Goats milk soap competition

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Primrose

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Hi all,

Being a crazy goat lady and part of the branch committee for the DGSA in my state ... It has fallen to me to organise a soap competition. I was wondering what everyone thought of this class list. This is a somewhat shortened version as I'm on my phone but if anyone wants the extended class descriptions I can add them tomorrow

COLD PROCESS
1. Plain
2. Scented - EOs
3. Scented - FOs
4. Natural colorants
5. Decorated - swirls, colors, embeds, impression mats and more
6. Decorative moulds
7. Botanicals
8. Vegetarian and palm free
9. Any other specialty soap

Then repeat the same for HP

Best CP soap
Best HP soap
Best overall soap
Best scented soap
Best swirl
Best combination of scent and design

Additional classes
19. Local soap makers entry
20. Novice soap makers entry
21. Liquid soap
22. Lotion/hand cream/body butter

Would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions you have!
 
Do you have enough soapers to fill those?

Also, why separate HP from CP? Then end product is the same, just the method is different.

I would make it clear that the soap has to be from scratch - no pre-purchased soap base or purchased MP. (making your own MP would be fine.)

Also, does the dairy goat community have a lot of vegetarians?

I would have these categories:
Plain (no scent or color)
Visual design
Scent

Have a best-of in each of these categories and a best over all. If you get a lot of participants you can always include more classes.

I wouldn't use "swirl" as a category because there are all sorts of things people can do with color and design that aren't swirls.

I also wouldn't worry about local or novice soapmakers at this stage. Who is going to be policing the "novice" category anyway?

Don't mean to be downer. I think it actually sounds like a fun project!
 
+Above. I'd simplify that; the contest is for "best pie" at the fair, not "best blueberry pie baked with 80% lard and 20% vegetable fat."

The CP/HP split makes sense to a soaper, but might not to a more general audience. If you think John and Jane in the audience will appreciate the difference, great! If not, I'd either expend a little effort explaining it or, even more simply, just fold everything together into "soap."

Kids can't really compete here...if that's a big deal, maybe have an MP category for the under-14 crowd?
 
I'd be overwhelmed by these categories as well - What's a "plain" soap: Unscented and uncolored? Sounds like judging a bunch of plain white bars could be fun... I often mix EO's and FO's to create unique scents as well, so I would be frustrated by limiting my self to just one or the other. Also, scent is very subjective to individual "tastes". A lot of these could be combined - example: natural colors and botanicals (as often the botanicals provide the color). What's a specialty soap: A salt bar made with goats milk? I would try to condense it to 3 broader categories and combine HP and CP methods.
 
Fifth time trying to post this reply because of technology gremlins grrrrr

Thank you for the feedback, I will take it on board and reduce the number of classes. I was worried it was too much too, but people kept saying to me "oh I do xxxx can we have a class for that"

DeeAnna, thanks for those links, they are great!
 
Yes, I am curious as a vegetarian about 'vegetarian goat milk soap' as a category. :) So long as it's not labelled vegan.

But one should realize that there are categories of vegetarian that include folks who eat/drink dairy (it doesn't kill the animal to milk it), etc. A vegan may not use goat milk soap, but lacto-vegetarian certainly might.
 
I have several vegetarian friends who want my goat milk soap but without palm or animal fats ...

I even know vegans who are happy to use goats milk soap from dairy goats in a small local hobby herd as they know the animals are treated well etc ... There are many different people with different perspectives and choices
 
Slightly off topic but... jas anyone done these water soak tests on their own soaps? In my effort to avoid soapmaking right now (ha! Still waiting for inspiration to hit me...) this seems like a fun project. What is the youngest soap you would advise testing?
 
Amd -- If you want to do a water absorption test to see how your soap will performs during normal use, then I'd test soap that's ready for normal use -- in other words, after the soap is sufficiently cured. But you could test a younger soap and a similar older soap and see if there's a big difference between the two. That might be interesting info to show whether the cure time is an important factor for slowing down how much water is absorbed by the soap.

edit: I think the interesting thing in the articles by Soap Queen is how she thought the water absorption test correlated well with the more subjective tests of lather quality. This comment especially caught my eye, "...The fascinating part about this test is that our subjective ideas about lathering (size of bubbles, stability of lather) seems to correspond well to the water absorption test. Too high of a soap superfat leads to softer soap and too high of a superfat also leads to smaller bubbles and creamier lather...."
 
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I'm just going to agree to disagree with you on this one, because anything I say you will just counter due to your beliefs (which you are entitled to have) and its not really got anything to do with the topic anyway.
 
Fifth time trying to post this reply because of technology gremlins grrrrr

Thank you for the feedback, I will take it on board and reduce the number of classes. I was worried it was too much too, but people kept saying to me "oh I do xxxx can we have a class for that"

DeeAnna, thanks for those links, they are great!

What things were they asking about?

To my mind, separating these things - HP vs CP, animal fat vs vegetarian, etc is unnecessary because all of these things are soap. We're still expecting the same things from them.

Also, I think some of these things can be categories for one year, to shake things up and to try new things. So natural colorants could be a category for one year, but not every year.
 
That's a really good idea about having an extra class one year and something different the next, thank you!
 

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