Does anyone have a recipe for soap made from goats' milk WITHOUT using lye? My friend is looking for one. Thanks!!!!!

-- Pat (pmikul@pcpros.net), March 23, 2000

Answers

You can't make soap without lye. Detergent is made without lye, but it works in an entirely different way from soap, and I'm not sure that you can make detergent at home. It might be possible to melt down some glycerine soap and stir in some goat's milk just after it traces (if glycerine soap traces)or she could always get some plain, unscented soap and grate it, melt it, and stir in the goat's milk after it traces and pour it into molds.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@transport.com), March 23, 2000.

Soap is created by the chemical reaction between fat and lye. Anything made any other way is not a soap. To get really creative and authentic, she might try the old way of hardwood ashes/water leached to a solution "strong enough to float an egg" but this is still lye and is not a very reliable way to make soap--the outcome is too unpredictable. Once the chemical reaction has taken place and the soap has cured for two weeks or so, the lye isn't caustic or irritating to the skin. I know of no other way, and I've been making soap for 20 years. I've done the wood ashes a few times for demonstration, and I'll take store-bought lye any day!

-- Denyelle Stroup (dedestroup@hotmail.com), March 29, 2000.

I agree with the answers above. I have been making soap for 10y and the only way to make soap is with Lye (sodium hydroxide) or Postash (from leaching ashes, potacium hydroxide). Your friends options are to rebatch the soap as suggested by grating and melting and adding the goat milk, or buying a glycerine base and melting and adding the milk. When making soap from lye and adding milk the soap turns brown and tends to be "ugly" looking to most people. We rebatch our soap and add the milk to keep the soap looking white. This tends to be more appealing to the eye for people to use it.

---Christie in AL

-- Christie Berry (cberry@iol-12.net), March 30, 2000.

Yes, you can't make soap without lye. Maybe she doesn't understand, and thinks that soap made with lye, somehow still has lye in it. When in reality it chemically changes, and in the successful finished product there is no lye, as it has changed. Store bought soap is made with petroleum products.

-- Karen (spud@mc.net), May 28, 2000.

For medicinal purpose, yes you can make soap without lye. My father used plants leafs, and some other medicinal ingridients and a very small reptile, which I will not name, crushed together to make soap. I think the reptile was the active agent for the soap. Please do not e-mail me back, I just wanted your writers to know that it is possible to make soap without using the active ingredient like lye.

-- Elizabeth Akinkuowo (poisonwood200@yahoo.com), March 07, 2002.