How We Make Amazing Goat Milk Soap at Birchtree
There’s a lot more to a bar of BirchTree soap than you might think.
Our soap starts here on our smallholding in Cambridgeshire, with our goats, our milk and the plants we grow around the farm. From there, each batch is made by hand by our family, before being cut, cured and carefully checked before it makes its way to you.
We don’t make thousands of bars in a factory, and we don’t want to.
We like knowing where our ingredients come from, knowing how our soap is made and being able to make every batch with the same care we’d expect if we were making it for our own family.
So, here’s what actually goes into making a bar of BirchTree goat milk soap.
It starts with our goats
Our goats are a big part of BirchTree.
They live here with us on the farm, and their milk is one of the ingredients that makes our soap what it is.
We use goat milk in our recipes because we love the qualities it brings to a handmade soap. It gives the finished bars a lovely creamy feel and is one of the reasons goat milk soap has become such a favourite with people who prefer a gentle, traditional bar of soap.
And because our goats are part of our family, there’s something rather nice about knowing that the milk used in our soap has come from goats living just a few steps away from where we make it.
From fresh milk to handmade soap
Making soap is a surprisingly old-fashioned process.
At its heart, it is simply a careful reaction between oils and fats and an alkali called sodium hydroxide, commonly known as lye. The lye is essential to making real soap, but by the time the soap has finished curing, it has reacted with the oils and fats to create the soap itself.
The process needs to be done carefully and accurately. Soap making isn’t really something you can just guess your way through!
Our goat milk is incorporated into our recipe carefully, with temperature being particularly important. Goat milk contains natural sugars, and if it gets too hot during the soap-making process it can affect the colour and the finished bar.
Once everything is prepared, we combine our ingredients and mix them until the soap reaches the right stage.
This is where the mixture starts to change from separate oils and liquids into the thick, creamy soap batter that will eventually become your bar.
We grow and use botanicals
We’ve always been big fans of herbs and botanicals.
There’s something that feels right about growing plants here on the farm and finding ways to bring them into what we make.
Depending on the soap we’re making, we use botanicals such as calendula (marigold), chamomile, mint and nettle.
Some are grown here, some are prepared for use in our recipes, and each one is chosen because it fits the character of the soap we’re making and has some sort historical usage with benefits for the skin.
We don’t want to cover our soaps in unnecessary decorations just to make them look pretty.
For us, the ingredients are the interesting part.
Making each batch
Once the ingredients have been prepared and our soap batter has reached the right consistency, we add the botanical ingredients and any fragrance or essential oils used in that particular recipe.
Everything is measured carefully because consistency matters.
We then pour the soap into our moulds, where it begins to set.
At this point, it doesn’t look much like the finished bars sitting in your bathroom. It’s a soft loaf of soap that needs time and patience before it’s ready.
And this is one of the things we love about making soap.
You can’t really rush it.
Cutting the soap
Once the soap has hardened enough, we remove it from the mould and cut it into individual bars.
This is another part of the process where making soap by hand makes a difference.Each loaf is cut into bars individually, rather than being stamped out by a machine in a huge factory.
There can be tiny differences from batch to batch, and that’s something we’re quite happy with.
We think handmade products should look handmade.
Then we wait…
Probably the hardest part of making soap is this bit.
Waiting.
Freshly made cold-process soap isn’t ready to use straight away. The bars need to cure for 4-5 weeks before they can be used and even longer for superior soap.
During this time, the soap continues to harden and loses excess water, resulting in a bar that is firmer and lasts much longer when you’re using it.
So while it might take us only a day to make and cut a batch of soap, the finished bars have plenty of time to sit on our shelves before they’re ready to be wrapped and sent out.
It’s one of the reasons handmade soap takes a little more time than grabbing a mass-produced bar from a supermarket shelf.
Every bar is checked before it leaves us
Once the soap has finished curing, we check the bars before they’re packaged.
We look at the appearance, the weight and the overall finish of each batch.
Anything we’re not happy with doesn’t go out.
Then the bars are wrapped and packed here on the farm, ready for their new home.
Why we make soap this way
Birchtree Soaps started because we wanted to make something different.
Our daughters had suffered with dry skin, and we found ourselves questioning some of the products we were buying and putting on our family’s skin.
We already had the goats, we already loved growing herbs and plants, and we liked the idea of making something ourselves rather than buying another mass-produced product.
So we started experimenting with soap.
What began as something for our family grew into BirchTree.
We’re still a family business, still making our soap in small batches and still learning and experimenting as we go.
We don’t have a huge factory hidden somewhere.
It’s made here.
By us.
With milk from our goats, ingredients we’ve carefully chosen and plenty of time and patience.
From our farm to your bathroom
When you pick up a bar of BirchTree goat milk soap, you’re holding something that has travelled a fairly short journey.
From our goats, to our soap room, to the curing shelves, to our packing table and finally to your door.
That’s what we love about being a small, family-run soap business.
We know the ingredients.
We know the process.
We know the goats.
And we know the people who made the soap.
That’s BirchTree.
Handmade on our family farm in Cambridgeshire.
check out this video which shows the process from start to finish we are super proud of the soaps we make and love to hear what you think.