Now you can get your beer in a different kind of bar after a Cochrane artisan has started using Half Hitch Brewing Company suds in a new line of natural soaps.
“It doesn’t smell like beer … you don’t smell like beer,” said creator Teresa Monague-Spurgeon with a laugh. “It’s just a really luxurious bar.”
The mom of two first started experimenting with homemade bodycare products about a decade ago when most of the items she found at the store “seemed to dry me out or make my skin worse.”
Today, after a ton of research – and trial and error – to find the right blends of ingredients, her licensed Cochrane company, Pur Botanics, makes and sells natural soaps, healing salves, bath salts, scrubs and lip balms.
Since liquids like teas can be used in place of water in the process of producing soap, Monague-Spurgeon got the idea to try blending in some beer. A lover of all things local, she contacted Cochrane brewmasters Half Hitch to see if they could strike a deal.
To get her started, Half Hitch provided Monague-Spurgeon with wort – the sugary liquid extracted from the mashing process of WHEAT that’s combined with yeast and fermented to make beer. One growler of wort makes about 50 bars of soap.
It takes between four and eight weeks to lather up a batch from start to finish – beginning with a base oil, combining it with liquid and natural additives like lavender flowers or vanilla bean, then mixing the concoction until it gets thick “kind of like pudding.”
Monague-Spurgeon puts in essential oils or herbs, and after a “gel phase” to bring out colour and aromas, she hand-slices the slab and lets the bars cure for three to four weeks.
For the Half Hitch bars, Monague-Spurgeon blended together Half Hitch’s Farmer’s Daughter pale ale with citrus, bergamot and cedarwood essential oils to make Hopped Up Citrus.
She also combined their Fire and Fury brew with a more earthy spice for a soap called Red-Handed Cinnamon.
“The colour it lends to the bar is pretty nice,” said Monague-Spurgeon of the coppery lager, adding hops are the main ingredient in beer soap and are known to have antibacterial properties and can help balance the pH of your skin.
“It makes your skin really soft … and it makes a really good lather; just really creamy,” she said. “I really love it.”
Pur Botanics soaps will be available at the Half Hitch restaurant and brewery location on Griffin Industrial Point in the next couple of weeks.
