I’ve made wine soap, now it’s time for beer soap. Beer contains many nutrients such as wheat and hops.  People have washed their hair with beer and find it leaves it well conditioned.  But I personally think washing with this soap bar would be much easier.

In case you are wondering, it does not smell like beer after it’s cured (over 3 weeks). It looks almost like a bar of chocolate, but I would advise you to not eat it.

The addition of spices such as cinnamon and cloves is great for the skin. It’s naturally antimicrobial, detoxifying, stimulating and has antioxidants too.  Because the soap is made naturally using the cold process method all the nutrients are retained.

If you suffer from skin rashes or just want healthier skin made with natural ingredients, try handcrafted soap!

Ingredients: Olive oil, Coconut oil, Palm Oil, Soybean oil, Castor oil, Sapporo Beer, Grounded cloves, ginger and cinnamon, Vanilla fragrance.

All the vegetable oils combined with the beer becomes a skin conditioning bar. I made sure to add lots of lovely spice and Vanilla fragrance oil to blend in with the beer soap. It’s a perfect soap bar for both men and women!  It’s also a very warming soap, especially for the winter time.

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Ginger Ale has always been my favorite drink of choice, especially if I’m traveling.  It’s suppose to be good for motion sickness and also stomach aches.  Two things that can make traveling difficult.

The only disappointing thing about a can of Ginger Ale is how much sugar is in it.  So I haven’t bought another can of ginger ale in the longest time.  A good way to control how much sugar you want is to just make it yourself.  So I decided ginger ale must be so easy to make and went online to find a good recipe.

Here is a simple and basic recipe for home made Ginger Ale from Real Simple magazine:

1 1/2 cups sliced fresh ginger
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 (1-liter) bottles club soda or plain seltzer, chilled

I haven’t tried that recipe yet, since I found another neat recipe with an Asian twist from Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.  He is the author of “Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef”.  His twist includes chile, lime, and lemongrass.  When I tried to make it that way, it tasted a bit off.  As I didn’t like the peppery taste of the chili.  And my carbonated sparkling mineral water was bitter too.  Or maybe I squeezed in too much lime juice and used Jalepeno pepper?

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Another addition to my handmade soap batch is ginger & cranberry soap. This batch also has ginger root powder and cranberry fruit extract, nature’s own antibacterial agent. After my ginger soap batch cured, it had a very nice soft ginger scent. The longer the soaps cure ( while it sits in a well ventilated room) the better it gets. The saponification happens when you add the sodium hydroxide to the oils and the mixture heats up and takes 18 to 24 hours to saponify. But it is recommended to let it completely saponify and becomes mild soap in 3 or 4 weeks.

Ingredients include: Safflower oil, Soybean oil, Olive oil, Palm oil, Avocado oil, Distilled water, Sodium Hydroxide, Ginger root powder, and cranberry extract. The color of bar is not as even out, with some streaks. No more streaks, after curing for 6 weeks. I thought the streaks might be from when I added the cranberry powder towards the end. But it is from not being completely cured. This bar is medium in texture, but gets softer after each use. Be sure to let it dry completely so you can get more uses out of it. The bubbles are nice. And it does later up well.

I have used this soap as a face bar and shaving soap. The bubbles are medium size and the scent is very light. For shaving, I find that I don’t get any more razor burns. I love that I never have to buy shaving cream again. Imagine all the chemicals found in commercial shaving creams. Basically, handmade soap is great and you can even use it as laundry soap.

These little cranberries (shown here) are really good for you. They are taken from John Cushnie’s article in the Telegraph.co.uk. He wrote about these super berry tittled, “Cranberries and blueberries: the simple superfoods”. Who would have known that cranberries also help fight cavities.

You can purchase some of my other handmade soaps from my Etsy shop: Cambree’s Etsy Shop