Soleseife - or seaman’s brine water soap - is a traditional German soap recipe that dissolves sea salt and water, and mixes in lye to convert oils into soap. We discovered this process had a name while experimenting with salt bars. Our unique take on this popular European spa soap is to create the brine using milk rather than water, deeply cleansing and moisturizing your skin leaving it silky smooth.

On this side of the Atlantic, most sea salt soap bars you find in stores contain undissolved salt crystals which act as an exfoliant, but can be scratchy and irritating depending on the type of salt used. These salt bars tend to produce very low lather because of the high concentration of undissolved salt. We experimented extensively with salt bars over the past few years and tried many on the market, but never found a process that produced a bar we could stand by.

What if We Put the Salt in the Milk?

Goat Milk Soleseife Bars

One day we tried dissolving the salt in the milk before adding in the lye and oils. We were successful at making a smooth bar without the scratchy crystals, but the lather still wasn’t up to snuff. Most traditional salt bar recipes contain a very high amount of coconut oil. If you try bathing in salt water, you’ll find that a bar of soap does not lather well except if it contains a high amount of coconut oil. Coconut oil is a great for your skin. But you can have too much of a good thing. In soap, like in life, it’s all about balance. We found that the high amount of coconut oil did not condition our skin as well as a more balanced combination natural oils and butters.

Discovering Brine Soap was “A Thing”

Realizing we couldn’t be the first to attempt such a process, we turned to our ultimate online oracle. There we found old German recipes for a brine soap that had many similarities to our standard recipe, except those recipes were using water to create the brine and we were using goat milk. So, we followed our standard recipe and included our milky brine, and … finally … siehe, Ziegenmilch Soleseife!

Unlike salt bars, our Soleseife lathered as well as our traditional goat milk soap, and even better when using a nylon bath pouf. The key difference was how our skin felt: clean and polished, yet soft and conditioned, like you had used an exfoliant but without the abrasive feeling. Soleseife is moisturizing, and dispels the myth that sea salt is drying to your skin. It can be used everyday as a skin conditioner, or as an occasional replacement to your traditional bar when you want to tone, polish and give your skin a healthy glow.

Our Soleseife, Goat Milk Brine Soap

We are delighted to introduce Soleseife in four maritime inspired scents.

Beach Breeze

Cedar Mint

Ocean City

Sea Spice