Rebatching Soap

 

I had quite a lot of a specific CP soap I had made in Sept-Oct, for Christmas. It wasn't selling at the market and I wasn't that happy with it, so I recently decided to rebatch it.  I thought the original soap turned out well, beautiful soap, nice scent, hard with a nice lather (same recipe I always use), but it doesn't sell nearly as well as my Healing Herbal soaps. 

I brought all of that particular soap home, planning to melt it down, add my own herbal essential oils to it, recolour and mold. I plan to add these soaps to my herbal soaps that sell well at the market.  

The very best way to redo soap is to grate it and add it to a new soap batch, like confetti soap, but I didn't have much lye and I didn't want to use it up rebatching this soap.  

I have rebatched soap before, years ago, but it had been a long while, so I did some research first. There are several methods of rebatching soap. I tried them all today. 

1) Melt it down in the slow-cooker. I tried that and it was not nearly fast enough. It sat in there all day long, barely changing at all.  

2) Boil in a double freezer bag. I did that one, as well. It is not nearly fast enough. It boiled for an hour and was just barely soft enough to knead hard. There's no way that I could add anything to it or even get it into a mold.

3) Oven method. At 180f it sat in the oven, covered, for an hour, just barely getting soft enough to knead hard, barely. 

4) In a pot on the stovetop, on low and on med. I tried both. The soap got somewhat soft, still in large clumps after 30 mins. I added some water to keep it from scorching, but it never did get soft enough to mix up.  

4) Microwave. Worked the best of all the methods I tried. Soft enough to add to and mold, pressing into the corners and edges as I went. After molding I added pressure, as well. I was only able to do enough for one rectangle mold at a time, in my 8 cup pyrex measuring cup, but it only took about 5 mins in total, stirring after about 1.5 mins each time. One rectangle mold makes ten 1" bars.

Next time I'm going to just go straight to the microwave and only do enough for one mold at a time. I have a lot to do, but it doesn't take long in the microwave. I sincerely wish I had just started there instead of wasting all the electricity to do the other ones first.  

Rebatched soap is thick and clumpy with bits in it, but I make rough "Homestead" soap so I'm ok with that. It's actually pretty smooth when cut, if pressed hard into the mold corners and edges and again from the top. 

This is the rebatched soap (left). It is Lavender, basil, Lemongrass, & Lilac. I think it turned out great! 

It smells nice too, sort herbal with lavender tones.