You use LYE?!

My first ever exposure to lye was seeing Edward Norton's character's skin bubble and burn in Fight Club after Brad Pitt's character threw powdered lye onto it. I never could have predicted then that I would someday be working with that substance myself on a regular basis and even  - of all things - writing a blog post on how this stuff is actually A-OK to create an out-of-this-world bar of soap!

There's a number of folks out there who struggle with the idea of a soap made with lye (listed as sodium hydroxide on our labels). Some can even recall the days when a grandparent stirred a pot of hot, raw soap themselves; this was generally a combination of leftover fats and oils from cooking and meat processing that met with lye (the super traditionalists would even create their own lye from wood ashes). Soap has been made this way for a very long time - even the ruins of Pompeii revealed a soapmaking factory along with finished bars of soap used to prepare textiles for weaving! Soap created in this manner was usually, as you can imagine, a very inaccurate process - particularly if you were creating your own lye solution. Many ended up with very lye-heavy, soft, greasy soaps that were very harsh to the skin, sometimes it would even burn to the touch!

How is handmade soap today different? Very simply, we know more about the chemistry behind soapmaking, we have pure grade lye, and we formulate to be on the side of moisturizing with a lot more accuracy than ever before. Now bear in mind that I am not a chemistry major, and I'm going to try to present how soap is made as simply and accessibly as possible. Ready to find out what happens with all those ingredients on the label? Good!

First, it is important to keep in mind that without lye, there cannot be soap. It is simply impossible. There are some soapmakers who shy away from discussing lye (or they'll mislead about it altogether - yikes!), but I feel it is up to us in this craft to educate our customers about lye and to make it a little less scary for you. I must also mention that there is a type of soap called "melt and pour" soap, which is a block of premade soap base that crafters can (as the name implies) melt, modify, and pour to create an array of designs. Does this soap base require lye? If it is true soap, then the answer is always yes. The difference is that the process of turning fats and lye into soap has already occurred and these crafters don't need to handle lye themselves (which is very appealing for those who don't want to handle caustic chemicals or want to involve their children in this as a crafty project). Here at OHTC, we create our own soap using fats and a lye solution instead of using a premade melt and pour base. There are also cleansing bars out there comprised of a mix of SLS detergents and other chemicals to create a product that looks like soap. For the purposes of this discussion, it is not soap in its true form, which is an alkali salt of fatty acids. (What the what? Read on!)

Ready for some chemistry? Very simply put, true soap is created when you mix together acids (fats, oils) with an alkali (sodium or potassium hydroxide - depending on whether you make liquid or solid soap) that has been dissolved in a liquid (water, milk, tea, coffee, etc) to create a solution. When these fats are combined with the lye solution, a chemical reaction occurs between the lye and the fats that produces heat, glycerin, and what chemistry recognizes as a salt (we call it soap!). Creating these recipes require a lot of math and double-checking to make sure that you have enough fat to react with the lye solution - in fact, most soapmakers include what we call a "superfat" into our equation. We purposefully put more fats in than the lye can possibly react with, which ensures that our finished soap is moisturizing, mild and not at all lye-heavy. This is all measured as accurately as possible, which means measuring by weight (never volume!) and using a digital scale. 

We also cure our soaps for a period of time to ensure mildness and to allow our bars to become firm and long-lasting in the tub! Here at OHTC, all of our soaps are cured a minimum of 4-6 weeks (most of the time, it is a full 6 weeks of curing!). This allows the liquid that was in the lye solution to evaporate out of the bar (making the soap much firmer) and the soap actually continues to react and saponify further during that time (ensuring a mild final product).

OHTC's Lavender Jasmine ingredients label

But - why is sodium hydroxide on the label? FDA labeling requirements for soapmakers can go one of two ways: we either list what goes into our soap pot or what comes out. To ensure accuracy, we list what goes into our soap pot instead of the finished result, which is why you find sodium hydroxide (lye) listed on our labels. We must list our ingredients in order of prominence and without the appropriate lab testing required to determine the exact amounts of glycerin, leftover unsaponified butters and oils, we cannot determine the order that these ingredients should be in with any degree of accuracy. So in order to stay FDA compliant and to be as accurate as possible, we list our ingredients as "what went into the pot" to create our finished soap. The exact butters, oils and fats used and in what amounts they are used in is what makes each recipe (and each soapmaker) a unique one!

A word for soapmakers and soapmakers-to-be: these soap recipes are often created over a long period of time and with a lot of investment in order to find a final master formulation. The formula I use at OHTC was over 4 years in the making in order to have a finished soap that is long-lasting, bubbly, moisturizing, and still leaves you clean as a whistle! I haven't even told my own husband my entire formula! Most of the soapmakers I know are incredibly protective of their trade secrets. If you're considering going down this path, please don't let that discourage you. There are many basic soap formulas available on the internet (always double-check these with a lye calculator!). Once you've become comfortable with the process of soapmaking, experimenting and developing a formula for yourself is an incredibly valuable process that teaches so much! 

Another valuable game-changing aspect to modern soapmaking is that we also now have pure, food-grade lye that our forebears did not have; yet another way to be very accurate with our lye-to-fats ratio. Did you catch that I said "food-grade" too? This doesn't mean that you can eat lye directly (yikes no!) but it does mean that the lye is pure enough to use in cooking. Just like with soapmaking, even though lye isn't present in the final product, it is used in cooking to help create an innocuous final product. Soft pretzels, olives, hominy, canned mandarin oranges, Japanese ramen noodles - all of this is made using food-grade lye! Lye is also used to modify the pH of other products due to its extremely alkaline nature. Other examples of products which contain lye are: toothpaste, hair dyes, facial moisturizers, eye liners, aftershave, baby wipes, lipsticks, breath fresheners, baby lotion, and even eye drops! (source: Good Guide)

Now a word of caution. I don't want anyone to come away from this post thinking that lye in its pure form is completely safe. It isn't. It is a highly caustic substance - so much so that it is often used to clear drains and clean ovens. Those products contain a never-ending list of warnings and caution symbols for a good reason! Unless otherwise stated, products which contain lye for these purposes are not pure, 100% lye that can be used for soapmaking and they are definitely not the products that we use to create our soaps! Even when using our 100% pure food-grade lye, responsible soapmakers must wear a lot of safety equipment in order to be well-protected from our lye solutions while we are creating our soaps.

I hope that I have helped explain that lye, when used responsibly, can be used to create a fabulous and mild end product, like hand crafted soap, and it shouldn't be the thing keeping you from trying a bar!

OHTC's Lavender Jasmine with Silk

Ingredients Listing - aka, what am I trying to read here??

A few thoughts about ingredients listing, especially now that I've gone down the rabbit hole that is FDA regulation and proper labeling. A couple things to keep in mind: very few products actually follow FDA regulations to the letter (even the big-name companies!) and soap can wear different hats in the eyes of the FDA. I know, this is SO exciting right? I hope that this post will clear up a lot of questions folks usually have about the soaps I offer and why they're presented the way that they are.

Soap that is primarily comprised of an alkali salt of a fatty acid ("lye" soap - not primarily made of detergents) can be considered a consumer commodity with few regulations (manufacturer name, size, and place of manufacture is all that's required on that label!). Candles and tarts also fall under this category. Ingredients are not required, so depending on how the soap is presented to the public (in this case, as "just soap") then there can be some liberties taken with the label.

Soap that is intended to moisturize, exfoliate, cleanse, smooth, and is meant to enhance your appearance falls under another category - cosmetics! Here at Orchard Hill Trading Company, we consider our soaps to be cosmetics as far as the FDA is concerned. There is a very strict set of requirements for these labels - font size, placement, and especially proper ingredients listing are all requirements.

With cosmetic labeling, current FDA guidelines require that we list everything in descending order of prominence with INCI (International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients) names. These names are intended to be recognized internationally and among different cultures. Manufacturers can include the common names of these ingredients in parentheses since many do not readily recognize certain names (example: butyrospermum parkii - what in the world IS that? Sounds dangerous right? It's shea butter!). I often hear that if someone doesn't recognize what's on the label, they won't bother using it. With these FDA regulations in place, it's up to us to educate and inform as to why labels read the way they do.

There is a third category that soap can be classified as: drugs. Soaps that are intended to treat a condition (eczema, acne, psoriasis, dermatitis, etc) are considered drugs as far as the FDA is concerned. Sunscreen also falls under this category. These products must conform to a rigid set of guidelines including clinical testing, submission and approval of a New Drug Application, compliance to a set of active ingredient usage guidelines set by the FDA (called monographs), prohibitively stricter production settings, and if I were to change my formulas in any way, then I would have to start all over with the process. This all amounts to a lot more money and, frankly, a level of responsibility that I don't want to have on my plate since I am not at all formally trained in these areas. If you want advice about your condition, the best advice I can give is that you should visit your doctor and discuss your options with them.

The key here is how the public is intended to perceive your soap. Is it presented as an eczema cure? Just pure soap? An exfoliating scrub? Even if it's not on the label, if a customer is led by the manufacturer to believe it has a certain function, that's what counts with the FDA.

Whew! That was a lot of info. Not terribly fascinating information either, but it might answer a few questions regarding soaps and why I market and present them in the way that I do. Doing things the right way isn't always the easiest, especially when customers ask me why X soapmaker has an eczema soap and I don't. Maybe that soapmaker has undergone the rigorous standards of the FDA. I know I haven't, so I don't make those claims and I can only speak for myself. I hope that this has been helpful!