Pure – True Castile Soap

Description

Pure Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil Castile Soap

Castile Soap is Olive Oil Soap. Pure. Simple. Gentle. # pure olive oil Castile 

Simple…or maybe not. Sometimes the issue can be confused when lots of other stuff is added and it’s still called Castile. One of the most famous “Castile” soaps has Coconut and Palm, then Olive, then a few other oils as well! Several others have quite a variety of oils including one that uses almost 100% Coconut Oil (which could be quite drying). One even adds Peppermint to their already large conglomeration…Go figure!

So what does Castile even mean? All this left us scratching our heads, because our understanding was that it meant pure Olive Oil soap! Research time! Sure enough, our research revealed that yes, true Castile Soap should indeed be an Olive Oil soap. But over the last half century or so it has often been used to refer to vegetable oil soaps. In that vein, most of our soaps are “Castile,” but we prefer to use only the original meaning, and thus we call only Pure a Castile soap. A “Castile” soap with other ingredients is technically “Bastille,” not Castile.

There are multitudes of stories out there about the origination of Castile, but the most likely seems to indicate that original Castile was made with sea water. Since we live inland, we chose to make a faux sea water for our Castile Soaps. Simply Distilled Water, Dead Sea Salt, and small amount of Baking Soda. All good for your skin ingredients, and makes a better bar of soap than Distilled Water alone. This is in our new Castile bars excluding the Goat Milk variety.  #pure

Thereolive oil castile

Pure Castile with added Butters or Goat’s Milk- Bastille

But hey, it isn’t a law that Castile has to have only Olive Oil is it! ;p So we also decided to add a few other soaps to our Pure line with a single added ingredient. A few “Bastille” soaps. But they have been kept at 90-95% Pure Castile! One with Goat’s Milk as the saponification liquid, one with added Shea, one with added Cocoa Butter! As they are at least 90% Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil, with only one added ingredient, we kept the name Pure/Castile (or “Castile with butter, etc.”). Pure Castile has no added anything, and the Goat’s Milk version is 100% Pure, just saponified with Goat’s Milk instead of Distilled Water. The ones with added Butter, etc. say so clearly. No confusion.

Confusion

But just for fun, while we are on the subject of confusion…LOL

There are, as we all know, millions of pages of laws in our land, governing everything from how fast you drive (Anyone else thankful we don’t have an Autobahn? LOL  Fun fact: over half of the famous German Autobahn system has NO speed limit! Imagine this: you’re cruising along at a mere 120 mph -ha- and some crazy dude whizzes by you at twice your speed. That’s the stuff nightmares (or dreams) are made of! ), to the thickness of your ketchup (yep, no kidding). This can lead to some serious confusion. In the world of soap making there are several confusing laws. (Surprise!) For example, the law technically allows companies to imply they are not soap by the way they label their products! Some companies try to slide by the fact that they are “soap” and use Lye to saponify the oils.
Here’s how it works: You have a choice of what to put on your ingredient label.You can put “what goes into the pot” or “what comes out of the pot” on your label. We choose to use the “what goes into the pot” method of ingredient lists because we would want to know, and believe you want to know, exactly what oils and butters, etc, go into the soap! (When you see “saponified oils and fats” on the label it literally could contain anything from soybean oil to Whale blubber 🐳) After all, we believe the label is for your sake, not ours. Since what comes out of the pot does not contain Lye, if you choose that method on your labels you don’t need to ever put it on your labels.
Another interesting tidbit: there are two forms of Lye commonly used; Sodium Hydroxide and Potassium Hydroxide. The Lye used affects the consistency of the soap. For simplicity sake, generally speaking Potassium Hydroxide produces liquid soap while Sodium Hydroxide makes bar soap.
All these confusing labeling laws are one of the reasons for the Castile/Bastille confusion.

What’s saponification?

Basically when we make soap, we put oils, butters, and a liquid (which we add to the Sodium Hydroxide to make Lye) Lye into the pot. The Lye then saponifies the oils. Now what you have is soap!❤️❤️ The vast majority of this process happens over the first 72 hours, then we cure it over the next 7-10 weeks to ensure a mild, long lasting bar!
Our Pure line is intended to be just that, Pure and simple. Here at Spero Soaps we love working with a variety of oils, essential oils, clays, salts and botanicals. But more isn’t always better. Sometimes, for some skin, less is more.

But I digress, that was a rabbit trail…Back to the subject. Keep reading…

Fluffy

Did that catch your eye? I love the large, soft, fluffy lather of our soaps! It’s honestly one of the joys of the job to me. So, when I read that Castile Soap had little lather I almost didn’t even want to make it. You see, it’s the Coconut and Palm oils that give the big bubbles. The Olive Oil lends the creamy moisture to soap. But I persevered anyway, and I’m thankful I did. The lather is definitely NOT the same as our other soaps!  But it is soft and creamy. While it is important to let all soap dry out between uses, it is especially important for this soap! Unlike our other soaps, this soap will become quite sticky if you don’t. (All natural soaps can become soft, so allow to dry between uses.)

However, we recommend you use a mesh shower poofy for this soap. It makes a HUGE difference!

Sodium Hydroxide

One more tidbit, just for fun. Saying Food Grade Sodium Hydroxide does NOT mean you can eat the soap. Yep, you knew that, lol. ;p

But we actually had a lady on a vacation back in 2018 tell us that the store next door sold soap you could eat if you found yourself caught in the wilderness without food. As a soap maker, I was completely baffled. I couldn’t think how she could possibly confuse soap with food…So I hunted down the soap. Here’s how the label read: Food Grade Olive Oil, Food Grade Coconut Oil, Food Grade Lye… I think you see where this is going. We got a good laugh out of it, but also realized where the confusion stemmed from.
Food grade Sodium Hydroxide is important. People actually make soap from drain cleaner. Yep, horrors, they really do! And guess what? It’ll make soap. But neither you, nor I, want all the accompanying impurities in our soap! All we use here is Food Grade. (It’s all we have ever used in any soap, even if we accidentally left the words “food grade” off the ingredient listing!)

Now, if you actually read all the way through this page you are, first of all, a trooper (I had fun writing it, and I hope you had fun reading it.), and secondly, a winner. Write in your order note box at checkout “I read it all! I want my free bar.” We will include an extra free full size soap of our choosing for you! Now, no cheating, if you didn’t read the page, but just landed on this, go back and read the page for the free soap. Lol