Soap making - Rebatching

Rebatching: Making new soap out of old. You may want to rebatch under the following circumstances:

1. In making soap your recipe failed and you want to try and repair it rather than throw it away
2. You have a lot of old soap scraps that you want to re-pour into new bars
3. You have ingredients you want to put into your soap that must be added after the saponification process is complete (like fragrance oils, some dyes, etc.)

How it's done: If you have a failed batch that hasn't had time to harden, you can follow the instructions for cooking soap. If your soap has completed it's saponification process then read on!

There must be a hundred different ways of doing this. Here's one:

* First, take your soap and run it through a grater. (I use a small hand held food grater.) After it is all grated into fine chunks, put it into a stainless steel or enamel lined pan. Stir in small amounts of water until it turns into a thin paste.

* Now put it over a low medium heat, but not hot enough to burn it. (Many people use a double boiler.) After it heats to a certain point it will liquify. This happens almost all at once after it gets hot enough, which is still well below boiling temperature. If you have ended up with a big ball of yuck, perhaps you still haven't heated the center mass hot enough or it needs more water. If it acts like it's starting to burn, turn the temperature down but keep heating it.

* If you added a bunch of water there is no problem with heating it up and boiling it off. If you do this, don't heat it above 230 degrees F.

* With the soap liquefied, pull it off the heat and let it cool down. As it cools down, but before it has set up, you can add your FO's, colouring and anything else you wish to put into it. If it sets up before you get it all mixed up - no problem, just put it back on the heat.

* After you have it mixed the way you want it, pour it into a setting tray or your moulds and smooth it out.

* After it cools you will find that it has already set up quite firmly. Go ahead and cut it into bar sized pieces, remove it from the setting tray or moulds and put it out to dry. If you live in a dry climate and have had some trouble with rebatched soap warping as it dries, you may wish to more evenly dry it by putting it in a loosely sealed container - loose enough for some air to get to it, but not too much.