What is the Alex Method? • Armatage Candle Company

The Alex Method for candle making suggests you shouldn’t heat your wax beyond 150°F (66°C) if you’re making soy wax candles.

By keeping the wax temperature close to the melt point of the wax you can make candles quicker and prevent fragrance notes from burning off, the theory goes.

But how well does this idea hold up?  What temperature should you add fragrance oil to wax, and how high should you heat your wax to?

In this article, you’ll learn:

1. How fragrance oil interacts with hot wax, and why that matters
2. What the Alex Method is
3. How hot to heat each wax to for the best results
4. Fragrance oil temperature best practices

Let’s dive in and explore!

What happens when you add fragrance to wax?

Wax expands when it heats up and contracts when it cools.

If you add fragrance oil (or essential oil) to wax while it’s a hot liquid it will cool down and contract, trapping fragrance molecules inside it.

Think of it like a large balloon filled with M&Ms: the bigger and more open it is (hot, liquid wax) the more the M&Ms can spread out.  As the balloon deflates (wax cools) the M&Ms are less free to move around and eventually they’re trapped where they are as the balloon closes around them.

The M&Ms are the fragrance molecules and the space in the balloon represents the open-ness of the hot wax.

As far as the analogy can stretch, it’s better to inflate the balloon (heat the wax) to allow the M&Ms to spread out evenly as much as possible before deflating.  Similarly, you should heat your wax enough to enable an even spread throughout the liquid.

If you DON’T heat the wax hot enough, fragrance won’t disperse evenly.  It may pool in certain areas, and present later as sweating or even pockets of fragrance embedded in the candle, which are dangerous because they can ignite if close enough to the flame.

Where candle makers disagree is on what temperature is hot enough to add fragrance.

What is the Alex Method?

The “Alex Method” is a practice for working with soy wax developed by staff at Nature’s Fragrance.  From Nature’s Garden:

1. Only heat wax until melted. If being done on a stove with a double boiler heat the water on medium low heat. Water should be just a light simmer.
2. As soon as the wax is a liquid the temp should be under 150F, take it off the heat add fo and dye. Stir with spatula until mixed.
3. If pouring wax melts, pour them right away.
4. Then take the rest and let it sit until it turns cloudy. Temp will be around 100f. I don’t actually temp anything anymore so your temp may vary. The most important part is to just watch for it to turn cloudy.
5. After it turns cloudy give it a good stir and then pour into your jars.

Soy waxes, like Golden Wax 464 and Golden Wax 444 are notorious for having rough tops after pouring.  Some makers have had great luck using “cooler” methods to combat this, with the Alex Method prevailing as the most well known procedure.

You’re supposed to wait until the wax is cloudy before pouring, which reduces the overall shrinkage of the wax after it enters the vessel.  This is a well-known method for minimizing bumpiness in soy candles from crystallization, but not completely.

Originally developed as a way to create smoother tops, many believe pouring cooler also prevents fragrance from burning off due to higher temperatures, however unlikely that is.

Pros

• Heating only to 150°F (66°C) takes less time than higher temperatures, reducing your overall batch time

Cons

• Lower heat means the fragrance oil has less opportunity to evenly mix inside the blend, which can lead to pockets of oil and sweating
• Candle may not cool with a smooth top or without craters if the was structure isn’t substantially melted down

Bottom line

The Alex Method is potentially dangerous to rely on because it prevents fragrance oils from properly spreading throughout a blend and prevents even crystal formation which creates bumpy, irregular tops.

It’s harder to consistently create smooth, crater-free tops

Although the advice that you should pour at a cooler temperature is typically good for soy wax candle making, every component in the wax needs to be brought above the melt point to ensure an even crystalline structure.

What does this mean?

Most commercial soy wax comes with a lot of “stuff” baked into the chemical makeup to allow it to be candle-ready.  It’s composed of a ton of proprietary items, all of which serve some purpose in the wax, and almost all of which contribute to its overall properties.

If the wax isn’t heated up enough, the micro crystals making up the wax aren’t broken down into their most basic sizes and will cool irregularly.  Historical evidence among candle making hobbyists and businesses indicate this temperature is somewhere between 185°F (85°C) and 200°F (93°C) for soy wax, and close to that for most other waxes too.

If the wax doesn’t break down to it’s smallest size, it will cool irregularly and the variety of crystal sizes will lead your tops to look bumpy and strange, possibly introducing craters into the final product.

Fragrance oils poorly dispersed may create a fire hazard

When wax doesn’t have enough space to evenly stir fragrance oil in, it creates pockets of liquid oil inside the candle after it cools.

These pockets are pure fragrance or essential oils, which have a flash point.  Normally, flash points don’t matter, but an operating candle has an open flame that can ignite the vapors given off by a pool of fragrance.

For example, if the fragrance oil pooled near the bottom of the candle and the flame comes in contact with it the wrong way, the entire candle can erupt in flames, sometimes in a violent way.  House fires sometimes start by candles with poorly mixed fragrance.

Does this mean you can’t mix the fragrance into cooler wax?

Not really.  It’s possible, but it takes a lot more energy to disperse fragrance into wax that hasn’t broken up its crystal structure with heat.  Even though your eyes can’t see it, there are elements of the candle wax that are larger than others, especially at lower temperatures.  Fragrance can’t possibly mix with it if it isn’t totally liquefied.

Seepage may take days or even weeks to show up based on how candle curing works.

Fragrance oil won’t burn off from hot wax

It’s a common belief among newer candle makers that heat damages fragrance.

Although true, it requires a significant amount of heat to fully disrupt the notes baked into a fragrance oil. Essential oils aren’t quite as hardy, and can be very sensitive to heat, but ultimately most notes won’t noticeably change from sitting and cooling in hot wax.

Fragrance notes leave when they evaporate, not necessarily when they get warm. In fact, the evaporation of these notes is what we count on happening with the melt pool temperature in a candle, and also what we want to avoid breaching with overwicked candles.

Even the original creator of the Alex Method noted he had “not noticed any different with hot or cold throw by doing it this way”.

If you hear that adding fragrance oil to hot wax can burn off the notes, your wax is far beyond the recommended range to heat because it would have to be near the evaporation temperature of the fragrance oil. Even the most volatile fragrances can handle the heat of the creation process.

Remember: fragrance oils are designed to work in candles, which are hot liquid items when being used. A little heat during the creation process isn’t just okay, it’s expected.

How hot should your wax be before adding fragrance?

The only way to quantify the relationship between fragrance and wax is to know all the ingredients and have a degree in organic chemistry.

In the absence of those, we can rely on information gathered by hobbyists and candle businesses that share routines and numbers that allow for consistency in the process.  These temperatures are recommended for what you heat your wax to before adding fragrance oil (at the same temperature).

Unless the manufacturer recommends anything different, these are good starting points in your experimentation.

Best practices for adding fragrance oil

Stir for two minutes

Make sure you stir the wax for at least two entire minutes after adding it to ensure it spreads throughout the blend.

Set a timer if you need to, or count to 120 out loud and confuse everyone around you.

Don’t be afraid to place the wax back on the heat if the blend temperature falls below where you intended to pour.

Melt the wax completely

Make sure the wax is completely melted.  For most every wax, this means bringing the temperature of the entire blend all the way up to the recommended range before adding fragrance oil.

Stir throughout the melting process, too

Almost every method of melting wax has some drawbacks in the form of hot spots.  Continuous stirring up to, and after, the max temperature occurs helps to disperse heat evenly throughout the blend.

At a minimum, always heat to the manufacturers recommended temperature

Manufacturers know more about the chemistry of the blend than most candle makers will ever know.  This means they’ve likely tested the minimum requirements for heat management to deal with whatever proprietary additives they’ve included in the wax.

If they have a recommendation different than what you’re used to, it’s prudent to follow that even if it conflicts with your ideas and patterns a bit.