Experimental Soap

Today I made soap for the first time - there are no pictures, because I was too busy trying not to mess it up or blind myself with lye or something like that, but hopefully there will be finished-soap pictures later. I'd love to say I made a flawless first batch, but there were some fascinating problems and some frantic mid-project internet searching and still the soap had to be rebatched. No permanent disfigurement, though, so that's good.

Not being one to do things by halves, I chose to start out with a goat-milk soap. I couldn't find a recipe I liked (I wanted to use my tallow, and no other fats), so I came up with my own with a lye calculator. I added some honey for moisturizing, but figured I'd leave it at that - no scents or colors or froofroo nonsense. Basic, I thought. Simple. Ha.

I added my lye to my milk (which immediately turned oompaloompa orange, but no biggie, I'm not picky), and started melting the frozen tallow while the lye/milk solution cooled down. When the tallow was melted, I turned back to lye/milk.... which was, now, soap. No, really. It was a block of spongy, putrid-smelling, orange soap, that leaked orange/brown vile lye-heavy liquid when I broke it up with the spoon. It gave off ammonia fumes like nothing I've ever seen - never mind goggles, I need a respirator! I ventilated the kitchen as best I can, grabbed the cat, and strategically retreated to the living room (closing the kitchen door behind me).

Woe is me! My first soap, ruined before I've even started! The internet, however, assured me that all is well. This sometimes happens with lye/milk solutions, I gather. The milk fats saponify too early, and goat-milk soap often reeks of ammonia. It's ok, it's nothing a stick blender can't fix.

Well, alright then. I'm game.

Back to the (slightly dizzying) kitchen, stick blender in hand. I added the gloppy, foul solution to my glorious, untarnished tallow, cringing slightly and thinking of donuts that could have been. I did my level best with the stick blender to break up bits of lye-heavy milkfat-soap, sclurching it into the rest of the bottle-tan mess. It's a lot of stickblending, and I was getting nervous: goat milk is sugary, and supposedly brings soap to trace quickly - I was also adding honey, which does the same. The mix looked thick - like the pictures I'd seen of "light trace" - so... I'm done? I added the honey, mixed it in thoroughly, and carefully poured the pumpkin-mousse concoction into a loaf pan.

My thoughts, as I putter around the kitchen and living room for the next hour or so:
I hope it sets.
It looks like it's setting!  
I did it! I made soap!
Huh. That was easier than I thought.
It turned white? Why did it turn white?
Maybe the goat milk didn't get as hot as I thought. Maybe the white is the milk... decarmelizing?
No, that's stupid. Hopeful, but stupid.
Well, the only thing -white- in the soap is... the tallow.
Ah, criminy.

It separated. The liquid tallow came to the top and made a lovely white layer, leaving a layer of pumpkin-colored, ammonia-scented, lye-heavy, lose-your-fingerprints-ask-me-how-i-know caustic soap underneath. We had a brief conference about whether this was likely to correct itself overnight, in which HD allowed me to use him as a sounding board to work out my own knowledge of, and unwillingness to accept, the correct answer. No - this will not fix itself by resting over night, or even over many nights. The fats needed to balance the lye are no longer in emulsion, saponification will not occur.

This calls for rebatching.

I scooped the still-soft failed batch out of the loaf pan and into a new, smaller pot (I felt part of the problem had been using too large a pot for such a small batch, and right-sizing the pot would help). I put it all on low heat and let it melt, adding just a smidge of cow milk to help it along (also, in case a lack of fluid in general was part of the problem, given how much got tied up in the earlier premature saponification problem). I took the stick blender back to it, and brought it all the way to a heavy trace - a texture like very thick brownie batter. It was on heat the whole time, which seems to have helped the ammonia problem. I also added cocoa powder and ground coffee (dry) for scent and color, and preliminary evidence suggests this will be a beautiful darker soap with a pleasant coffee scent. I should know in a few days, I guess. In the meantime, I'm thinking of it as "Mocha Latte" soap, until a catchier name or contrary evidence appears.

Tallow

Several friends and I are going in together on a side of beef – “cowpooling” - with the meat in question expected to arrive late February. Having only a small freezer, and expecting approximately 30lbs of beef, I’ve started clearing out freezer space.

One of the things taking up space in my freezer has been nearly 4lbs of beef suet, which I’ve been waiting to render into tallow. It’s been waiting for some time – I think I originally planned to do this before Thanksgiving, and then ran into holiday craziness. This weekend seemed like a good time to finally tackle it!

First, it helps to cut the suet up as small as possible. Last time, I used my food processor, but I will NEVER, EVER do that again – it makes a phenomenal mess! This time, I took a serrated knife and hacked it up by hand, taking care to discard stray bits of connective tissue and so forth. Easy enough, and much less cleanup!

When it’s all cut up, 4lbs (well, 3.8lbs) of frozen suet looks about like this:

I then added about 4 cups of water, with several tablespoons of salt already dissolved into it. The water keeps the suet from burning before the tallow renders out, and gives the solids somewhere to settle into. Salt, I’ve been told, helps “purify” the tallow… magic? Actually, it’s a lot more straightforward than that. It raises the boiling temperature of the water, thus helping render out more tallow, faster. More importantly, it makes the water denser, so you don’t have any wishy-washy semi-separating tallow bubbles.

Get the heat going:

A solid boil, and rendering is well underway:

I swear it's boiling, you just can't tell in this pic for some reason.

I found that, having been more careful with the preparation – tossing out connective tissue and less desirable bits – there wasn’t any of the unpleasant smell I’ve encountered with rendering. Honestly, it didn’t smell like much of anything – it was just steamy. You do have to take care that you don’t manage to boil all the water out from under your liquid beef fat, with all that steam.

Straining the gooey bits out of the good stuff:

I did toss the dregs from the strainer back into the pot to render a little further, though I didn’t get all that much more from them.  When they were all tapped out, we mixed them with peanut butter and some bread crumbs to put out for the birds.  We put the mix in hollowed-out apple halves and hung the result in the maple tree:

Letting the fat cool, without disturbing it:

Hardened tallow:

The plates of tallow need a good wipe down and a rinse under cool water. If they look nice – uniform, creamy white, nothing untoward hanging on, not oily or slimy or grainy but like a cross between butter and white chocolate – then they get dried off and packed carefully in the freezer for later baking or soap making. If they smell like cheap burgers or don’t look rights, then they go back into the pot with some fresh water, I re-melt it, and we try again. I’ve had goosefat hold out for a third boil, where it just wouldn’t separate from the solids and it wouldn’t clarify or solidify until then, but beef suet tallow seems to fix itself the second time around.   This tallow needed a re-melt – it was grainy, with some beefy bits still trapped on the underside, and a faint but distinct burger odor. You can see some of the yuck on the upside-down piece in the picture.  I put a brand new pot of salt water on the stove, broke the tallow up into it, brought the whole thing to a vicious boil, took it off the heat, and then put it straight into the fridge when it stopped bubbling.

All told, I got maybe 2.5lbs of tallow. Perhaps I could have chopped the suet up more for a higher yield to my rendering, but I’m pretty happy with it. It takes up a lot less room in the freezer, and soon I’ll be using it for soap making and maybe some cooking (ooh… doughnuts…. )

yum.

Happy Birthday to Me!!

This week was my birthday (Wednesday)....  Guess what I got in the mail?

Flax seed!

I'm absolutely ecstatic. Joybilee Farm came through beautifully on this, and we spent a giddy while exclaiming over the very Canadian-ness of the package - seriously, that's how excited I am - and then I got right to work researching designs for a flax break. Ye olde an' symple tules are more varied and complex than they first appear.

It's 500g of seed, enough to sow 200sqft thickly for fiber production. I have absolutely no idea what this translates into in terms of weight (or yardage) of linen yarn produced, but I will find out!

...

(If, like me, you're mildly obsessed with this, I did find here that a "1.5m by 5 m patch of flax produces about 350 grams of flax fibre." 1.5mx5m works out roughly to 80sqft, so my 200sqft patch might yield something like 875g of finished fiber, which would be about 2362yds in something like the preparation Euroflax Sport Weight uses, or an astonishing 5075yds in something similar to 14/2 Euroflax Lace. Of course, that's assuming it's the size of the plot that determines production, not the amount of seed that goes into it; and ignoring known variables like spinning technique, growing conditions, seed varieties, harvest timing, etc.)

Sleeping farm in winter snow

There were a lot of things I wanted to do this week. So far, I have done approximately none of them. I have sat on my couch and convalesced in the wake of about the most virulent stomach bug I can remember having. Now on day three, I can say that this Gatorade-and-toast diet is very effective for weight loss, but really has nothing else to recommend it.

So, since there’s nothing going on here today, how about pretty pictures from this weekend? On Saturday, we went up to see my folks, and ended up visiting the farm, which was peacefully sleeping in the snow. It was a beautiful day, and we got some good shots:

The driveway, covered in snow, winding between trees... very quiet this particular Saturday.



The granary, with the apple tree in the foreground, and the sun glowing January-afternoon style in the background.

Asher having a good time, running to...



...and fro.



Cheerful red barn a pleasant contrast to the cold gray and white world... or maybe vice versa.