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When it comes to finding the best goat milk soaps with pure, natural ingredients, it can seem an alchemical task. There’s a lot to consider about soap-making processes and ingredients in order to choose the right soap for your skin, purpose, and price point. To help you navigate the surprisingly nuanced goat milk soap market, I’ve outlined the basics below:
Milk Quality
Start with the quality of goat milk. Buying from a soap maker who works directly with farmers or, better yet, raises their own goats helps you know what’s going into your soap. Also, check the ingredient’s list and where goat milk ranks in the list; you’ll want goat milk to be early, which indicates that it's a main ingredient.
Other Ingredients
Beyond nourishing oils like coconut, palm, and olive oil as well as essential oils for fragrance or health benefits, goat milk soap should be simple. Ingredients to flag are GMO products like soybean, corn, canola, vegetable, or modified rapeseed oil—while the FDA has found no evidence that GMOs are less safe, the rule of thumb for soap is simplicity. You'll also want to avoid sodium lauryl sulfate, which is an emulsifier that increases soap lather, but strips skin of healthy, naturally occurring oils. However, sodium hydroxide, or lye, is fine—it’s added early in the soap-making process and, though often listed as an ingredient, is usually not present in the final product.
Soap Making and Curing Processes
The two soap-making methods are hot and cold process. For milk-based soaps, the cold-process method for making and curing is considered the best as there’s no risk of the milk curdling and allows soap and glycerin to form without cooking the soap.
Who knew soap was so complicated? Here’s the list of the best goat milk soaps to make adding goat milk soap to your routine as simple as the soap should be.
1 The Overall Best Goat Milk Soap
Hand poured and cut in the United States, Horse 'O Peace Ranch’s goat milk soap is made with 100 percent raw goat milk and without water (a drying agent in soap). Chemical fragrance-, dye-, and filler-free, Horse 'O Peace Ranch goat milk soap has a pH level of 7 and is a great, affordable ($1.20 an ounce) start in the goat milk soap market.
With other naturally nourishing ingredients like organic oatmeal, that cleanses skin, fights acne, and hydrates dry, itchy skin, along with organic honey, this soap is the all-around best unscented goat milk soap. The ingredient list is simple: olive oil, raw goat milk, coconut oil, organic palm oil, sodium hydroxide (lye), and vitamin E.
The process Horse 'O Peace uses in their soap-making guarantees that the milk temperature never rises above 80 degrees, maintaining the milk’s moisturizing properties. Though not Leaping Bunny certified, the manufacturer does claim that this product is not tested on animals.
The Best Naturally-Scented Goat Milk’s Soap
While a little pricier than this list's other goat milk soaps (at $2.20 an ounce), this goat milk soap has over 1,000 reviews and a 4.5-star rating on Amazon. Yellow Bird is a cruelty free (though not Leaping Bunny Certified), family-owned business and its products are all handmade in the United States with GMO free, paraben free, soy free, sulfate free, gluten free, natural ingredients (many of which are organic), so you can feel good about this goat milk soap (the money-back guarantee doesn’t hurt either).
Yellow Bird uses the cold process method to make their soaps in small batches without harsh chemicals, dyes, or synthetic fragrances. Ingredients include sustainable organic palm oil, organic sunflower oil, organic coconut oil, goat's milk, organic shea butter, oats, lavender essential oil, sodium hydroxide (lye, which Yellow Bird notes, none remains in the final product).
The Best Unscented Goat Milk, Certified Cruelty Free
Legend Creek’s unscented goat milk soap is made with milk from their own farm-raised goats and raw honey from their hives. This goat milk soap is about as farm to shower as it comes and its ingredient list is just as uncomplicated: goat milk, saponified oils of olive, coconut, hemp, shea, lye, and oatmeal. Without phosphates, sulfates, parabens, or dyes, this fragrance-free goat milk soap is ideal for those with sensitive skin. Plus, the soap is biodegradable and certified Cruelty Free by Leaping Bunny (the only soap on this list certified by Leaping Bunny).
The Best DIY Goat Milk Soap With Sustainable Ingredients
Our Earth’s Secrets' goat milk soap base is perfect for those who want to experiment with customizing their own goat milk soaps—just melt and pour into molds or add essential oils for scented soaps.
Our Earth’s Secrets work directly with farmers and producers to be environmentally conscious and to use ingredients from sustainable sources. While this product only has 10 percent goat’s milk, this soap is still soybean free and made in the United States. For a bit of creative freedom, this goat milk soap base is a great start for the DIY soap maker.
The Best Goat Milk Soap Set
This Southern Natural Goat Milk Soap gift set comes with two 4-ounce bars and a soap sock to help soap last longer, which makes this a great gift set for any occasion.
Southern Natural’s goat milk soap is made the “good old fashioned” way: with no animal fats, only high-quality, food-grade vegetable oils and butters. This soap consists simply of fresh goat’s milk, essential and fragrance oils, combined using the cold process method. The ingredient list for this specific soap includes saponified oils of olive, coconut, palm oil, goat milk, purified water, and rosemary and spearmint essential oils. While you may notice water in this ingredient list, when our top pick spoke of water’s skin-drying properties, water is considered an acceptable agent for making lye solution. Plus, this soap is backed by a 100 percent satisfaction guaranteed company policy.
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