How do I Rebatch?Updated 3 months ago

Sometimes it is a hard pill to swallow, but when it comes to soaping, mistakes will be made, tears will fall, and you learn from your errors!

This week, we had a slight oversight.

All of our soaping ingredients were weighed out and ready for the combination and melt down. We had the lye and water ready to make the lye mixture. Everything else was prepped and ready to go.

We put on our safety gear and started the soap making procedure. Everything seemed to be going flawlessly. Our scent was perfect, the color combination was the spot on, and the soap batter poured beautifully into the mold. It was soaping bliss.

Then, we started cleaning up. That was when we found the sunflower oil. It was still in its dish, waiting to be added to the soap recipe. And, it was about 5% of our total soaping oils no less.

Devastated, it was now time to play the waiting game. We had to wait for our beautiful soap to mold for at least 24 hours before it would be sturdy enough to remove it.

What resulted, after unmolding, was a gorgeous shade of green soap that broke into pieces when sliced. Our soap was too lye heavy. And, we knew this was because of the forgotten and overlooked sunflower oil.

One way to correct this soaping error was through rebatching. Rebatching is almost like a do over for soap. Although there are various reasons as to why you would rebatch, one of them is the fact that you can add an oil to your soap. Our soaping oversight would be a perfect example to rebatch.

So, in order to save the 4 pound soap batch we had, we decided that we would take this opportunity to learn about rebatching and write a blog post on how to rebatch. Although it was the very first time we ever attempted a rebatch, here is the process we did to show how to rebatch soap (pictures included).

Step 1: Grate the soap. This was no small feat for us. In total, 4 pounds of soap took us about 45 minutes to do.

Step 2: Melt the soap back down. For this we selected to use our crock pot. Since we had missed the first opportunity to add the sunflower oil, we did this now to the grated soap.

Step 3: Stir. Actually, this step is more like trying to rotate the soap. Since you never want to scorch your soap when using a crock pot, this stir was more like a rotation of the soap within the crock pot.

Step 4: Wait about 25-30 minutes, then check the soap again and stir/rotate. The longer the soap melts, you will notice more of it becoming very gel like.

Step 5: At this point, we noticed that the soap looked a little dry. If this occurs, add a little water.

Step 6: Stir to disperse the water among all of the soap.

Step 7: Wait for another 20 minutes or so, then give the soap a good stir.

Step 8: Add fragrance and stir. Although we did scent the original batch, we wanted to rescent the rebatch for any scent that may have been lost through the saponification process and the reheating process.

Step 9: Get your mold, and start to fill it with the soap. Remember to tap your mold as you fill to reduce any bubbles that may be trapped in your soap.

Step 10: Continue filling your mold and tapping it until all of the soap is out of the crock pot and into your mold.

Step 11: Insulate and wait. The soap will need about 12 hours or so in the mold. Once the time elapses, remove the soap from the molds and slice.

Our rebatched soap bars are awesome now. They have a creamy full lather, and even better they don't crumble and are actual bars! Although the finished rebatch bars do have a rustic appeal, it kind of suits them. Overall, this was a great learning experience, and we were able to save the 4 pound batch of soap. Learning how to rebatch really was not difficult, and was well worth the effort in the end.