Rice Bran, Sunflower and Castor Oil
Making soap is a crash course in oil varieties. The options are virtually endless, and range from reasonably priced to very expensive. As I mentioned in the Palm Oil blog, we don’t use olive oil in soap—although we love to cook with it. Making soap with goat milk has some “technical difficulties” that we have to deal with. For one thing, the milk fats cause the natural color of the soap to be darker than soap made with water. The chemical reaction with the lye (saponification) “cooks” the fats to some extent, so we don’t typically get a bright white bar. We also don’t want to use synthetic color stabilizers or other chemicals to lighten the hue of the soap. High olive oil content tends to give the soap a greenish cast, which I find unappealing.
Enter Rice Bran Oil! This is a common substitute for olive oil, and we love it! It has a high Vitamin E content which your skin loves! It is often recommended for aged or especially dry skin. We use rice bran oil in almost every bar of soap we sell.
Now, while you can make soap with one type of oil paired with your liquid (in our case, goat milk) lye mixture, it is so much better for your skin to have a variety of oils to work together to make the bar itself better (sudsy, creamy, smooth, long lasting), and to boost the skin benefits. Sunflower Oil is a wonderful addition to any skin related product. It also has a high vitamin E content, and is slower to absorb into the skin. This makes it perfectly for lotion, and also for soap. Sunflower oil contributes to the silky feeling of the soap, and since it absorbs more slowly, your skin has a longer lasting layer of moisture.
Castor oil rounds out the ingredient list in most of our soaps. A little of this oil goes a long way! It boosts lather, and has anti-inflammatory properties. Containing ricinoleic acid, a monounsaturated fatty acid, castor oil acts as a “humectant.” Humectants keep water from evaporating from the skin as quickly. Castor oil is found in many types of cosmetics and moisturizers, as well as wound treatment ointments.
As you can see, every bar of QP Goat Soap has a carefully balanced variety of oils, along with a maximum amount of raw goat milk, that bring you the best soap experience we can deliver!