Ale Soap

I finally got the chance to try soaping with "Beer"....well, not necessarily "Beer", but Ale :)

I am not a big beer drinker and my husband also drinks it occasionally so it did take me a while to finally get the chance to soap with it.  My lucky day came when the hubby came home with some "Apple Ale"!

I guess it's pretty popular now, and the hubby wanted to try it.  Lucky for me he did not like and I had some left over bottles to play with!

I did a little bit of research to make sure I did it safely.  I was a little nervous about working with the alcohol and whether I was going to end up with a volcano!  I checked out this video one more time from Soaping 101 You Tube Channel to review and prepare.

I had purchased my fragrance oil a while back from Bramble Berry, Oatmeal Stout.  It

s a very nice fragrance, and I thought a nice compliment to my Apple Ale soap.   

I let my Ale sit out overnight and then made sure to froze it.  I mixed in my lye and slowly dissolved on the frozen Ale.  I got a very interesting color.  A cream brown, which I thought was different.  I decided that I wanted to make this soap with no Titanium Dioxide and also decided to gel it.  I wanted more of a natural color bar with some interesting red swirls.  

My problem?....well I got a little carried away with the red brick oxide that I used for my swirls.  I used a little too much, and I guess I will be looking forward to some red on my washcloth for sure!  I also realized that I should have not gel this soap since the color really discolored to a dark brown.  In the picture below you can still see some of the swirls, but I can tell you that right now it has gotten pretty dark that you can barely see them :(.  I still think the fragrance is really nice and just need to plan differently for future batches.

I am excited for my 2014 Soaping Year.  I am hoping to try different types of soaps!  Looking forward to giving a try at new swirls (making a new attempt at the Peacock Swirl), and maybe branching out to more natural soaps and maybe working with Essential Oils.  I hope you continue to visit and check in on me.  

Now that I finally got my computer up and running I hope to have more soapy posts up and I am going to attempt to be a little more active with my Facebook page.  

As always, THANKS FOR CHECKING OUT MY BLOG!!!

Happy Soaping!

Roxana