Persimmon soap?

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I know I'm super late to the party here, but since I have tried making kakishibu (persimmon tannin) soap, I thought I'd chip in my opinions about this, and also the topic about neonatal body odor.

I am naturally a very smelly person, and I also take care of two retired elderly people, one exhibiting an immensely pungent old-people smell, whilst the other one isn't that bad...I can only assume that this 'old people smell' is perhaps a genetic thing that only affects certain people, and not all old people in general. The fairly stinky elderly I am taking care of is being stingy and refuses to use anything I give him, so unfortunately, I can't test out whether or not the soap helps reduce old people smell.

Regarding making the 'Mirai japanese persimmon' soap, the ingredient used is fermented young persimmon tannin, called 'Kakishibu'. It is typically used in dying wood and fabrics, and comes in liquid or powder form. If you use around 2 tsp liquid ppo in cold process soap at trace, it will end up as a rich, dark brown soap. I have no idea why or how some brands have such a dainty light orange color, unless there is only a teensy weensy bit of persimmon tannin in the soap.

Something I want to also add while making this soap is that the persimmon tannin (or even if you are trying to use fresh persimmons) will turn the soap blue, but will settle to dark brown once the soap is saponified.

I mentioned previously that i am a smelly person, and I tried making the soap to see if I smell any different. Any soap would get rid of body odor, but even a little mild sweat on my clothes can make me smell pretty icky. The persimmon soap also helps with body odors from hormonal imbalance (supposedly?), so I just thought I'd give it a shot. I've tried my homemade persimmon soap for a whole month, on two separate occasions (I waited maybe about 3 or 4 months inbetween). I can definitely tell that during my persimmon-soap months, my clothes don't stink as bad in the washing machine, compared to using my other homemade soap. However, I've mentioned before that this is all possibly something to do with genetics, and most likely will not affect everyone when using the soap.

I really hope this information helps anyone who is curious about it, since I myself could barely find any information.
 
Very interesting Jackie. I opened the thread because I have a persimmon tree, and I always have more fruit than I know what to do with. Glad I read it, even if this soap doesn't use the fruit!
 
Very interesting Jackie. I opened the thread because I have a persimmon tree, and I always have more fruit than I know what to do with. Glad I read it, even if this soap doesn't use the fruit!
At first I thought something was wrong when my liquid persimmon tannin turned blue, but I found an online video of a guy who used persimmon pulp in his, and the exact same thing happened to his batch, so it should be okay to make persimmon soap out of fresh ones. I've seen some persimmon soaps on Etsy, so it's not like it has never been done. Depending on how much you use, the soap itself can ends up as a light orange-brown to a dark chocolate-brown. I have not used fresh persimmon, so I do not know if it speeds or slows trace, but I know the liquid kakishibu does not affect trace at all.

Also, if you have a dehydrator, dried persimmons are quite tasty ;)
 

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