We use goat’s milk as the liquid in our BirchTree soap recipe because it gives the bars a creamy lather. The milk brings its own fats and sugars to the recipe, alongside the oils and cocoa butter we use to make each bar.

Our base recipe uses olive oil, coconut oil, sweet almond oil, apricot kernel oil and cocoa butter, alongside goat’s milk and sodium hydroxide, also called lye. The lye reacts with the oils to make soap. Depending on the bar, we also add ingredients such as honey and oats, dried botanicals, essential oils or fragrance. You’ll find the full ingredient list on each bar’s product page.

It depends on what your skin reacts to and what else is in the bar. A lot of people with sensitive skin Love goat milk soap and use it comfortably, while others find soap drying or react to ingredients such as fragrance or essential oils. Check the ingredient list for anything you know you react to. If you’re trying a new bar, start with a small area and stop using it if it irritates your skin.

Our goat’s milk comes from Marigold and Lavender, the two goats we keep on our family smallholding in Cambridgeshire. We freeze the milk before using it in our soap batches.

We make our soap by hand in small batches using the cold-process method. We mix the lye with frozen goat’s milk, combine it with our oils and cocoa butter, then pour the mixture into moulds. Once the soap is firm enough, we cut it into bars and leave them to cure.

Let your soap dry between uses. Keep it on a draining soap dish or hang it in a soap saver bag away from the shower spray. Leaving the bar sitting in water makes it soften and wear down faster.