My Salty Dog Spa Bar soap is named after the famous “Salty Dog” cocktail. This soap really has amazing lather, gentle exfoliation from the sea salt, and a refreshing scent of grapefruit. In case you don’t know, Salty Dog cocktails are made with a lot of salt and grapefruit juice. I thought this would be a fun video to make and also wanted to share my recipe. I just finished publishing the video to my YouTube channel. I’ve included the recipe and a link to my video in this post. :)
Salty Dog Spa Bar – The name for this soap came from my Grandmother’s favorite cocktail
I knew I wanted to make a salt bar, but I didn’t want to deal with some of the hassles that come with making a 100% salt bar. I also wanted to make a Grapefruit essential oil soap where the scent stayed with the soap longer than a few weeks. So I decided to combine these ideas and experiment with different recipes.
In my experimental recipes, I used higher and lower amounts of varying types of salt but finally decided on 10% fine all natural Sea Salt. To make sure the soap still lathered (salt puts a big damper on lather), I upped the coconut oil to 50%. Then, to combat the dryness of using a high percentage of coconut oil, I chose to superfat my soap at 15%. Superfatting basically means leaving extra oils in the final product. Finally, I decided to add organic coconut milk (milk in oil method) and some clays to the recipe. I love using coconut milk and different clays in my soap recipes.
The essential oil blend I finally decided on seemed to have the longest lasting grapefruit scent. But not only did the blend I chose help the grapefruit scent last, the combination of milk, clays, and salt in this particular recipe seemed to help, as well. I’m finding the grapefruit scent is lasting longer in this soap than in any other grapefruit essential oil recipe I’ve tried in the past.
Salty Dog Spa Bar Lather
Here’s my recipe in percentages…
Salty Dog Spa Bar Recipe
Coconut Oil – 50%
Olive Oil – 20%
Sunflower Oil (high oleic) – 5%
Sustainable Palm Oil – 10%
Avocado Oil – 5%
Apricot Kernel Oil – 5%
Castor Oil – 5%
Kaolin Clay – 2 tsp per 500g of base oils
Rose Clay – 1/2 tsp per cup of soap
Sea Salt – 10% of base oil weight
Essential Oils – 50 g/kg (5% or 0.7 oz per pound of oils)
Water – same amount as Lye plus 14 grams
Coconut Milk – same amount as Lye
Superfat – 15%
Lye – use a soap calculator to determine the amount of lye for your specific recipe. Some great online soap calculators are located at: thesage.com, soapcalc.net, & summerbeemeadow.com
Essential Oil Blend:
Pink Grapefruit EO – 80%
Litsea Cubeba – 10%
Patchouli – 10%
I also add 0.08% Rosemary Oleoresin to all of my soap recipes. I add the Rosemary Oleoresin to my warm oils before adding the lye water.
Here’s the video on how I make the Salty Dog Spa Bar soap. I actually tried narrating the video as I made the soap, but, as with all of my other non-soap making videos, I chose text overlays instead. I just do not have a voice for video. :)
Thank you so much for reading my post!
Kápia Méra 
Hi
I found this soap recipe because I have a friend who’s business name is ‘salty dog shipping’ It looks wonderful and I can’t wait to give it a go. I have my own blog and I’ll link to your site when its done. Thanks for the recipe. I’ve never made a soap before with 15% superfat so I’ll be interested to see how it turns out.
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Sounds like a wonderful soap! I don’t use palm oil, can you possibly give an alternative for it? Than you so much!
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Sorry, back one more time. You can disregard my question regarding palm oil replacement. I found your answer on a different soap recipe: replace with shea and cocoa butter, about 3:1 ratio shea to cocoa to fulfill 100% of the palm oil amount. Thank you again – for everything!
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Sorry it took me so long to get back to your question, but I’m glad you found the answer. Hope it works well for you! :)
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I just finished watching the video – thank you!!! Really, I love that you use only natural colorants and fragrances, plus I learn so much from everything on your blog and videos about how to make the soap. I really appreciate you sharing so generously!
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How long does this stay in the mold before cutting,since it is a salt bar but only 10% do you still cut it only hours after it sets up? Also, I just want to make sure I understand before trying this since I am new to this, but after running your recipe through a lye calculator,you use the # you get for lye and add 14 grams for the amount of water, and you use the # your got for the lye as the # for the coconut milk? For example..if it says you need 125 grams of lye, you would use 139 grams of water and 125 grams of coconut milk? Thank you for your help!
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Hi Lauren,
Thanks for visiting my blog!
This salt bar definitely does get hard quicker than a regular batch of soap. However, since I only use 10% salt, I usually cut the bars the next morning or so. So if I make the batch at 4pm, I’ll cut the bars by 10am to Noon the next morning. The bars will probably still crumble ever so slightly on the bottom (mine always do), but when I use a vegetable peeler to trim the edges, they clean up nicely. I’ve only been able to cut these bars with a wire cutter, btw. When I tried a metal knife slicer, the bars really crumbled. I’d recommend cutting as soon as the batch is ready if you’re using something other than a wire cutter.
Regarding the water and milk, your example is correct. Here’s another link (by Amanda at Lovin Soap) that explains the method really well (in ounces), in case you’d like some more info – http://www.lovinsoap.com/2013/02/the-classic-oatmeal-goats-milk-and-honey-cold-process-soap-milk-in-oil-method/
Thanks for asking and good luck with your soap making!
Holly
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Great, thank you so much for the detailed response, I appreciate your feedback. Your soaps look awesome, and I want to try them all! Thanks again!
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