You might have noticed from our website updates that we are running low or are temporarily out of some of our soap varieties. Part of the reason for the lag in inventory right now is that we are still so new at the “business side” of making our all-natural soap products that we had no idea how much inventory to prepare for the holiday shopping season. We are still in the learning curve of this whole whacky business thing called Kumbha Moon Soap Company and are fairly novice at predicting the demand for our products for holidays and special occasion gift giving in addition to our regular sales...and we obviously underestimated! We had several customers ask us if we could make a new batch of soap for them to pick up in a day or two and we had to explain the other part of the reason why our inventory was low…the soap curing process. “What? Soap has to cure?” Yes, and the best way we could explain it was to compare the soap curing process to the way a good quality cheese has to age – slowly, carefully, and with great patience!
Handmade soap recipes use a fair amount of water or other liquids to help dissolve the lye and to create fluidity to the batch during the process of making it (believe us, the last thing you want is for a batch of soap to seize…that’s another blog post!). There are often other ingredients in a soap batch that have a water content too, such as pumpkin or carrot puree or goat milk. Experienced soap makers will know how to calculate a recipe and “discount” the amount of water to safe handling amounts. The less water that a batch of soap contains, the faster the bars will cure.
| The curing process is basically the resting time for a new soap so that water can naturally evaporate from the bars. Commercial soap companies actually force the "cure" by adding chemical hardeners. We can't even imagine what dangers lurk in those chemicals! We usually hand-cut our soaps out of our handmade wooden molds 24-48 hours after we make the batch. When we hand-cut the soap into bars, the texture is still very soft and pliable and soap at this stage is also still finishing the saponification process, which means that the oils might still be naturally converting to a new compound called soap. Young soap that hasn't cured won’t last very long in running water. As soap cures and the water evaporates, the bar will shrink slightly but it will become very hard. A harder bar of soap means that it will last longer with regular use, lather better, and provide the maximum benefit of the high-quality ingredients that we use. Many soap makers will sell their soap bars after 3-4 weeks, but the Kumbha Moon girlz want you to have the best possible bar of soap from us, so we cure our soaps for a minimum of 6-8 weeks. Our Castile soap bars with 70% olive oil need even more time to cure and usually hang out on our curing racks for almost 12 weeks. Right now at home, we are using some plain unscented soap bars that we made almost one year ago and the bar has lasted for weeks in the shower and the lather is still voluminous! | Go where few people have gone...our curing area |
So please be patient with us as we rebuild our inventory and gently tend to our soaps during the curing process. When you purchase a handmade soap bar from us or another soap maker, feel free to ask how long the bar has cured or how old the soap is. The Kumbha Moon girlz are always happy to tell you exactly what you are purchasing, how we made the product, and the values and quality that we have infused each of our products with!
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