What Is Cold Processed Soap?

Your soap needs to get the job done.

(Bold take from a soap company, I know.) Just like any other tool, you really don’t need to know how the soap in your hands is made so long as it’s made well. So long as the person who makes the soap cares about the process, everything should work out. The big commercial soap companies didn’t get the memo. Unfortunately, the timeless art of soapmaking has morphed into the beast it is today. Instead of quality products, bathers have to settle for cheap bar soaps or more often bottles of synthetic detergent (body wash). But there’s still hope. It’s time to start giving a damn about how your soap is made. It’s time to learn how it ought to be made.

In this blog post we are just going to talk about bar soap. A tear down of body wash deserves a page in itself. That bar of soap you are holding was probably made one of two ways. If you are lucky, it is cold processed soap. Otherwise, it is a melt and pour. 

What you need to know about melt and pour is that it’s easy to make. It’s so easy in fact, you can pick up a DIY kit at your local crafts store and... do it yourself. Basically, this soap is made by melting down pre-made soap and mixing it with whatever. Dyes, scents, and even extra detergent can be added at this step. The mixture is poured and sets into a “brand new” soap. Because this process is simple, melt and pour is an attractive option to large scale manufacturers looking to buy in bulk and cut costs. But doing this means the soap’s ingredients, effects on the skin, and overall quality can’t be controlled. 

Cold processed soap is the poster child of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” We at Big Al’s call our soap old fashioned because humans have made and used real soap for millennia. That process has only had time to be improved and refined into what it is today. This process uses some chemistry magic plus a bit of know-how to make dreams come true. The word of the day is saponification. 

Saponification is what happens when you combine dissolved lye with fat/oil. If the soap maker isn’t running a fight club, there is no leftover lye in the final product. That gets eaten away along with some of the oil. The end product is a substance that attracts dirt and oil but also gets rinsed away easily in water. That’s soap! 

Not to get political, but Big Al’s is pro-cold process. That’s because it allows us to have much more control over every aspect of our bars. Instead of having to use a premade base, we start out with our own selection of base oils. In the old days, they often used tallow and lard for soap, but Big Al’s sprang for the good stuff. Our mixture has olive oil, coconut oil, sustainable palm oil, and sometimes sunflower oil. We found that this blend provides the best balance of moisturization while boosting lather and bringing just the right texture to our bars. From there, each soap is built with specific ingredients to make it unique and a treat for the skin and nose. A typical Big Al’s bar can contain kaolin clay, peppermint leaves, beer, or maybe all three! On top of that, an essential oil blend pairs each bar with the perfect scent. This may not be as cheap or easy to do as melting and pouring, but we think it’s worth making something from scratch. 

Now you are an educated bather who can take back control over your next soap purchase. You also get to be the cool guy at parties who knows what “saponification” means. Soak it up champ. Most importantly, you can now appreciate the work and history that went into that bar of soap. If anything that can be one of your next shower thoughts.