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Our Soap-Making Process
Our handmade goat's milk soap products are produced right in the comfort of our own farmhouse in Sheffield, Iowa, using regular pots, pans, and utensils
that you might find in any normal kitchen. The soap-making process is simple; it is the special aspects of our process and the blends we use that
give our soap a great appearance and a wonderful experience to the user.
The process starts twice a day when Dan milks our ladies. He uses a custom-built pen that contains a feed dish so they can
have a snack while being milked. Dan milks the lady by hand, which only takes a few minutes to do. Holly once attempted
to milk and it took five times longer to only get a fraction of the milk, so she happily leaves it up to Dan "Milk Man" Hurley.
The milk is strained to remove any foreign material (the occasional hair), pasturized, and then rapidly cooled to preserve maximum freshness.
This ensures the best quality milk is in our soap. It is stored in sealed jars until we are ready to use it.
Once we are ready to make a batch of soap, we first start out by blending cold oils in a pot on the stove. The mixture varies from soap to soap, but
can contain any of: olive, coconut, palm, soybean, and cottonseed oil. These
oils have to be heated slowly to prevent burning and to make them pourable and mixable with the other ingredients.
Meanwhile, powdered lye is slowly added to the cold milk to produce the lye-milk mixture. This is stirred to combine it thoroughly. This is probably the
most dangerous time of making soap, as the lye is very corrosive. We always wear hand and eye protection! Please note: Lye, although used in the process
of making soap, is no longer lye by the end of the making. Please see our F.A.Q. for details.
The lye-milk mixture is then poured into the hot oil mixture, being careful not to splash or pour too quickly. It is mixed thoroughly once added.
Borax and sugar are added to the mix. The borax provides natural cleaning power without forming a harsh soap as well as acting as a thickener and foam booster. The sugar
is a special ingredient that we discovered to improve the texture and clarity of our soaps.
We then add glycerine. The process of saponification, where the lye and oils are made into soap, produces glycerine naturally. However,
to give our soap that 'added kick' of moisturizing power, we add glycerine to the mix to make it even richer, something commercially-made
soaps to not do. In fact, they strip out glycerine to use in other products!
We then add the essential oils or fragrance oils, keeping these ingredients as natural as possible (see our product
lists for further details). Some of our soaps also contain special ingredients (such as oatmeal, rosemary, green tea,
aloe vera gel, lanolin, cocoa butter, etc.) This is the time when these special ingredients are added. All soaps
containing special ingredients mention them in the description of the soap.
This is a view of the mixed but unblended soap mixture. It is still quite warm at this point. The soap mix is then run through our own blending process
to render it smooth and silky -- just the right quality we want! Our blending process also assists in the saponification process, which by the time this
is all blended, is well underway.
The mixture is then poured into our homemade soap molds (over waxed paper for easy removal later). A steady hand and patience is required to avoid
spilling it!
The molds are then shaken to remove air bubbles and level the soap. The tops are smoothed using a custom-made scraper to ensure a flat, smooth surface.
Here is soap forming and hardening in the molds for 24 hours before cutting.
It takes approximately an hour of setup time and 45 minutes per batch to make
soap, and another 30 minutes for cleanup afterwards, so a total of about 2 hours and 15 minutes per batch.
After a day of forming and hardening, the soap is then solid enough to be cut using a knife and a guide.
We get approximately 30 usable bars per batch.
The "ends" are used by our family or packaged as "grab bags" of many pieces of soap for customers to buy.
The soap then sits in the mold for another day before being removed. The soap is then retired to our curing racks
where it will sit for six weeks to properly cure and harden.
This process ensures that the soap will be a mild, long-lasting bar once used.
After the soap has cured for at least six weeks, it is hand-wrapped by Holly and labeled by Tori and is then
ready to be sold to customers!
This page and all content Copyright (C)2007 Hurley's Goat Products, Sheffield, IA
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The process starts twice a day when Dan milks our ladies. He uses a custom-built pen that contains a feed dish so they can
have a snack while being milked. Dan milks the lady by hand, which only takes a few minutes to do. Holly once attempted
to milk and it took five times longer to only get a fraction of the milk, so she happily leaves it up to Dan "Milk Man" Hurley.
