I crossed a line I shouldn’t have today. Before I knew it, I needed my mom to come rescue me from potential disaster. OK, that’s probably a bit dramatic for a story about making soap, but those are the facts.
In my last post I wrote about doing this. A week later, I finally did it. Yes, I finally made soap from scratch today. It was both easier than expected and trickier than I imagined. As I type this, the soap “batter” is sitting in a silicone mold going through the chemical reaction that turns the oil medley I picked and the drain cleaner solution I had to wear PPE to mix, into actual bath soap.
Why am I telling you this? I’m no soap savant and this is not a soap making newsletter. I’m sharing because this is the start of one of my AI business projects. A few weeks back I decided to start an AI-assisted ecommerce business. I asked my buddy Claude to help me brainstorm some ideas, but none of them felt like a good fit for me. Drop ship store? No thanks, too hard to breakthrough. Create a course? Not yet, maybe one day.
Instead, I went crafty. I decided to do something I love, making something with my hands that’s actually useful. I’m making hand-crafted bath soap. I didn’t know how to do that. I asked Claude to make a soap recipe to my specifications.
Claude created a recipe that will hopefully have a perfect mix of luxurious lather, gentle exfoliation and won’t melt away like the wicked witch after the first shower. I also wanted a clean label, so no artificial fragrances or colors. Last, I insisted on including cacao 3 ways in my soap. Claude came through with a great formula. The only catch was I had to personally mix the ingredients without getting a chemical burn in the process.
I also asked Claude to help me with the marketing strategy for this soap. That’s where I spent most of my time and tokens. Over the course of a few hours we decided on a marketing plan I’ll describe in a future post.
With a recipe and a marketing plan in hand it was time to make my soap. I got my station ready with all of the ingredients, mixing bowls, scale, gloves, N95 mask and laser thermometer. It was go time. Thankfully it was a sunny day, so I could mix the lye and water outdoors. My mom and daughter watched this step from inside the house to avoid exposure to lye fumes. That stuff is no bueno inside the house.
Once the fumes were gone it was time to head back indoors for the next crucial step, mixing the lye solution with the oils. My hands were trembling with either nervous anticipation or the dread of spilling a drop of lye water on my wife’s beautiful kitchen countertop. The first half of the pour went well, so I kept going. I was feeling good. This is easy I thought. One last tricky bit to go, using a stick blender to jumpstart the saponification (convert the oils and lye into soap) reaction.
There’s a moment in soap making that people who’ve done it for a while know to look for, they call it “bring to trace.” It’s the moment when the mix of oils and lye starts to thicken and leaves a trace of batter on the back of a metal spoon. Many soap recipes, mine included, ask the soapmaker to stop there at “light trace.” It’s a fine, delicate line I shouldn’t cross. I crossed it at top speed until the overheating motor on my stick blender begged me to stop. I was way past “light trace” into “heavy trace.” Instead of an oat milk smooth liquid I was left with something closer to oat porridge. Whoopsie!
That’s when I brought in the big guns. I begged my mom to put on some gloves and help me scrape my quickly solidifying soap into its mold. I think we saved it, barely. We’ll know for sure in six weeks when it’s finally ready to hit the showers. Maybe your shower.
Disclosure: I write these posts. AI helps me edit them.