Creating Coffee-Scented Soaps: Capturing The Aroma Of Fresh Brew

Coffee soap is a great way to incorporate your love for coffee into your daily routine. Coffee grounds are a large exfoliant, making them perfect for exfoliating the body, especially dry areas like feet and elbows. Used coffee grounds are best for both melt and pour and cold process soap. Fresh grounds can bleed in the soap, creating a halo of colour.

If you want to add a coffee aroma to your soap, you can use coffee essential oil or coffee fragrance oil. Coffee essential oil is used mainly for scent and likely colour, whereas coffee fragrance oil is used for scent and can be added at a smaller usage rate.

Coffee grounds add exfoliation and an interesting look in soap

Coffee grounds are a great natural exfoliant for soap. They do not dissolve in water, making them perfect for scrubbing away dead skin cells. Coffee is also antimicrobial, protecting the skin from germs.

Coffee grounds add a natural, interesting look to soap. They can be added to the soap mixture before pouring into moulds, or sprinkled on top of the soap before it sets. The grounds tend to settle at the top of the soap, creating one side that is better for exfoliating.

When making exfoliating coffee soap, it is important to use a high quantity of olive oil to ensure the soap is moisturising. You can also add sunflower oil to make the lather silkier, coconut oil to make it bubbly, and cocoa butter to create a hard and creamy soap.

For an extra exfoliating boost, you can add a small amount of sugar to your coffee ground soap.

Coffee butter is a luxurious way to give your soap a pick-me-up

Coffee butter is an extremely popular butter to add to your soap, lip product, and skincare recipes. It is luxurious, rich, and it feels like it can wake you up with just one whiff! Coffee butter is made from real coffee seed oil and exhibits excellent spreadability on the skin, making it ideal as a massage butter. It pairs amazingly with caffeine extract and coffee fragrance oils.

Coffee butter contains around 1% natural caffeine. It contains Coffea Seed Oil, thought to block enzymes harmful to skin destruction. It adds moisturizing attributes to creams and lotions and bar soaps. The average melt point is 104º F.

Coffee butter can be used in cold and hot process soapmaking. It can be added to cold process soap up to 6%, lotions and creams up to 5%, and balms up to 100%.

Coffee and tea as the liquid in cold process soap

Coffee and tea can be used in place of, or in addition to, distilled water in your cold process soap recipe. They add colour and a very subtle scent to soap. They're also great from a marketing standpoint – coffee and tea fans will love it. They do require a bit of prep before getting started.

How strong you make the coffee and tea is a matter of personal preference. If you want a fairly dark colour and a slightly stronger scent, you can brew a strong batch. For less of a colour and scent impact, you can brew a slightly weaker batch. Mixing the tea or coffee with distilled water can help prevent some of the discoloration as well. Instead of using it at 100% of the liquid amount, you can reduce that to 50% or so. Use the Lye Calculator to find out how much lye and liquid to add to your recipe.

Once your coffee or tea is brewed, it needs to chill in the fridge for several hours, up to overnight. When the lye is added to the liquid, it reacts and heats up the mix. If the coffee or tea is at room temperature, that can cause darker discoloration. It also creates a fairly unpleasant smell. Cooled liquid will discolor and smell a bit less. What colour the liquid turns depends on what you’re using. We’ve found green tea turns a medium brown colour. Coffee turns green when the lye is added, then morphs into brown.

Ingredients:

• Brewed coffee (frozen) 230g
• Sodium hydroxide 104g
• Extra virgin olive oil 150g
• Fragrance oil 11g (I used a blend of coffee and coconut fragrance oils)
• 1 teaspoon (or less) of spent coffee grounds. (You can add more but they are scratchy).

Method:

• Prepare a large, strong cup of brewed coffee, and when cooled, pour and weigh 230g into an ice cube tray and freeze. Do this the day/evening before you make the soap to ensure it is properly frozen.
• Weigh the oils and butters into a small saucepan and melt slowly on the stove using low heat. You can also melt the oils in the microwave on low heat in a microwave-safe container. Do not overheat the oils and butters, about 60°C / 140°F is sufficient.
• While the oils and butters are melting, weigh the fragrance oil (if using) into a small glass or jar and cover until required.
• Using full safety precautions (eye goggles and gloves minimum), weigh your sodium hydroxide into a small container and cover with a lid immediately. Place somewhere safe.
• Make your lye solution in a medium-sized jug. Gradually add the sodium hydroxide to the frozen coffee ice cubes and mix slowly and carefully until the sodium hydroxide is dissolved and the coffee is melted. This mixture should be around 20°C / 68°F once the solution is mixed, which is just perfect for adding into the warm oil mixture. Don't worry if there are a few bits of undissolved lye in the mix, you can strain those out.
• When you are ready to make the soap, pour your warmed oils into a large jug and stir in the fragrance oil (if using). Carefully pour the lye solution into the oil mixture, and whisk the soap until it thickens. You can use a stick blender to speed up this process, but it is not necessary with this recipe.
• Add a small amount of spent coffee grounds (if you want to) and mix it in.
• Once the soap has reached a medium trace, pour it into the mould. Decorate or texture the top if you’d like to.
• Once the soap has become slightly firm, cover it and wrap it in a blanket or towels to force the soap to gel. It was a cold day when I made the soap and I didn’t wrap it sufficiently (plus I kept taking a peek), so mine didn’t gel fully. (More about gelling soap and what that means here).
• Once firm enough to cut (I left mine until the next day), cut into bars and cure in a dry/airy place for 4-6 weeks to fully harden.
• Test the soap for correct pH (learn about that here) and enjoy!

Fragrance oils can be used to incorporate the smell of tea or coffee into your products more strongly

Fragrance oils are the way to go if you want to incorporate the smell of tea or coffee into your products more strongly. Bramble Berry carries a variety of tea and coffee-inspired scents. Use the Bramble Berry Fragrance Calculator to find out how much fragrance oil to use in your products. If you're using tea or coffee in your products in the form of liquid, coffee ground, tea leaves, coffee butter, etc., adding a matching fragrance oil is a great way to create a cohesive product. Check out the fragrances below to find the perfect tea or coffee scent for your project.

Coffee and Tea Fragrances:

• Espresso Fragrance Oil
• Turkish Mocha Fragrance Oil
• Chocolate Espresso Cybilla Fragrance Oil
• Chai Tea Cybilla Fragrance Oil
• Green Tea Fragrance Oil
• Black Tea Fragrance Oil
• Green Tea & Cucumber Fragrance Oil
• Lavender Green Tea Fragrance Oil
• White Tea & Ginger Fragrance Oil
• White Tea & Ginger Candle & Soap Fragrance Oil
• Lychee Red Tea Fragrance Oil

Coffee seed oil has a delicious aroma

Coffee seed oil is a thick and luxurious oil extracted from freshly roasted coffee beans. It has a delicious coffee aroma and is suitable for use in handmade soap, lotion, balm, and bath bombs.

In soapmaking, coffee seed oil can be added to cold process soap recipes, up to a concentration of 10%. It is not recommended for use in melt-and-pour soap. When making coffee-scented soap, it is important to note that using coffee instead of water in the recipe may not impart a strong coffee smell to the final product. The addition of lye to the coffee mixture can create an unpleasant odour, but this can be masked by adding a fragrance oil such as espresso fragrance oil.

Coffee seed oil has a variety of benefits for the skin. It is rich in polyunsaturated linoleic acid, polyphenols, and diterpene esters, making it an effective ingredient in sun care, anti-ageing, wound healing, and anti-cellulite formulations. Coffee oil is also known for its anti-inflammatory and skin-softening properties, and its ability to retain moisture. Additionally, the caffeine present in coffee seed oil can help stimulate detoxification and aid in cleansing, making it useful for treating acne-prone or problematic skin.

When creating coffee-scented soap, it is important to consider safety precautions such as wearing goggles, gloves, and long sleeves during the soap-making process. It is also crucial to ensure that the coffee mixture has cooled to room temperature before adding the lye, as this can affect the final temperature of the soap batter.

Overall, coffee seed oil is a delightful addition to coffee-themed soaps, providing not only a delicious aroma but also a range of skin benefits that will leave your skin feeling soft, moisturised, and rejuvenated.

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