Pumpkin Stout

One of the comments we get at every single market we attend is, "OOOh, these are So pretty! Much too pretty to use." Which we answer with a cheerful smile and mental growl. With these soaps, though, that's never going to be an issue! These bars actually do have nice horizontal layers, but you can't see them because the Pumpkin Spice and the Oatmeal Stout layers darkened nearly identically. Sigh. Still, this is a soap to treasure both for its Amazing smell and for its over-the-top awesome ingredients! These are "beer bars," which means extra fantastic bubbles, and they also have colloidal oats, for skin pampering goodness. 

These cold processed soaps are made with saponified olive, organic coconut, sustainable palm, almond, and castor oils; shea butter; beer; colloidal oats; kaolin clay; mulberry silk; and sugar. Formulated to offer a rich, creamy lather with plentiful bubbles, each bar weighs at least 4.8 ounces.

The other ingredients, not related to lather, bubble type, and skin feel, are phthalate free fragrance oils, and sodium lactate (the salt component of lactic acid, used for hardening soap). Sodium hydroxide (lye) is added to oils early in the soap making process. Lye and oils combine in the saponification process, chemically transforming into soap and glycerin, leaving no remaining lye. Our soaps, along with many (most?) cold processed soaps, are "superfatted," which means that we add slightly more oils than are necessary to saponify the lye. This ensures that no lye will remain when saponification is complete, and the remaining oils contribute to producing an emollient bar of soap.