Beer Soap!

If there's one thing that Bend is reknowned for it's as a microbrew heaven.  Drive the streets of our fair city and you'll see brewing companies, IPA signs, beer trucks driven by bearded mountain men.  I've long wanted to dabble in the chemistry of beer soap-making, and finally have taken the plung! 

Thanks to my colleague Adam Becker (literally a Jack of All Trades), the first of many batches are currently curing--getting primed for my beloved customers in Bend.  I'm kind of a beer idiot, so Adam's in charge of choosing brews, suggesting fragrances, and flattening the dickens out of the beers.  We use brews in place of water in the soap recipe, but in order to avoid a beer and lye volcanic eruption, the beer needs to be really REALLY flat!   That's Adam's job, and he does it well.  :)

What's different about making beer soap?  Well, the first noticeable difference comes when the lye is mixed with the beer.  The smell is awful!  Pungent...ripe...dark.  It's a far cry from when I mix lye with water--for that, I need to work outdoors because the combination dangerously takes your breath away!  For this...it's the smell.  Blech, I work quickly and get that mix cooling!  The other noticeable difference is in the final product.  So far we've created beer soaps out of porters and ales (all local brews, of course).  We've created unscented soaps so far, just to get "base line" ideas of what beer soap smells like.   The soaps are beautiful!  Consistently colored, smooth, heavenly.  The fragrances (no extra added) are earthy, mellow and sultry.  I'm sure we'll experiment with more fragrance combos, but I'm a fan of what we've discovered so far.

Keep an eye out for some beer soaps in the near future!