Before I started making soap I used to buy a soap with coffee grounds in it. It was a "gardener's soap", the coffee grounds were supposed to help with scrubbing dirt off your hands. Recently I decided to try making something similar. I found a few recipes (here and here) to get an idea of how much coffee to use.
The recipes say to use fresh coffee grounds and fresh espresso to make the lye, but as we don't drink coffee, and this was just for washing hands, I wanted to use waste coffee grounds instead. We got some from a friend of a friend with a cafe and I dried them in the woodstove. I used packets of instant coffee that I keep around in case someone wants a coffee.
I decided to use half tallow, quarter coconut oil and quarter olive oil for this recipe as the coconut oil adds more suds and that seemed appropriate for a soap that would be used to clean hands. The recipes also suggested that the coffee would remove other odours. I wondered what it would smell like, so I didn't use an essential oil for this first batch.
The recipe is based on my bath soap recipe from a previous post.
Coffee soap recipe
250g olive oil
250g coconut oil
500g tallow
6% superfat
142g caustic
300-330g coffee
You can get all my tallow soap recipes in my eBook Make Your Own Natural Soap, more information here.
My other soap posts:
Natural soap using beef tallow
How to rebatch a soap disaster
Why use natural soaps and salves?
Neem oil soap and salve
Shaving soap
Soap with coffee grounds
The recipes say to use fresh coffee grounds and fresh espresso to make the lye, but as we don't drink coffee, and this was just for washing hands, I wanted to use waste coffee grounds instead. We got some from a friend of a friend with a cafe and I dried them in the woodstove. I used packets of instant coffee that I keep around in case someone wants a coffee.
I decided to use half tallow, quarter coconut oil and quarter olive oil for this recipe as the coconut oil adds more suds and that seemed appropriate for a soap that would be used to clean hands. The recipes also suggested that the coffee would remove other odours. I wondered what it would smell like, so I didn't use an essential oil for this first batch.
The recipe is based on my bath soap recipe from a previous post.
Coffee soap recipe
250g olive oil
250g coconut oil
500g tallow
6% superfat
142g caustic
300-330g coffee
The soap doesn't smell like coffee, so next time I would use an essential oil like tea tree or eucalyptus. I quite like the colour from the coffee, and it does seem to work at cleaning my hands after gardening.
What do you think? Do you like to play around with soap recipes? What else should I try?
What do you think? Do you like to play around with soap recipes? What else should I try?
PS I'm going to start selling my soap in September....
You can get all my tallow soap recipes in my eBook Make Your Own Natural Soap, more information here.
Would you like to try making your own soap from natural ingredients, but don’t know where to start?
This eBook will take you through everything you need to know to make simple soaps from natural ingredients, including herbs, clays, charcoal, oatmeal and coffee grounds.
It also explains how to use tallow in soap. Tallow is cheap and locally available, and it makes long-lasting moisturising soaps, it is an under-utilised ingredient in home soapmaking in my opinion. This eBook includes 10 recipes specifically designed for tallow soap.
Basic Tallow Soap
Pink Clay Soap
Green Herb Soap
True Grit Soap
Black Magic Soap
Salt Spa Soap
Honey and Oatmeal Soap
Neem Oil Soap
Sustainable Shaving soap
Cleaning Soap
Formulate your own
It also explains how to use tallow in soap. Tallow is cheap and locally available, and it makes long-lasting moisturising soaps, it is an under-utilised ingredient in home soapmaking in my opinion. This eBook includes 10 recipes specifically designed for tallow soap.
Basic Tallow Soap
Pink Clay Soap
Green Herb Soap
True Grit Soap
Black Magic Soap
Salt Spa Soap
Honey and Oatmeal Soap
Neem Oil Soap
Sustainable Shaving soap
Cleaning Soap
Formulate your own
My other soap posts:
Natural soap using beef tallow
How to rebatch a soap disaster
Why use natural soaps and salves?
Neem oil soap and salve
Shaving soap
Soap with coffee grounds
Ohh Hubby drinks coffee every day so lots of grounds here. I wonder if you used un-used coffee grounds you would get more fragrance.
ReplyDeleteI love the colour. I have been wanting to make a coffee soap for some time now but things are a bit hectic. We have totally run out and hate being without our own soap. I am acquiring some beef tallow in a few weeks so I will have to knuckle down to it soon. I have also decided that I want some proper loaf molds too so I can nice soap slab/slices. I favour your fat mix too and find it fits the bill for moisture richness, lather and cleansing without too much stripping.
ReplyDeleteIf you want a really good scrub for farm dirty hands you could try adding finely ground egg shells to the coffee soap. I have made a few batches of this one and it is really good at getting grease off hands.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this! I've been wondering about the coffee grounds plus wouldn't mind something else to do with them besides the compost. I have "gardening hands" almost every day so coffee soap would be a great thing to keep around.
ReplyDeleteI've made coffee soap with fresh coffee grinds. My husband is a dedicated coffee drinker so they were easy to get! I use the soap as kitchen soap as it is meant to remove odours from your hands such as garlic. I'm not sure it works at removing garlic from your hands but it is a nice soap and cleans well so I'm happy. It also keeps really well. I found some in the back of the cupboard that must be two years old and it is still fine. Maybe the coffee was acting as a preservative (I've really no idea about that, it could be that it was stored in a cool dark place).
ReplyDelete