HOW TO MAKE HANDMADE SOAP

The benefit of hot process soap (or HP) is we can using it the next day after we finished mixing. Hot process soap doesn't need to be cured (while cold process soap should be cured about 4 weeks before we can use it).

The difference between hot process soap and cold process soap making is the saponification process. Saponification is the chemical reaction of an akali and oil/fat to form soap. For cold process soap making , saponification occurs and continue in the soap mold so we have to wait for it to finish curing...normally is about 4 months. But for the hot process we heat the soap in a mixing tank until it finishes saponifying. After the soap finishes cooking and has cooled, it's ready to use.

I will explain hot process soap making by using Double Boiler and oven as the heating resource.

Hot Process Soap Using a Double Boiler
Different from the cold process because we starting to prepare the lye solution first and melting the oil/fat comes second, and prepare all ingredients to be ready to use before starting the process because hot process soap making won't wait the lye solution and melted oil cool down before adding ingredients.

Hot Process Soap Making Using a Double Boiler - Process step by step
1. Prepare and weight your oil.

2. For larger pot, fill it with water a half height of the pot, and start boiling the water with a low heat.

3. For smaller pot, fill it with the oils/fat you weighted. Place the small pot on the stove and slowly melting it with low heat.

4. While the oil/fat is melting, during this time - prepare your lye solution. Once the oil/fat has completely melted, then turn off the heat. Caution!! Don't melting the oil/fat with high temperature, just let it get hot enough to melt.

5. Now the oils/fat has completely melted - turn off the heat. Then it's time to add the lye solution. Different from the cold process, we don't need to wait for the oil/fat or lye solution to cool. Slowly add the lye solution to the oil/fat in the pot.

6. Stir the mixture until it's well mixed.

7. Continue stir until you see a trace. You will know a trace when the soap batch becomes thick. You will find 3 stages you need to look at. In the beginning an easy trace which appears like a skinny sauce. Next a medium trace which appears like gravy and lastly a thick trace which appears like pudding. All cleaning soap undergo trace to correctly saponify.

8. Just like a side note, you need to keep stirring just in case your recipe volcanoes. Not every quality recipes is going to do this, but when you do not keep stirring or keep close track of it, the soap may crawl up and out of the pot. When your soap mixture reaches a pleasant pudding thickness, allow it to relaxation for any couple of minutes to ascertain if it volcanoes. Stir again whether it does until the soap is no more attempting to crawl up the pot.

9. Now it's time to cook the soap mixture. Place the small pot of soap mixture into the larger pot of boiling water. Remember in step 3 we started boiling the water.

10. After cooking it for any couple of minutes, you will find some separation happening. The oil and water will begin separating with the white stuff swimming in the oil. It's okay now to cover the small pot and walk away. You should check onto it every occasionally.

11. You need to stir and blend the pot completely any time you check on it. One of the thing you will find the fact that oil will slowly disappear and also the mixture will slow turn from pudding prefer to gel like. The cooking time will be different depending on the oil/fat use in the recipe. It may be 15 mins or as much as an hour or so.

12. While your mixture is cooking you can prepare mold and your addictives, colorants, herbs, essence oils,..etc. Whatever color or properties you plan on adding to your soap, now is the time to prepare it.

13. Once your soap mixture reaches a gel like blob texture it's time to add the addictives and stir.

14. Now it's time to put the soap into you molds and let it cool.

15. Once your soap cools, you can start using your soap.

Watch this hot process soap making process in video :

Hot Process Soap Using An Oven
This process is not everything not the same as the cold process method. After finishing the cold process method you pour the soap in the mold and warmth within an oven. Just make certain your mold is warmth resistant.

1. Follow the cold process method.

2. Pre-heat your oven to 170 degrees.

3. Pour your soap into your mold and place mold in oven at that temperature.

4. Cook for 4 hours and turn off oven. Leave the mold in the oven to cool.

5. Once cool, remove mold from oven and you can start using your soap.

If you make hot process soap with this technique , it means you made cold process soap with very little wait time...yeah! don't need to wait it to be cured.