Monday, July 7, 2014

One of the major reasons Earthen Step got started is because of how much junk is out there.  Check out these "motivating-to-change body care products" articles.


When we started making soap me and my wife both agreed that the soap was fantastic!  We also agreed 100% that the shampoo was degrading the entire experience.  We started using our soap as shampoo most of the time and supplementing in horrible store grade garbage shampoo now and then.  The shampoo is still the downside to our showerings and we are working hard to fix this problem.  We have some shampoo bars curing right now that we are both excited to try.

These are the major issues with the last shampoo bar:
  • Too much coconut oil .  Saponified coconut oil is spectacular at cleansing, which might be stripping the hair down.  My hair is very poofy after using it.
  • Too high in pH -- the pH test strips are in the mail.  Hair loves to have a low pH, around 5.5, and skin could care less because it has these awesome things called "sebaceous glands" which replenish its acidic barrier very, very quickly. Short hair probably has less of an issue with the terrible shampoo bars out there because the scalp also secretes this oily/waxy sebum.
  • Too little extra fats left over in the final bar.  We might need to step up the super-fating in the shampoo bar to bring about better conditioning. 
  • The overall thing is that our hair is dry, frizzy and too clean after showers! 
We are going to make micro batches testing these ideas out and see if we can come up with the best shampoo bar in the world!  We will make small adjustments to one bar at a time so we can see what each change adjusts.  This is all part of the fun in being a soap maker, tinkering until you figure out the perfect balance.

Wish our mighty endeavors the luck of a thousand eagle talons so you may soon partake!

Your friends at Earthen Step 
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