Melting, and in what order

The melt is where graining is prevented or created, and it takes longer than people expect.

Gentle and indirect

A double boiler, a bain-marie or a proper melting pot. Not a pan on a burner.

Fats scorch locally long before the bulk is hot, and a scorched batch smells faintly of burnt nuts in a way that does not lift.

The order

Hardest first. Carnauba, then candelilla or beeswax, then the butters, then the liquid oils.

The liquid oil can go in early as a heat-transfer medium, which helps the wax melt evenly, and that is a reasonable variation. What does not work is putting a hard wax into an already-warm mixture and expecting it to disappear.

Flavor, color and vitamin E are not part of the melt. They come later.

Why direct heat ruins it

Beyond scorching, overheating drives off nothing useful and oxidizes the oils. A batch taken far too high has started its rancidity clock before it was poured.

So there are two errors, not one: too cold leaves crystal structure and grains, too hot degrades the oil. The hold temperature page is about the window between them.

Getting it all the way melted

Clear, not cloudy. Cloudiness means solids remain, and those solids are seeds for graining.

Stir and look rather than trusting a timer, because a fragment of unmelted wax on the side of the pot will find its way in.

Give it longer than feels necessary. The commonest process error in this craft is impatience at exactly this step.

References