Herbal Infusion

While there are multiple methods to creating an herbal soap, I’m going to share with you a couple of my favorite methods of herbal infusion. The first method takes about two weeks, but is made without adding heat and you can just set it aside, shaking once daily until ready. The second method takes about an hour and must be watched and stirred regularly to keep it from burning. Adding heat here creates a different scent than the no-heat version.

Additional Supplies:

Mason jar

label

Ingredients:

1.5 oz herbs

6 oz olive oil

Make sure the herbs you are using are human-friendly. For example, lavender is calming and soothing to the skin, whereas alkanet, though good for healing irritated skin, is used mostly for color. The herbs used can be powdered or cut and sifted. Generally, I will crunch up big leaves and grind large roots so as to create more surface space for the oils to pull out the goodness in the herbs. Make sure your herbs are dried; the liquid in fresh herbs can cause rancidity.

Every recipe in this book contains olive oil, so we will be using olive oil for extracting the herbs. To start, gather your jar, herbs, and at least as much olive oil as will be used in your recipe. You may want to use a bit more than what is called for as the herbs will soak up some of the oil. Alternatively, you can simply add the lost oil content into your accumulative oil when measuring it out for soap.

Method 1:

The first step is to measure the herbs, place them into the Mason jar, and add oil. Then cap, label, date, and shake. Keep in a cool, dry spot and shake daily for up to two weeks. After this time, strain your herbs out of your oil, compost herbs, and ta-da! You now have herbal oil. This can be added to your soap just like you would add regular oil.

Method 2:

To make this oil, you need only an hour. Simply take your herbs and oil, blend them into a heatproof container, and create a double boiler by placing this into a sauce pan with a few inches of water. Bring the water to a simmer and let simmer on low heat for about 1 hour. Remove your oil from heat, strain out herbs, and toss them into the compost. Save the oil for some marvelous future soap or use right away!