Just a little bit about how we started. It began over 10 years ago when my 2 girls and I saw a soap making class offered in the North Georgia mountains- by a wonderful soul, Kate Rogers with Greenstone Soap Company at her soap shop in Sautee. We couldn't resist and took her class and left with our own notebooks filled with soap recipes, soap making instructions and information on soap and vendors, essential oil samples and our first batch of the handmade soaps that we all made. Each of us worked on our own soaps, with whatever essential oils we chose. This was a wonderful eye opener and soap experience! And it turned us on to soap making... soap testing... different soap ingredients... and... beer soap!
I had used Body on Tap shampoo when I was a teenager and I loved it. I couldn't believe it was discontinued in the early 80's but I never forgot about it. When we learned how to make soap, we decided to test beer as a main ingredient. And- voila! Our beer soaps were born! Beer isn't the easiest thing to use in soaps. If you don't handle it just right, the soap easily seizes up before even pouring in to the mold- we had to practice a few times to understand the difference when using 100% beer in our soaps. But we nailed it. And it's been our regular soap recipe ever since.
Using alcohol liquids in our soaps became our norm. With the beers, we try our best to make our matching soap & candles be a reflection of what's in those beers as well as what taste is left on the palate of beer enthusiasts. We even look at the BeerAdvocate reviews to see what others think of the beer tastes and smells. That is why we have a matching soap & candle for every beer and beverage on our labels. Our Pale Ale, Blue Ale, IPA and soon to be Farmhouse Ale soaps and candles are as close as we can get them to smell like the beers used in the soaps. Our IPA has olive oil infused with hops as well as a hop on top of the bar of soap. The candle smells the same. Roasted hops & pine. Mmmmm...
Thank you guys for supporting us along the way! More about our journey in the next post- Cheers!
(Photo of Carson & Hannah at our soap class in 2012)
