Raising the bar: Oregon soap company mixes up batch of success

OREGON - Most businesses wouldn’t want customers to wash their hands of their products, but Dean Murray hopes that’s exactly what you’ll do.

Murray is the mix master behind his family business, BearMoon Soap in Oregon, which makes a line of handcrafted soaps and other personal care products.

For Murray, his recipe for success starts with the Bear necessity — making quality soaps — but the science behind the soap is anything but simple.

His cleaning concoctions run the gamut, from ones that sound good enough to eat (Oatmeal, Goats Milk and Honey Soap) to some that sound positively relaxing (Tropical Oasis, Tranquility), to others that will give you a chuckle (Grumpy Old Man and Drama Queen soaps).

Bearilicious, a maroon-and-white bar that gives off a berry-flavored smell, and Cool Water, like the popular cologne of the 1990s, are just two of the nearly 50 different blends that Murray whips up in his soap-making shop. For those who aren’t looking for soaps that are Heaven scent, BearMoon’s Mechanics soap sticks to the basics: cutting through tough grease and grime. That soap is very high in coconut oil and potent D-limonene, and also has finely ground pumice stone.

Soap is made in the cold process, using a mixture of regular fats (such as olive oil, coconut oil and others) and sodium hydroxide to create a chemical reaction. It’ll heat up to anywhere between 150 to 200 degrees while it goes through the process. It takes 60 to 90 minutes to melt all of the oils and mix with sodium hydroxide and water.

Wearing a protective mask and respirator, Murray puts the mixture together in a tray that can make 32 bars, and weighs 10 pounds.

As it cools back down, it hardens. Because of the amount of water that’s in the soap, it’s soft when it’s done.

After hardening and cutting, bars are put on a rack for at least 30 days in the curing process, exposing it to the air and allowing for the moisture to evaporate. After about 6 weeks, it’ll stop losing water weight. From the time bars are cut to the end of the cure, it loses about 15 percent of its weight.

The longer a soap is cured, the better it will be. As the bars harden, they also get a little milder, the pH balance increases a bit, and it will develop soap crystals that will lather and cleanse the body.

Murray makes two kinds of soaps in the cold process form: soaps that have fragrance oils and micas (mineral) powders to color them, as well as natural soaps made of nothing but herbs, clays, essential oils.

More than just ingredients go into Murray’s products; there’s a science to his soap.

“When you look at the ingredients that go into the soap, they have an acid profile and are high in a certain type of acid,” Murray said. “Coconut oil is high in lauric acid, what gives you that clean, squeaky feeling and it also creates a lot of bubbles. That could strip the skin of its own barrier, so you balance that oil with oils that are high in oleic acid. By using the different oils with different outcomes, you affect what that feeling will be.”

The science even comes down to the wrapping. Murray uses a polyolefin wrap so that the scent comes through, allowing people to get a good whiff of the soap before buying it.

Murray’s favorite soap is one he doesn’t sell, since it takes a very long time to perfect. Olive oil soap doesn’t lather, but when it rinses it leaves skin very soft. It once was considered the “soap of royalty” in medieval times.

“When I make it, it has to cure for a year,” Murray said. “If you use it before, it just feels like kind of slimy. As it ages, it becomes very moisturizing.”

When Murray isn’t making soaps during the week, he’s selling his soaps at least 3 days a week at markets in Rockford, Huntley, and sometimes closer to home in Oregon and Byron. Along the way, Murray will get the occasional special request. When he does, he makes up a small test batch of eight bars to see whether it will work out.

While Murray is the soap star of the business, he’s got a strong supporting cast helping him: his family, including his wife, Kim, brother, Keith, brother-in-law Kevin Rude (who owns the building where Murray makes his soap) and his wife Julie. Others chip in by helping with marketing and acting as test subjects for each creation.

Murray and his brother wanted to operate a business together, and came up with making soap after hearing about how successful it can be. They looked into the soap business, and Dean was invested in the idea. The brothers eventually turned it from a hobby into a business after Dean had a house full of soap in a year’s time.

“The intent was just to create a small family business where we could work together,” Dean said.

While customers can stop by the shop where he makes the soap, in the former Ace Hardware building, Murray has been wanting to grow the business and open a proper storefront in the other end of the building. He was aiming to do that last year until the pandemic put those plans on hold, but said he still plans to make that a reality “soon.”

Soaps aren’t the only items Murray makes. He also whips up lip balms, body scrubs, body butter lotions, bath balms (made of citric acid and baking soda), beard oil, and even jelly soap for kids. He’s also working on shampoo and conditioner bars and plans plans to offer then later this year, once they’ve passed all his tests.

Murray takes great pride in the quality control of his soap-making process. There’s no cross-contamination, and ingredients, which are never stored on the floor, are logged for each batch. Each bar has a certain identification marker to trace anything back to the original products in case there were ever an issues.

BearMoon soaps ship all over the country, and can be purchased online as well as at local markets and shops. After 5 years of success in the family business, Murray is always generating more ideas for special soaps; that, perhaps more than anything, is his favorite part about what he does.

“It’s part of me just saying, not only do I want the soap to smell good and be very functional, but also I want it to look good,” Murray said. “Each one of these soaps has a different fragrance. It uses different oils so there’s a different feel, to a degree, for people. We all react differently to different ingredients in the product.”