Atlantic Soap Company’s Seawater Soaps
Sunlight streams into the clean white workshop, playing off a kaleidoscope of colorful shapes adorning a metal rack. Caroline Laye dons her apron, purple gloves and goggles and grabs a temperature gauge. No, she’s not an ICU nurse. She’s about to whip up a batch of Sunshine Citrus soap, combatting germs and bringing delight to the senses in a much more benign way.
Laye gives the bowl of lye and seawater a zap with the thermometer to make sure it’s come to room temperature (lye heats up when mixed), then gets to work. Timing is everything when making cold-process soap. She pours in a mixture of shea butter and coconut, olive, castor and sunflower oils, then gives the cloudy liquid a couple bursts with an immersion blender. She taps the bowl to remove air bubbles, then drizzles some fluid from the blender onto the surface. She’s looking for a “light trace”, the way honey sits on top of a foamy cappuccino, as a sign of emulsion. Satisfied after a couple more blends, Laye whisks in grapefruit fragrance and dried calendula petals. She pours the goopy liquid into silicone molds, then waits. After two days, the soap will be hard enough to remove from the molds, but then it needs to cure for about a month to reach the status of soap.
Laye became a soap maker by chance. After moving to the Cape for her husband’s job at the Marine Biological Laboratory, she started working in the kitchen supply store at Eastman’s Hardware in Falmouth. The store started selling artisanal soaps, which flew off the shelves – and more than a few into her shower.
Feeling the urge to start her own business, Laye toyed with the idea of a bakery. But after eight batches of cookies, she knew mass quantity baking wasn’t for her. Then, a cover story on a magazine in the racks at Michael’s caught her eye.
“It was clear that living on the Cape, I was going to have to make my own destiny,” says Laye. “That’s when it hit me. Why not make soap?”
The first soap Laye made featured kelp powder, which inspired her to explore other marine themes. She found a recipe using brine as a base, and that has become her niche. Every batch of soap includes about two cups of seawater that she collects from local beaches, then filters to remove debris. (Any bacteria or organisms are killed when mixed with lye, Laye says.)
“There are so many minerals in seawater that are good for your skin. Seawater has just enough salt that it’ll give you these nice beautiful benefits and make a wonderful hard bar of soap,” says Laye.
A year into business, Atlantic Soap Company has made waves with a regular line of six soaps and a few limited editions like Sunshine Citrus or Cranberry. Laye says her best seller is a charcoal facial bar, which incorporates activated charcoal and black sand from Icelandic volcanoes for gentle exfoliation. A lotion made with shea butter and beeswax that smells like suntan lotion is a panacea for dry, cracked skin. Laye also makes natural soy candles in poppy, tea and honey, and rain scents. Eco-conscious consumers will be delighted to know that the palm oil in some of her products is certified sustainable and that all the packaging is plastic-free.
While most of her ingredients are sourced from a West Coast supplier, Laye is exploring collaborations with other Cape Cod makers, including Chatham Kelp and Devil’s Purse Brewing. In her only departure from seawater soap, Laye uses Devil’s Purse Handline Kölsch to make a velvety smooth bar from the beer, available at the Dennis brewery and online.
“Soap isn’t a girly thing – guys just love it. We left it unscented and uncolored except for a little mica to make it shimmer a little bit,” says Laye. “The sugars in the beer make it super lathery so it’s an awesome shampoo bar. That wasn’t the intention, but that was an awesome side effect.”
In the wake of coronavirus, Atlantic Soap Company has shifted from its usual circuit of artisan fairs and popup sales to virtual markets and Instagram. The only downside of that arrangement, Laye says, is that it’s impossible to smell the soaps virtually. A colorful, easy-to-navigate website does make it a snap to order individual soaps, or even quarantine gift sets to people who need a little dip in Cape Cod seawater from afar.
