News Center Maine || 207

Elaine Kinney Makes and Sells Beer Soap

We often say in this business that stories are everywhere. Ideas are sparked while we're driving or while we're walking down the street. Tonight's story was inspired by a trip to the grocery store. I was picking up what I needed for Thanksgiving when I heard, 'Are you Samantha York?' and that is when I met Elaine Kinney, a transplant from Pittsburgh finding a new use for Maine beer.

Shane Noble, co-owner of Battery Steele Brewing: "Here you go."

Elaine: "Sweet thanks"

It's 11:30 in the morning, and Elaine Kinney is already on her way back home with a hall of IPAs. Today, she's visiting the Maine brewery, Battery Steele in Portland. When she's back home, the real fun begins. In her kitchen, Elaine gets to work on a recipe she's been perfecting since 2019.

Elaine: "So we're just going to dump [the beer] in here. It ends up being roughly 2 oz of already boiled beer to a bar of soap."

Samantha: "So did you just wake up one morning and you were like 'I want to make soap' or where did the idea come from?"

Elaine: "Yeah, I do think it was somewhat tied into quarantine and just the the time in the world. I had been doing different types of social service jobs for about 7 years, and I was just getting really burnt out, and then the world shut down, and I was working from home. And I thought, you know I'm already working from home, might as well work for yourself. This is a good time to officially go for it."

Samantha: "Did you really enjoy it as soon as you did it?"

Elaine: "No, I was really hard on myself for not being good at it right away. I was really really struggling to transition into it, but I think it was also like a very healthy learning curve where I kind of had to be like 'nope, you're going to fail then you're going to try it again, and you're going to learn that it's okay to fail. Failing is part of it."

Since those early days, Elaine has launched and grown her own small business, White Pine Bath and Brew.

Elaine: "It makes beautiful soap, you know, we don't discriminate. It's all good." She makes all her soap at home, first boiling down the beer before letting it cool then adding what's called lye to the mix. "So I have to add this very slowly. The color is changing a little bit right now. It's getting kind of orangey - a little more opaque" Finally she combines ingredients like coconut oil shea butter and avocado oil with that Maine beer mixture. 

Samantha: "It's soap that is made with beer which is unique in itself. Was that kind of your goal from the beginning, or when did you start thinking, 'Okay people have excess beer we could do something with this?'"

Elaine: "Right, so I've never made soap without beer in it, but it wasn't until maybe 2021, I think, was the first time I had a brewery reach out to me. They said, 'We have short fills; we have overstock; we can't sell this.' and then there's also a common thing is just over production. After a certain date it just doesn't taste as good. I started out making it in crockpots!"

Samantha: "It's just crazy to me!" 

Elaine: "I know - not my idea - that's how you you get into it. You can make about 10 bars at a time in one crock pot. So I was thrifting crockpots in case I broke them or something went wrong, and it was just kind of trial and error. Trying out batches, seeing what worked, seeing what didn't, seeing what I liked."

You won't find a crock poot in her guest-room-turned-workshop.

Elaine: "This is where I actually make the soap itself. So, these are 22q stainless steel lobster pots."

Samantha: "That's so Maine!"

Elaine: "This my drill which just keeps it mixing, so I can step away for a minute. You know they don't have Kitchenaids that are on a burners, so I had to get creative. I'm the only person I found - and I have scoured the internet believe me and others have for me trying to help me figure out how to scale this business up. This machine that I have built does not exist. You cannot buy this somewhere. The heat accelerates the saponification - the chemical reaction - and it just mixes and mixes, and it turns into a mashed potato texture. I have some [finished soap] from last night. This is a different scent."

From here she pours the mixtures into molds, lets them set and...

Elaine: "You can pull away all the sides of [the molds] and see how it's stuck a little bit here. But that's okay. It's all safe to touch."

Samantha: "It smells so good!"

Elaine: "This is Lemongrass Shea & IPA. I sold out of this over Christmas, and I haven't had a chance to make more of it."

Samantha: "This is that texture that you were talking about."

Elaine: "Yeah, I poured it into the mold. It kind of gives you that really cool texture, and I like a fresh bar in the shower too. That top is really exfoliating!" 

Exfoliating and sustainable - It's a combination that really is all suds.

"I am hoping to actually put an addition on my house, so I can have a really nice, dedicated soap making space that's just for that. That would be the dream. I'm making it in my spare bedroom upstairs, so it would be nice to have a sink that I didn't have to go to a different flight for. My mission now is to source all of my beer exclusively from brewery waste. I want to do it entirely from that just cuz - why not be more sustainable? Why not use it that way when you can."

I think this is such a cool idea. Her house smells so good by the way - just being there. What's really cool about how she makes the soap is that it's kind of like an instant process; whereas the bigger manufacturers, I guess, they use more of a cool process to make their soap. So it can take weeks before you can even touch it. Whereas [Elaine's] method - she can get right in there and get it out the door. It's really cool, and obviously it seems simple off the top of your head cuz it's a it's a process that's been happening for thousands of years. But you see the ingenuity that goes into it. She makes her own machine upstairs to mix it all. Got to get creative!