this combination of oils, at these ratios, would create a soap that was equal to or better than any batch yet. Maybe we succeeded with this formula, or maybe not — soap is a pretty subjective thing. That said, I was initially disappointed in this batch when I tested the first bar at about a 3 week cure time. It just didn’t lather like it should have. In hindsight, this was great information. On a whim however, I grabbed a bar off the rack a few weeks later, and, having had more time to cure, it performed beautifully.

Regarding this particular soap, the custom blend of Bergamot, Tangerine, and Ylang essential oils is reminiscent of orange mixed in vanilla cream. Ylang has always seemed overpowering to me, and I was determined to appreciate it… to use it in a way that accentuated its lustiness, while maintaining good form. In this I believe I succeeded.

I hope this soap — this formula, No.s170 — becomes a great seller, but if it doesn’t that’s okay. We have so many great soaps, and many of our simplest formulas are some of our best. Please try a number of them, and let us know what you think. Thank you for your business.

— John, Lost in Minnesota