I have a freezer full of whole hops, but have yet to use them in soap. If you use a really hoppy APA and concentrate at least half of it down, the smell will stick in my experience. Just watch for acceleration
Edit to add: I would absolutely not add whole hops to the soap, they would go brown and look like mouse poop (like lavender does). Perhaps some on top might look cute, but expect them to go brown.
Whole hops doesn't go brown. We make a hop head soap made with beer from a local brewery.
The whole hops is pushed into the top of the bar. I wouldn't consider putting hops in the soap, way too scratchy.
SageontheMountain, do you find that the hops have any exfoliating effects, or is it more for visual interest? Also, would you recommend any specific type of hops over another? I think Bulk Apothecary had a big sale on hops recently, but I was so daunted by the options that I didn't buy any! LOL
The very reason I started making soaps was because I wanted to make beer and hops soaps. My second batch of soap
ever was very...ambitious, shall we say, and didn't turn out in any way as I wanted. Still good soap that we're using for hand washing, but not "beery"
at all.
This may be a long post, so in good journalism style I'll give you the conclusions first and the details second: First, whole hops very definitely turn to brown mouse turds when put into the batter, and they are very rough. Second, I could not get any hop character at all in spite of using a very hoppy IPA, infusing hops in oil, and adding whole leaf hops. Finally, adding crystal malt turned the soap into a dessert soap, not a beer soap.
I set out to tick every "beer" box with this soap. I chose a very respectable, hoppy, American IPA, boiled it down enough to remove alcohol and carbonation (but not TOO much as the hop aroma compounds turn to bittering compounds with longer exposure to heat) then froze it. It was 100% of my liquid for the recipe.
Meanwhile, I did a hot extraction with about 2 oz of Centennial hop pellets in 8 oz of apricot kernel oil. Pellets are very compressed and are stingy about giving back solvents, so I only ended up with 6 oz of oil after squeezing. It was VERY dark yellow-green, very fragrant oil. It was "dank" with hop goodness. That made up 15% of total oils in the batch with the rest being a relatively typical mix of lard, coconut, and olive with a splash of castor and avocado. The oils before adding the lye were a beautiful and fragrant emerald.
Adding the beer and lye, though, turned everything brown and started to stink. I pressed on and everything went well enough, despite the smell. At trace, I added two tablespoons of a caramelized malt called Caramunich that I had pulverized to powder in a coffee grinder (I was thinking oatmeal parallels here) and approximately an ounce of dried, homegrown leaf hops (Glacier). I had carefully removed the hop leaves from the bracts they grown on (a very fiddly process) and chopped them about medium-fine.
At this point, I had a soap ready to go into the mold, but there was absolutely no hop scent at all, no beer scent, just an awful lye scent. Since this was my second batch and I was afraid of getting a finished soap with this terrible smell, I flinched a bit and added a 1/2 oz of BB's lemongrass-sage FO (40 oz batch) thinking that small amount might help cover that hateful lye smell and would harmonize with any hop character that remained after the cure.
I poured into the loaf and put the mold into the freezer to prevent overheating from all the sugars in the batter. Took it out next day and cut it the day after. Now that it's cured, the results are absolutely nothing at all like I'd hoped.
IMG_20151017_235416[1].jpg
As you can see the soap is quite yellow and the leaf hops are brown and scratchy. The smaller brown dots are the crystal malt. It works great as a hand soap, but I tried it in the shower one time and it's as rough as a loufah. Way too rough for me. The biggest disappointment, though, is the smell. No hops whatsoever. It smells like malt. For you brewers reading this, it smells like malt extract. For non-brewers, it smells a bit like sweet granola and caramel together. There's no hint of that little bit of lemongrass-sage FO that I added in my moment of weakness. It's actually a very pleasant smell, but it's NOT HOPS. :-( It performs very well, lathers great (as it should with all that sugar), and rinses clean - although it sometimes sheds those little hop pieces in the sink. It's very popular with the household and family even though it's not what I planned. Overall, a happy accident.
If I were going to try this again, based on this experience I would:
NOT add the crystal malt. It's sugars are over the top and its scent overpowering. Pulverized unmalted barley would be a better choice for the "oatmeal" route.
NOT add whole hops except as a possible topping. They are too scratchy and ugly when put in the batter.
INCREASE the percentage of infused oil - a lot. Like all the liquid oils infused at a ratio of 1 oz of pellets for 4 oz of oil (expecting to lose a 1/3 of the oils to the hops)
However, even with those changes, I'm skeptical of any hop aroma making it through saponification in CP. Hop aroma compounds are acids.
Perhaps the actual answer is making an HP soap and superfatting after the cook with an hop-infused oil? (I haven't tried that, but I may...) I'm also considering adding a large amount of the squeezed pellets - half of weight or so - like one would add salt or pumice. I'm not sure even that much would impart hop aroma, though, unless one went the HP route.
This is already super-long so I'll end, but if anybody has questions about hop varieties or such, I'm happy to answer.
