How to Make Goat’s Milk Soap
Today I made some Oatmeal, Milk and Honey soap. My basic recipe is 45% soft oils, 40% hard oils, and 15% butters, with a 4% superfat because the goat’s milk also adds fats. The amount of milk is about twice the amount of lye. This method is not for beginners, but you can use an online soap calculator such as SoapCalc to figure out a recipe with the ingredients that you have or like. I added some pulverized rolled oats (do not use quick oats!), some local honey, and some Oatmeal, Milk and Honey fragrance oil.
Pulverized oats, local honey, and fragrance oil
Making soap with goat’s milk is a little bit different than using water. The lye heats up whatever liquid you add it to, so there are several things you need to do to prevent the goat’s milk from being scorched by the lye.
The first thing I do is melt all the oils and cool them down to around 80-90 degrees fahrenheit.
Melted oils
Another thing I do is freeze all the goat’s milk in ice cube trays.
Frozen Goat's Milk
When the lye is added to the frozen milk, it will melt it. You have to be sure to stir it really well to get the lye completely dissolved. The best way I’ve found is to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a silicone spatula and keep stirring until the temperature of the lye solution is around 80-90 degrees fahrenheit as well. If the lye solution is too cool, you can get pockets of undissolved lye in your soap. This is a great time to have your goggles, rubber gloves and apron on!
Lye is dissolving the frozen milk
Once the lye is fully dissolved, it’s time to add it to the oils. I use my stick blender to mix them. When the mixture starts to thicken, I add the oats, honey, and fragrance and mix some more.
Adding the pulverized oats
I like to pour my soap when it is still pretty thin – about like pancake batter. Once it is in the mold, I cover the top with plastic wrap and tape it down.
Oatmeal, Milk & Honey soap in the mold
I used to prevent gel in my goat’s milk soap by putting a fan on it. Some soapmakers will put the soap in the refrigerator or freezer at this point. My mold won’t fit in either, so this worked for me.
Soap and fan set-up
I have since decided that I like my goat’s milk soaps to gel, so I will insulate with a towel or two, then cut the soap into bars in a couple of days after it has a chance to set up and isn’t too sticky. You can see more information and comments about gelling vs. non-gelling goat’s milk soaps here.
If anyone has questions or comments, I’d love to hear them!
This post was updated on January 16, 2012.
May 27th, 2008 at 8:38 am
I’ve been gearing up to try my hand at CP soap, Goat’s Milk in particular. I’m so glad you posted this! I’ll be coming back to read it a million times before I actually dig in! Lol
May 27th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Hey Elizabeth – I would definitely make regular CP soap with water before attempting a goat’s milk batch just so you know what it “looks like”. Let me know if you have any questions about either process, k?
May 27th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Yea, I think thats what’s been putting me off so far. Lol. I will try a small batch (or 2 or 3) before doing the Milk ones
July 30th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
How to Make Goat’s Milk Soap « Great Cakes Soapworks…
How to make goat’s milk soap with fresh goat’s milk. This tutorial is for experienced soapmakers only….
March 19th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Hi
Thank you for your information about how to make handmade goat milk soap. I’ve been trying to make handmade goat milk soap for the last 4-5 months. I used half water and half milk to get the color I wanted. I let the oils cool down with room temparature and cool lye solution. I pured the cool milk to the oil and the lye solution which was dissolved with water to the oil and I use strick blender to mix it.
The result was I got lye granule flying around my large 3 batches ( 12 lbs batches ). It wasn’t my measurement and I was not because sodium hydroxide didn’t dissolve completely because it happened with all 3 batches. Do you know why? How can I solve this problem?
Thank you for your help
Cindy
March 20th, 2010 at 11:29 am
@Cindy – If you like to use half water, half goat’s milk, then freeze the water and goat’s milk in ice cube trays, and add the lye to the frozen milk & water. Once all the milk & water is melted, you can add it to the oils and blend.
June 12th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
When I first made soap, no one told me that I should try regular cp before making goat’s milk soap.
So, I jumped in with both feet, and never looked back. Only when I got involved in some soaping sites, did I learn that goats milk soap was supposedly difficult. I’ve never had it burn the milk, I have had it turn it a bright yellow.
June 14th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
You can add the milk a little later in the process, by mixing the lye/water to the oils, hand stir for a few minutes, then add the milk. I’ve used this process and it seems to work well, though it will still heat up quite a bit.
June 14th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
@jett – Yep, I’ve done it that way too. By freezing the milk though, I can use all goat’s milk for the liquid portion of my soap and it won’t overheat.
January 31st, 2011 at 12:09 pm
I made a small batch of goatsmilk soap using this exact same method.. I poured it into my mold Saturday. It is now Monday and the soap is still very soft and oily on top. Will this harden, or did I mess something up..
January 31st, 2011 at 8:42 pm
@Donna – Hopefully it will harden. Keep an eye on it, and keep checking it!
March 29th, 2011 at 7:14 am
I tried goatmilk oatmeal & honey a couple of weeks ago. I had only done Hot process as I am new to soap making and impatent to try my new creations! So I did cold process in the oven! Turned out like cookies! They smell like you could eat them ( I did not add fragrance)
) I’m doing another batch today, along with a coconut milk one too!
The tops did turn out oily but I just wiped them off. They are pretty hard now, but I’m letting them cure for another week or so. I think the only hard part about it is being sure to add the lye slowly to the milk… and waiting!
March 29th, 2011 at 7:47 am
@JulieB – If you use frozen milk, there’s no need to add the lye slowly, but you do have to stir as soon as the lye is added or it will form hard yellow lumps of undissolved lye.
May 10th, 2011 at 6:09 am
Thanks – I might try this. I linked it to my soap project post too, for inspiration!
Inspire Me Heather´s last blog post ..project- soap
May 10th, 2011 at 9:28 am
@Heather – Looks like you have all kinds of fun projects on your blog!! Thanks for the link!
November 9th, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Making soap at home is an easy and enjoyable way to get even more from your small farm..Thank you so much for this post cause I’ve done a great soap using this blog instruction…Thank you so much for this….
January 2nd, 2012 at 2:22 am
I use the same method as you. One question I have is how much pulverized rolled oats do you use per pound of soap? I made one batch with around 1 1/2 cups of pulverized oats to 2 1/2 pounds of soap – the bars stayed soft (almost like playdoh) even after sitting for 4 weeks. I’m pretty sure it was due to too much pulverized oats.
Thanks!
January 2nd, 2012 at 9:49 am
@Matt – You’re right – that sounds like too many oats! In my largest recipe (11 lbs. of oils), I only use 2 cups. The other thing is making sure you are using the old-fashioned oats, not the quick kind!
January 2nd, 2012 at 10:30 am
Thanks for the reply Amy! I used old fashioned oats and followed a recommendation on a website for the amount of oats – they were either way off on the amount or I read it wrong. Can’t find the site again to verify. Thank you for sharing how much you use!
One more question, what kind of soap molds do you like to use? My wife just got me an acrylic slab mold for Christmas. It holds 5lbs of soap. Just made my first batch with it yesterday. Will be un-molding today.
http://www.soap-making-resource.com/slab-soap-molds.html
January 2nd, 2012 at 3:53 pm
@Matt – I use wooden log molds that my husband made. I can cut them to a more precise size than with a slab mold, and precision has suddenly become very important to me!
January 11th, 2012 at 7:43 pm
I’ve been making CP Soap for a while now, and always do fine UNTIL I try to make it with Goat’s Milk. So far, the only advice I have been given is to use half water / half milk, but I would like to use all milk.
My first attempt resulted in Alien Brains – milk got too hot with the lye and curdled. Now I freeze my milk as you mentioned above, the problem is I don’t think my mixture get’s warm enough and I have white spots as soon as I pour.
It’s not lye. I believe it’s stearic acid? Something from the mixture not getting warm enough. Any ideas?
I might try mixing my oils the night before. Although I use beeswax in my recipe (for hardness) so not sure how that will go…
Melani´s last blog post ..grrr huphenstuff!
January 11th, 2012 at 8:37 pm
@Melani – Can you reformulate your recipe without the beeswax & stearic acid? I don’t think melting your oils the night before is the answer if it’s not getting hot enough. My recipe is pretty large, but I’ve discovered that I can stir the lye solution quite awhile before it starts heating up, so I will stir until it reaches at least 80 degrees before adding it to the oils.
January 11th, 2012 at 8:44 pm
The stearic acid isn’t an ingredient I add – I was told that’s what it was. But my oils are heated to 80 degrees celcius to melt the beeswax, so I doubt that’s the problem. The beeswax is included to harden the bar because I don’t use Palm oil of any sort. Even prior to the beeswax however, I get these white spots when using goat’s milk.
I make about a 2kg batch, my Milk/Lye solution got to about 30 degrees celcius, my oils to 80. I let the oils cool to about 40-50 degrees (c) before adding in the milk/lye mixture. As soon as I pour though, there are the white spots.
They are firm too – like if you pluck out a ‘spot’, you can’t crush it in your fingers. But it’s not Lye as I don’t get a zap and there’s no grainy feeling to the milk/lye mixture when I stir.
Melani´s last blog post ..grrr huphenstuff!
January 11th, 2012 at 8:56 pm
@Melani – I have to admit I’m stumped. I make goat’s milk soap with just olive oil and it seems to work out ok, so it can’t be the lack of palm. But there must be something about your recipe that isn’t cooperating. I guess I would try leaving out the beeswax – increase the coconut for hardness and let the oils cool to 30 degrees celsius, so they are about the same temp as the lye solution when you combine them.
January 11th, 2012 at 9:40 pm
LOL, googling and I just came across one of your other posts that appears to have the same spots as mine!
http://www.greatcakessoapworks.com/handmade-soap-blog/index.php/so-disappointing/
The info in the comments was good. I’m 99% sure it has to do with the GM and Lye not mixing in properly. Will have to test some things tonight I think…
Melani´s last blog post ..grrr huphenstuff!
January 12th, 2012 at 8:46 am
Ok, so now maybe we are getting somewhere!! I realized that I need to update this post because I have been gelling my goat’s milk soaps and stirring my lye solution a lot longer to make sure it’s fully dissolved and heated up to at least 80 degrees F / 30 C before adding it to the oils. I’m also using a silicone spatula when I stir the lye solution to make sure I’m scraping the edges of the container that I’m mixing it in really well. I haven’t had any trouble since I started doing this.
I hope that’s the answer you need!!
January 12th, 2012 at 2:42 pm
Going to give it another go this morning and stir for much longer, see if that helps!
Thanks SO much for the info!
Melani´s last blog post ..Goat’s Milk Frustrations
January 18th, 2012 at 4:12 am
You have one large mold there!! The soap looks so lovely…I bet it must be heavenly to use as well!!
January 18th, 2012 at 8:17 am
@Nitya – Thank you for your comment! Yes, my husband made all my molds, so they are extra long.