The Bar Soap Story

Author: Hall Newbegin

Date: June 23, 2018

Juniper Ridge and bar soap go way back. Bar soap was one of the first real products our founder Hall Newbegin made in his basement back in the late 90’s. ‘Real products’ meaning something other than harvesting plants and distilling essential oils and aromatics, which Hall has been doing for decades.

The thing about bar soaps – and what makes them so special – is how difficult they are to make without using shortcut ingredients like detergents and petrochemicals. We use the centuries-old process of saponification, which means converting organic vegetable oils into soap. We blend in some softening plant oils and wildharvested essential oils and the result is a wonderful, naturally sudsy bar of castile soap.

The downside of this process is how hard it is on the aromatic elements. The castile process uses a lot of heat, which can diminish the strength of an essential oil or even change its structure. That’s why there are so few bar soaps on the market made with real essential oils. We’re dedicated to exclusively using seasonal, native, wild plants for our aromatics. It’s the only way we’re willing to create products and to ensure the integrity of our materials and finished goods.

Enter Coastal Sage. Sage is the perfect match for bar soap due to the resilience of its scent profile. Sage is a hardy plant in two ways crucial to our products: it responds well to pruning, which allows us to harvest it sustainably, and its unmistakable scent stays intact during formulation, making it the perfect aromatic for body wash and bar soap.

For this Field Lab, we included real pieces of Sage leaves in the bar for some added exfoliation. The saponified castile base is blended with moisturizing plant oils, like Coconut and Safflower to prevent the drying effect some bar soaps can have. As for the scent, let Salvia apiana fill your space and scent your skin with the essence of a crisp, tangy breeze of the coast.