Making Yamali Soap

Thought you would like a pictorial story on how Yamali soap is made, using the traditional cold process method.

First, we measure the hard and brittle oils, the oils that produce hardness and lathery qualities to the bars.

The hard oils we use in our soaps include organic sustainable palm oil, and coconut oil. The brittle oils,

or butters we use add rich, moisturizing, and conditioning properties. These include shea and cocoa butter.

Once these oils are measured, they are put in the big soap pot to be melted.

Once melted, the measured liquid oils are then added to the soap pot. These oils are full of vitamins and nutrients that sooth, condition and nourish the skin most. We love using rich, extra virgin olive oil in every single batch, but also use emollient jojoba, avocado, wheat germ, castor, sweet almond, apricot kernel oils.   

During the mixing and melting of the vegetable oils, the sodium hydroxide, in bead form, is mixed with pure water. The resulting solution is often referred to as 'lye', and can cause serious, (and painful, may I add...) burns, if not handled with caution. The mix looks cloudly at first, whenever the beads are added to the water; however, the solution quickly turns crystal clear. (Scary? A little at first, but I soon got used to it.)

 Once the lye solution and veggie oil mix acheive my desired temperatures, the lye is slowly poured into the soap pot. This makes the oil turn cloudy, as the photo below shows.

 Okay, at this point the lye and oils must blend together and create a chemical reaction called saponification. In other terms, to 'saponify' is to 'make soap'. (Being this is a chemical reaction, it involves a lot of science, which I have decided to spare for this mainly pictorial story of the simple basics of cold process soapmaking here at Yamali Naturals.) Anyways, this raw soap mixture must be consistantly stirred until it has a thick, goopy consistancy. This can take a loooooooong time, depending on the recipe. Thankfully, I have a few happy volunteers that always want a turn at stirring.

When the raw soap mixture is nice and goopy, the essential oils, botanticals, and grains are added. We use a large variety of different pure essential oils that I blend myself, to create the different scents. Lavender, rosemary, lemongrass, patchouli, orange, peppermint, lemon, spearmint, citronella, lime, cedar, grapefruit, ylang-ylang, bergamot, and much, much more! Botanticals and grains are used for gentle, or even rough exfoliation. Oatmeal, cornmeal, poppyseeds, coffee grounds, calendula petals, peppermint leaves, lavender buds, etc.

The raw soap is then poured into lined, wooden molds, covered up and then insulated for 1-2 days. (Shown here is our flat mold, but we also have log molds.) When the soap has set, and is hard enough, the paper lining is peeled off, letting a good amount of air to the slab of soap. The soap is then cut after it becomes hard enough to remain rigid. If it's too soft, the bars will bend, and become mishaped. Below is a photo of the soap right after it was poured into the mold.

This soap has been taken out of the mold, and separated from the paper wrap to dry more. 

Obviously, I don't have a photo of the yellow soap being cut, but here is one of the green Oasis soap.

And here is some Ginger Clean and Honey Lovin' Oats already cut and ready to cure.

The soaps are cured 6 weeks before wrapping....to be continued.