My soapmaking experience today

This morning I decided to make a soap that has been requested multiple times by my friends and customers, but I was not able to make it because of the lack of certain ingredients at the time. The special request was a hunter and fisherman's soap that masked human scent. I have heard people tell me about how effective this type of soap is, and how succesful their hunting or fishing trip was after using it, and they give all credit to the soap! I had heard that anise essential oil or extract (yes, licorice) is the main ingredient in fisher's soaps, so I decided to give it a whirl, being that I finally had all the ingredients for it.

With a basic idea in my head, I created a shampoo bar recipe and calculated it to see how much lye I would need. I knew that anise was going to be the main scent, but I didn't wan't the scent to be too overpowering with licorice. So after thinking about it, I decided on adding some sweet fennel to the blend, which is still very close to anise, but I hoped, nonetheless, it would give the bar an extra note of calming sweetness. I also had the idea that I wanted to color this soap pitch black or slate gray to prevent the possible visual confusion of "Yes, this is our black licorice bar. No, as you can see, it's not really black." (Yes, questions like this are asked.) So, I asked my mom if I could use the rest of her activated charcoal powder capsules for a good cause. (Hopefully, nobody here is going to get poisoned any time soon, becaue the best remedy is officially gone.) I wasn't sure if I wanted to make a black swirl contrasting with the natural creamy yellow, because the Oasis and one of the 'new-and-soon-to-be-introduced' bars are both swirled, and besides that I wanted and was ready to try a new technique of color contrast. Making new bars is so fun!

Well, around noon, I started making the soap by mixing the lye and melting the vegetable oils. ) See the post on Making Yamali Soap.) I wasn't sure when I should add the charcoal to achieve the best color, so I added about a teaspoon of the powder to the lye solution. (My 7 year old brother emptied each individual capsule, twenty count at least, for a whopping one dollar bill. I love my sibling-minions. Thanks Nate!) The lye then turned pitch black. But here's the funny part: when I poured the black lye into the melted vegetable oils, instead of turning the saponifying soap gray, it turned pale sage green! Weird.

I was about halfway to the tracing point, when I made up my mind about the technique I wanted to use. Layering. Only two layers, simple enough. The bottom was to be black and the top, uncolored, which is usually a creamy yellow due to the types of oils I use.

After the raw soap completed saponifying, and traced, I took a small portion out and whisked in a few generous teaspoons of activated charcoal powder, and then returned the soap to the batch.

After all the black goo was mixed into the soap, I divided the raw soap in two, and poured them into two separate log molds.  

I covered the molds with another mold, and some old bath towels to insulate. Now, onto the second layer.

I am going to skip ahead to the dividing of the raw, uncolored soap. Here it is.

This is a picture my sister took of me pouring the second layer onto the first layer.

Neat. Wasn't expecting Pittsburg Steeler colors, but some people I know may like that.

Well, I'll be posting pictures soon of the cut and finished bars, and eventually, packaged. I still need a name for the soap, any ideas or suggestions are welcome.

Yamali's Hunter and Fisherman's Shampoo Bar

Scented with black anise & sweet fennel