When I returned to the States I decided to try my hand at soapmaking. I bought a big jug of canola oil and a can of Red Devil lye and started to research making soap on the internet. I made my first batch the next day and it worked! It wasn't very interesting, but it was soap. For the next four years I experimented with various oils and essential oils, learning how oils affected the final product and what beneficial properties they added to the soap.
What's the Big Deal About Natural Products?
Natural products are made with unprocessed, uncontaminated raw materials. Most types of coconut oil are made with a process involving solvents. Traces of these solvents end up in the soap! Is that dreadful? No, but if you don't have to have them, that's all the better. Modern soaps contain a number of chemicals, some natural, some not. These chemicals harden the bar, give it a long shelf life, and an almost permanent aroma. Sometimes people are sensitive to these chemicals and blame the symptoms on something else.
Mountain Ranch Soap is about as natural as you can get. We start with Calaveras Olive Oil which is pressed locally, in Copperopolis, California. The oil is first pressed as virgin oil, also known as lampate, which means lamp oil. Lampate is too strong for human consumption -- it is dark green and has a strong olive aroma -- but it makes good soap. The soap comes out green but fades when exposed to light, as in your shower. The other main oil we use is coconut oil. Our coconut oil comes from Spectrum Naturals, a natural products manufacturer located in Petaluma, California. The oil is expeller extracted, a process that involves no heat and no solvents. This oil costs about $4 a pint in the health food stores.
Philosophy
The two oils at the top of the list in soapmaking are coconut oil, noted for its lather, and olive oil, noted for its kindness to skin and healing properties. Palm oils and tallow are much cheaper and are usually the primary ingredients in soap, handmade or otherwise. All of my soaps are made with extra virgin olive oil (hence, the green color) and expeller extracted coconut oil. I also add a little avocado oil as an emollient. I used to add beeswax, but a bear attacked my beehives.
The fragrances are from pure essential oils: lavender, tea tree, lime, lemongrass, and even a little rosemary. I like my soap to have a distinctive aroma. I want my tea tree to smell like tea tree not a muddy mix of aromas.
Methods
I first started making soap as a hobby, something to try my hand at. I subscribed to several soap making mailing lists and discovered that everyone seemed to be making soap one bar at a time in small batches. It was a very cottage industry. Having worked in systems and manufacturing for years, I began to see ways of streamlining the han made soap process. My goal was to produce 200 bars a day in four hours or less. After four years of development, I've succeeded in my goal. My facility in Mountain Ranch is designed so that one person can, with a minimum of wasted effort, produce 200-300 bars in fewer than four hours. Where the common practice is to freeze the mold in order to remove the soap, I use a drill driven screw to push the soap out of the molds. I can unmold, slice and put onto curing racks, six molds in fifteen minutes. My slicer slices one soap log into 18-20 bars at a time. I designed a curing rack that speeds curing by allowing air to freely circulate around the soap, and also allows a very high storage density (important when you have over 4000 bars curing at a time).
My soap is still handmade, but I've streamlined the process to make it profitable and still be able to have fun doing it. The best ingredients carefully prepared seem to make a very nice soap with strong and distinctive aromas. Plus, it is totally natural with no artificial colors, aromas or chemicals. Naturally high in glycerin, my soap adds moisture to your skin. The avocado oil softens the skin and helps preserve the moisture.
About Saltwater Soap...
Several times in my life I've gone cruising on sailboats. The first time was shortly after Sally and I were married when we sold everything and sailed from Cleveland, Ohio to Miami, Florida via the Erie Canal and the Hudson River. We later sailed from San Francisco to Mexico and back. Along the way I looked for soap that would lather in saltwater. My mother told tales of her uncles in the Royal Navy with only seawater to wash in, and the fact that they used saltwater soap. I never found any. Later I researched it and found that the key to saltwater lather was the amount of coconut oil in the soap, the more coconut oil the better, up to a point. Soap that was 100% coconut oil was found by some to be drying. I played around with various ratios of coconut oil and olive oil until I found a combination that would lather in saltwater and still be gentle on the skin. The added advantage is that it lathers really well in freshwater. I add a little avocado oil that remains in the soap as free oil. This acts as an emollient to retain moisture and soften the skin.
Where We Are Now
Currently, Mountain Ranch Soap has a production facility with a maximum capacity of 500 bars a day, with a sustainable production of 200 bars a day. Natural cold-processed soap needs to be cured for at least a month. The cure time, plus production and packaging time, adds up to a six-week lead-time for orders, existing schedule permitting.
Labeling, aroma, and to a certain extent, packaging, can be special ordered so you can create a private brand of your own. Different styles and shapes of soap can also be accommodated, but at a lower production rate. The existing system is optimized for the current size and shape of the soap.
