Russian Tea Soap

We’ve finished the testing period, and have begun production of a new homemade soap variety: Russian tea!

If you’ve read the blog very often, you know we love our Russian tea (see The Secret of Russian Tea). We enjoy its aroma so much, we decided to try to recreate it in a soap.

Cakes of Russian tea soap curing in the cabin (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).

Cakes of Russian tea soap curing. Next comes trimming and wrapping (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).

We experimented with different combinations of essential oil until we found one that smells a lot like our Russian tea mix (no, we didn’t put Tang® in it!) The test batch cured just in time for Alaska Day, the event we most strongly associate with Russian tea. It didn’t come out of the mold very well. We managed to produce three commercial quality cakes, and distributed the ugly failures among family. We found that, while it starts well, it ages even better—the fragrance seems to mature and warm. It’s really nice!

Like all of our soaps, it’s certified Made in Alaska.

We’ve discovered that a lot of people like to enjoy Russian tea at Christmas time, so we’ve decided to offer this soap seasonally. It’s too late for Alaska Day this year, but our next batch will be available for Christmas. We’ll only get one batch this season, which should be cured in a few weeks.

Usually, we sell most of the soap we make locally, either to tourists or Hainesites, but we made a pretty big batch, so we should have enough to fill on line orders. You can find it on our Store page, here. We’re taking orders now for deliver shortly after December 3rd. First come, first served—we’ll disable the Russian tea soap button as soon as possible if the available cakes get reserved.

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