Our Handmade Soap Process

Behind the Scenes

The process for making every product at Alpenglow is lengthy and precise. There are no purchased mixes. We don’t contract manufacture (have a lab make stuff for us). Everything is made entirely by hand, from scratch using wildcrafted, organic and only 100% natural ingredients. This creates a far more beneficial, healthy and delightful end product, similar to the way that cookies and tomatoes purchased at a store do not compare to homemade cookies and homegrown tomatoes.

We heat the oils and blend them very well with lye, until it thickens enough to leave a trace on the surface. Then we add herbs and essential oils, blend again, and pour them into block molds. The double cavity here makes 144 bars per side.

Here Susan de-molds – that is removes the mold after the soap has saponified for a couple of days.

Wax paper lines the molds so the soap doesn’t stick. Here Susan removes the wax paper before slicing.

Our bar slicer works by forcing wires through the large block mold. This cuts towers.

We then slice those towers into bars using a different wireframe on the slicer. It’s a lot of hard work, but pleasant indeed.

A full tray of Shampoo & Shave Bars. It takes about 4 hours to slice and clean up 3 molds of soap or shampoo bars (864 bars).

For optimal longevity, we cure our bar shampoo and soaps for a full month before we wrap and sell them. We have one rack for Goat Milk Soaps, one rack for Shampoo & Shave Bars and one for Shea Butter Soaps. You should smell our workshop!