Chapter 215 Making Soap
The lunch was relatively simple.
One dish of stir-fried long beans with meat, another of stir-fried greens, a bowl of pickled vegetables, and a bowl of thin porridge and a flatbread for each person.
Cheng Wanwan asked Si Dan to deliver food to Master Yu and San Niu to deliver a bowl of porridge to He Xiao, so that the boy and his master could develop a relationship first.
The whole family sat down to eat. After the meal, it was Cao Yingying's turn to wash the dishes. On her first day, she broke two bowls while washing them, but now she is very efficient and can wash more than a dozen bowls clean in no time and put them neatly in the cupboard.
Cheng Wanwan was in the yard researching how to make soap.
All the raw materials were placed in front of her: a pile of wood ash, a jar of rendered lard, a pot of wine, and a large ceramic pot.
Zhao Sanniu, who was chopping wood nearby, asked curiously, "Mom, what are you doing? Do you need my help?"
Cheng Wanwan nodded: "Okay, come and help me for a bit."
She was having trouble managing it all by herself, so she said, "Put this pot on the stove first."
Zhao Sanniu didn't know when such a pot had appeared in his house, but he didn't ask any questions. He picked it up and placed it on the stove.
Cheng Wanwan called Zhao Sanniu over to help her filter the wood ash, filtering out the small pieces of wood and mud stones that hadn't been completely burned. Then she poured the pure wood ash into a porcelain pot, added twice the amount of water, and stirred it continuously.
The reason for using a ceramic pot instead of an iron pot is that after wood ash is boiled at high temperatures and precipitated, it will produce a high concentration of alkaline solution. Iron and alkalinity will react chemically, so it is best to avoid this reaction if possible.
After the wood ash and water are fully mixed, you can start heating it with firewood, burning it over a high flame to increase the concentration of the alkali solution.
The book mentions a method to determine whether the alkaline solution concentration meets the standard: put an egg in it, and if it floats, it means the solution is successful.
Next, pour the prepared lard and alcohol into the ceramic pot, and stir vigorously while simmering it over high heat.
Zhao Sanniu was a strong boy. After stirring with the pestle for a while, he couldn't hold on any longer and shouted, "Second brother, come and help me!"
Zhao Ergou didn't go out to do business; he was busy at home doing nothing. When he heard his third brother's call, he immediately came over.
He took the mallet and stirred the hot solution, asking with great confusion, "Mom, what are you making? It looks really strange..."
Cheng Wanwan stared at the pot and said, "You'll know when it's done."
If it fails, wouldn't it be a waste of the children's excitement?
Zhao Ergou stirred the liquid with more force, and the pale yellow liquid gradually became transparent, while the layer of grease on the surface disappeared.
Cheng Wanwan smiled; they were now 80% successful.
She dropped a drop of water in, and the water dissolved completely, which means the chemical reaction was over.
She poured in the prepared salt water, and the solution in the pot suddenly began to churn. Then she stirred it rapidly. This step, called salting out, is to separate the pale yellow substance and increase the hardness of the finished product.
Ultimately, the resulting pale yellow sediment is soap.
Cheng Wanwan then realized that she hadn't made a mold in advance. Helpless, she had to quickly ask Zhao Sanniu to go to Old Zhao's house to cut bamboo tubes. Because the people in the old house all knew how to weave bamboo products, there were always several bamboo poles in their yards. Zhao Sanniu took his machete and ran over quickly. In no time, he brought back more than ten bamboo tubes.
Cheng Wanwan poured the precipitated soft solution into bamboo tubes, filling ten bamboo tubes in total.
She placed ten bamboo tubes on the windowsill and waited for them to solidify.
Zhao Ergou and Zhao Sanniu were so tired that their arms had gotten thicker, and they were very curious about what this thing was, but Cheng Wanwan just wouldn't tell them.
The two boys found out when they took a bath that evening.
She sat down in the house and did some calculations. According to the prices of the current dynasty, a pound of fatty pork cost about twenty-odd copper coins, which could be used to render a jar of oil. A pot of wine was a bit more expensive, probably costing over a hundred copper coins. A little bit of salt water cost about two copper coins. Wood ash was negligible. The total cost was less than two hundred copper coins, but she made ten bars of soap... No, more than ten, because she used bamboo tubes to solidify the soap. If she used a special mold, she estimated she could make about thirty bars of soap.
As far as she knew, the price of ordinary bath beans on the market was at least three or four hundred coins. Because bath beans were exclusively for the upper class and nobility, they were usually mixed with spices and herbs, and the price of one bath bean could be more than one tael of silver. The price of some unique scents would be even higher.
Her product is far more effective at removing dirt than bath beans; it could definitely sell for half a tael of silver. If she could add various fragrances, the price could double.
After the soap precipitate is extracted, what remains is crude glycerin, which can be used as a basic skincare product. Once the market is developed, it can be a profitable business.
Cheng Wanwan silently made plans in her mind.
The reasons she started this new business were twofold: first, her family genuinely needed this item; and second, she didn't have enough storage cabinets.
The things she bought the most were books. Her one-cubic-meter space was crammed with books. If she brought anything back from going out, there would be nowhere to put it. She couldn't wait to upgrade her storage cabinet, but the upgrade would cost five thousand taels of silver.
It would take at least three or four years to earn this much money just by selling braised food and fabrics.
Three or four years is far too long for her, so she has to make a business that is guaranteed to make money.
As she was pondering, Zhao Dashan stepped in from the doorway: "Mother, I want to discuss something with you."
Cheng Wanwan looked at him encouragingly: "Go ahead and say it, Mom is listening."
The eldest is the most sensible, and has never offered to do anything on his own initiative before; this is the first time.
“I was working in the fields just now when I heard from the village head that Zhao Mazi’s family is selling land,” Zhao Dashan said. “It’s the land next to our new house, a total of three mu. His son is short of dowry money for his wedding, so he wants to sell this low-grade land. The asking price is one tael of silver per mu, but the villagers think it’s too expensive and are unwilling to buy it.”
In the village, the best fields cost two taels of silver per mu, medium-quality fields one and a half taels, and the worst fields one tael of silver. Zhao Mazi didn't arbitrarily set prices, but since there was a lot of wasteland in the village, and the village head had lowered the price of the wasteland, the villagers were naturally willing to spend one tael of silver to buy two mu of wasteland. It just so happened that the off-season for farming was approaching, and they would have time to cultivate the fields.
Cheng Wanwan asked, "You want to buy this land back?"
Zhao Dashan nodded: "When we lived in the old house, we could grow vegetables in the yard. Now the yard is paved with tiles, so we can't grow vegetables there, but we still need to grow some. So I thought I'd buy this plot of land next door so we can grow vegetables."
"I think your idea is great," Cheng Wanwan smiled. "I'll go get you the money."
With Da Shan planning and managing everything related to farming, she really didn't have to worry about a thing.
She took out some extra silver from the house: "Besides the three acres of land next door, buy some land near the wasteland behind our house as well."
Previously, we bought 40 acres of wasteland. Building houses and adding chicken coops and duck sheds took up about 5 acres of the land. Now, we have the idea of starting a soap business and need to build another soap workshop, so this piece of land is not enough.
She said, "Let's buy about another twenty acres."
Zhao Dashan didn't ask what he was going to do with so much land; he just took the money and went to get things done.
The matter of buying land was no secret in the village. If someone sold land, someone else would naturally buy it. If it were someone else buying the land, the villagers might gossip about it, but when they heard that it was Da Shan Niang's family who bought the land, no one had anything to say. They just worked hard and tried not to fall too far behind Da Shan Niang.
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