Hot Process Soap Making & The Holidays

When it comes go soap making, I am a fan of the cold process. I like how you create the soap from scratch from seemingly random ingredients. I love how you can customize the soap and the challenge of getting things just right so that the batch turns out well.

Even so, the cold process has one major disadvantage. Time.

The nature of the cold process and saponification means that it will be anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks before your soap is ready for use. That’s a long time!

 

Hot Process and the Holidays

While this isn’t necessarily too much of an annoyance during the normal year, there is one time of year when this delay can put you in a bind. That time of year, of course, is the Holidays. The Holidays always seems to have a way of sweeping in before you realize it. Not getting a jump on things early enough can mean no soap if you are relying on the cold process

Enter the hot process. The hot process method can take as little as 2 weeks to become ready for use. This is because the heat applied during the process works to accelerate saponification. The result is that the lye and oils combine to create soap molecules faster than they do without the application of heat.

 

Why Doesn’t Everyone Use the Hot Process?

The reason not everyone uses the hot process is that it involves a higher level of complexity. Just as the cold process is more involved than melt & pour, the hot process is more difficult than the cold process.

If you would like to learn how to do the hot process, check out this site. My friend, Gary, has created a soap making video that is all about the hot process. In the video, he takes you step-by-step through making soap with this method so that you can learn to do it the right way the first time.