If you’ve been making soap for awhile, or sometimes it can be one of the first mistakes a new soapmaker makes, you’ve done this. You mix your lye solution, prepare your oils, bring your soap to trace, pour it into your mold…but wait! It fills your mold about an inch short.

how to rebatch

Or, maybe you didn’t notice the shortness of soap batter, but you cut your soap and it is crumbly when cutting.

You weigh your soap and it weighs 50 ounces. You look at your recipe and all ingredients (oils, water, fragrance, additives) add up to 58 ounces! OOOOOPS!  You forgot to add 8 oz. of olive oil!

I know that the recipe I used for this soap should have filled it to the top. I forgot to add the olive oil, a whopping 16 ounces! It is probably hard to see but I’m about 1/4 inch below the top of this mold.

forgot oil in soap

Here it is unmolded – the same day! Yep, it turned this beautiful red color.

soap troubleshooting

I weighed it and new exactly what I had done (or not done!). I didn’t add the olive oil.

When something like this happens, don’t toss your soap! You can rebatch it! Here’s how.

Every soapmaking should have a salad shooter in their arsenal. We’re going to grate the soap down and that is just not something that I want to do by hand.

Chop your soap into pieces that will fit through the salad shooter and grate!

rebatch soap

Add the oil that you forgot and toss it to mix it good! Get your hands in there! (This one happens to look a bit like hamburger meat.)

how to rebatch soap

Dump it into a Crockpot.

how to fix soap

Turn your Crockpot on and let it heat up. Stir every 10 minutes or so. I set mine on high, but soon had to turn it down as it was a bit too hot. The oil will separate out at some point. Mix, Mix, Mix.

Cook it until it has all gelled.

gelled soap

Glop it into your mold!

rebatch soap

It is not the prettiest soap but it is a soap with a story!

Unmold and cut the next day. Cure for at least 3 weeks.

rebatch soap

Prevent it!

  1. Mark off each oil as you add it. Sometimes we forget what we measured out!
  2. I will sometimes setup my workstation with all of my oils to the left of my scale. As I measure, I move the oils to the right of my scale.

A few considerations:

If you don’t rebatch your soap right away, then you might have to add water, as water evaporates as you let your soap sit. Add 1 teaspoon per pound of soap shreds and mix well.

You might have to add additional fragrance. If the cooking process evaporated out much of your fragrance, you can add some at the end before you glop into your mold. Add 1/4 oz. per pound of soap shreds.

Happy SOAP REBATCHING!

-Amanda

I want to know…what is your most memorable soapy disaster? How did you fix it? What did you learn?