Last winter, when I was planning the Winter Wilds Collection, I wanted a peppermint candy-scented soap bar with pretty red and white swirls. The suppliers I typically go through were out of my first pick, Madder Root, so I picked what I thought was the next best option, Beetroot Powder. After all, I had used beets to dye other things, surely this bright maroon powder would make a lovely candy cane swirl. It did not; in fact, it completely failed. Making something handmade vs factory-made has another layer of pressure because if I make a mistake, my product can be vastly different than the last batch, and for customer continuity and expectation, that wouldn’t be a good thing. Behind the scenes, making small batch soap can look like a lot of trial and error and some mild panic. So, here are a few mistakes that taught me the most (and stocked my personal shower / drawer of failed batches): 

Mistake #1: Swapping Oils Like They’re Interchangeable During the Alaska Summers Collection, I unexpectedly ran out of Olive oil, mid-batch. At that moment, I figured I would just sub the missing 100g of Olive oil with 100g of extra coconut oil. 1000g of oil is 1000g of oil, right? Unfortunately not. The texture completely changed in that “oh shit” batch, it was much rougher than my other batches, and I was thoroughly disappointed. In hindsight, different oils have different fatty acid profiles which means important things like hardness, lather, conditioning all shift. I learned that I can shift oils a tiny bit within the margins, but not blindly. A tool I use to track all of my recipes to make sure they will behave is SoapCalc.net and it has helped understand what each oil contributes, especially as I venture into new products like shampoos and conditioners. 

Mistake #2: Herbs Scalding or Turning Brown The 4th soap batch I ever made was the ‘prototype’ for Rosemary & Mint and I was patient enough to add the peppermint leaf at a super thick trace. It resulted in a little speckly rosemary bar with a greenish hue. The next time I tried, I dumped all the peppermint leaf into the soap batter as I was mixing it and the lye was not completely neutralized. This left smeary brown mouse-turd-esque pellets in the soap. That is…not ideal. The acidity / high pH plus the heat from the chemical reaction of saponification is NOT herb-friendly. It’s like adding handfuls of grass to hot coals. I learned some herbs need to be used sparingly but also that the time in which they are added  to the soap batter really matters. Patience in my friend. 

Mistake #3: Natural Colorants Sometimes Don’t Work At All Peppermint & Beetroot was intended to be a swirly, cute Christmas bar. Up until this point, rose clay made my soaps pink, rhubarb root made them purple, lemon peel powder gave a pretty yellow, so why wouldn’t beetroot powder make a deep maroon? I was excited to cut the loaves, and as soon as I pulled that bar off the end, the inside was white with dull, sad beige swirls. I was gutted. From that flop, I learned that pH can affect pigmentation in some colorants, and that not all beautiful, natural colors can be trapped in a bar of soap. 

I guess the biggest lesson overall is that soap-making is chaos. Sometimes I follow the recipe perfectly but if the temperature or humidity in the shop is off, the end product is as well. Small changes can make big results and every failed batch I have ultimately teaches me something useful. I think that mistakes don’t mean you’re bad at making soap, I think they show you’re learning the craft. This is exactly why I also test, tweak, and refine each recipe before selling the bars. Every soap you get from me has gone through this learning curve so you don’t have to.