WMTW || Made in Maine

This Brand of Maine Soap Starts With a Local Craft Brew

A woman in South Portland has developed her own line of small batch, handcrafted soap. She calls it White Pine Bath & Brew...

When Elaine Kinney blends together the ingredients to produce her line of soaps there's always that expected array of oils and butters.

Elaine: "I started with beer soap, actually. That's the way I learned to make soap."

But the eye-catching addition to each recipe: locally brewed craft beer.

Elaine Kinney: "There are amino acids in hops which is soothing for skin irritation and there is biotin and vitamins in brewers yeast and beer I've noticed also boosts lather significantly."

Elaine created her company White Pine Bath & Brew in 2020, working from a converted bedroom inside her home in South Portland. She says once the beer's alcohol and carbonation are boiled off, any remnants of beer scent disappears too. She enjoys getting creative, pairing each of her specialty bath soaps with a specific local brew.

Elaine: "I like to match the theme of my soap with the theme of the beer. So, for example, I have a Coffee Brew Bar that I use a coffee stout from the local brewery Banded Brewing..."

At last count, Elaine's brand included 16 beers from 11 different Southern Maine breweries. On the back of each bar, she notes exactly which ones as part of a mission to promote her business as sustainable. She'll use almost exclusively beers destined to be dumped out.

Elaine: "I reach out to breweries, and see if they have things like short fills, any brewery excess that they normally would have to dispose of, cans that just aren't all the way full that they can't sell but it's not really worth getting rid of either...but there's nothing wrong with it."

Right down to the cut and shape of each bar, this brand of handcrafted vegan soap she describes as distinctively Maine.

Elaine: "To honor the Maine mountain tops of our beautiful state, I like to keep that edge really rough."

While Elaine is quick to admit hers is not the first brand to incorporate beer, she boasts the special relationship she has forged with Maine's craft brewers - As you might say, one hand washing the other.

Elaine "I try to primarily take excess from breweries to give a second life to that beer, so it becomes a symbiotic relationship because I'm also helping promote their business."

While most of the company's soaps are scented White Pine Bath & Brew also has a line of fragrance-free soaps. Still every one starts with a can or bottle of local beer.