How To Create Your Own Amazing DIY Goat Milk Soap
So you’ve heard that goat milk soap has so many benefits to that of traditional, harsh soap bars that you’re looking into making your own goat milk soap bars?
Because when you know how to make milk soap yourself, you can start to get creative and add other ingredients into it to suit your own personal preferences; think scented lavender or rose etc.
But of course, you have to know how to make the basic soap milk base first, and this is what this page and these videos are going to show you.
Now, in all transparency, I haven’t made goat milk soap (yet) and I didn’t know how to make goat milk soap before I researched into it, but I now consider myself a soap making pro – in theory only that is! So with carrying out a bucket-load of research, I’ve found three very good recipe ideas to make a wonderful milky soap using goat milk.
Because these are DIY home-made soaps, the ingredients vary from person to person. And as you’ll soon see, the last two videos show you clever ways to decorate your soaps so you can give them away as gifts.
How To Make Goat Milk Soap
Three Goat Milk Soap Recipe Ideas
The first video is by a Shannon from Pond View Farm. Shannon shows you how to make goat milk soap using lye, lard, coconut oil and grapeseed oil.
This video goes into the detail of the ingredients and equipment she uses. Also, near the end of of the video she shows you how to use an online soap recipe calculator (who knew there was such a thing!) to make a calculated printed recipe.
The second video is from Becky and her goat milk recipe includes lye, olive oil and lavender oil.
The lavender oil gives it a lovely fragrance and she shows you how to create goat soap bars to give out as gifts.
The third video is by Soaping 101 and her goat milk soap recipe is based on 100% goat milk with lye.
She then tops each soap mould with colorful ebru tops. Ebru is a Turkish art technique and she does her own take on this to make a colorful decorative pattern on the soap top.
I hope you enjoyed watching these videos as much as I did!
You could make basic goat soap bars just for your own personal use, as in the first video, or if you want to get creative you could make them as gifts too.
Goat Milk Soap Ingredients
As you’ve just seen in the above videos, the ingredients to make these soaps varies, but here are the main basic ingredients:
- Fresh goat milk
- Coconut oil
- Olive oil
- Lye
- Scented essential oil
What is Lye?
Lye is Sodium Hydroxide and is the main ingredient in soap making
When the lye and the oil combine they chemically harden and change into the soap base – this is called the saponification process.
All natural soaps use lye as their base and if they don’t, then the soap is classed as a detergent because the soap base will have to be made from another ‘chemical’ ingredient which will still present in the finished product.
Important: There is no lye present in the finished goat milk soap bar because during the chemical reaction saponification process, all the lye is used up as it turns the oil into soap [Source].
This is why goat milk soap bars are natural and can be used by people with sensitive skin, eczema and psoriasis.
Soap Scent Ideas
Take inspiration from Becky in video 2 when she put lavender oil in her soaps to make a lovely lavender scent.
You could experiment with other scent oils too such as:
- Peppermint
- Strawberry
- Coconut
- Melon
- Cinnamon
- Honeysuckle
… the list is endless really.
Go here to see a list of essential oils fragrances which can be used in DIY soap.
Essential Equipment To Make Goat Milk Soap
Apart from the basic equipment to make soap bars, you also need some health & safety gear as you’re dealing with Lye and creating a chemical reaction with the oil.
So here are essential equipment which is needed:
- Stainless steel or glass bowl (not plastic or rubber)
- Spatula and mixing spoon
- Immersion blender
- Scales for weighing ingredients
- Thermometer
- Moulds
- Safety glasses
- Gloves
- Apron
Goat Milk Soap Business Idea!
If you fall in love with making goat milk soap, and you’re good at it, then why not take it one step further and make them to sell as a side-hustle?
Make money by selling decorative goat milk soap bars, just make sure you declare all the ingredients you use. Some people will have allergies to some of the ingredients which can be used in goat milk soap.
Take the advice from Shannon in video 1 and input the ingredients into an online soap recipe calculator and print it off (I still can’t believe that this actually exists!) You can then put this goat milk soap recipe sheet in with the soaps before posting it off to your customers.
Places to sell your goat milk soap bars:
- Amazon
- eBay
- Etsy
- Craft Fairs
- Word-of-Mouth
Facts About Goat Milk Soap for Skincare
If you’re not entirely sure what the benefits of goat milk soap are when it comes to skin care, I’ve written a whole blog post on this called “9 Exciting Goat Milk Soap Benefits for Healthy Skin Care“. In this post I go over the ingredients in the goat milk itself and how they benefit the skin in different ways.
Good luck in your soap making endeavors!