Beeswax pellets are great, right? They are small pellet shape globs of beeswax that can be used in a wide range of beeswax recipes (such as candles), whilst also being easy to store away in containers when not in use. Have you ever tried to cut or portion up beeswax? It’s pretty tough unless you melt it down, and then you will have a big mess to deal with! Beeswax pellets do away with the need for all this hassle and make handling beeswax so much easier for a small scale crafter. Most people simply buy their beeswax pellets from a craft store or online. But others wonder whether it is possible to save some money by making their own beeswax pellets at home. Read this article to find out how..
How Commercial Beeswax Pellets are Made
Before deciding how to make our beeswax pellets at home, it helps to know how they are made commercially in beeswax factories across the country 🙂
If you look online, you can see that there are wax pellet making machines available that feed hot or warmed wax down a tube and cut into pellets as it is shot out the end of this tube. Think of it as a meat grinder for beeswax.
The problem is, these machines cost thousands of dollars and are not really viable for use at home. It is not simple to get a machine to make beeswax pellets, due to the fact that the beeswax will have to be at the perfect temperature for it to be correctly formed into a pellet when processed through a machine in this way.
From the video below you can see other commercial beeswax pellet machines use another process. They simply drop the beeswax onto a flat surface in a certain way so that it creates a pellet when cooled. Although the end result is more like a lozenge than a pellet! Again, this machine takes up a lot of space and is not viable for home use 🙂
What you Will Need to Make Beeswax Pellets at Home
Here are the main things you will need if you want to follow my home based beeswax pellet recipe below. You can click the images to view these items over at Amazon and get all the details.
1. Parchment Paper (often used in baking)
2. Pyrex Jug
3. Container
As you can see above, not only is this the best way to make beeswax pellets at home, but also the cheapest!
Best Way to Make Beeswax Pellets at Home
If you can’t easily use the machines used in the commercial world, what is the best way to make beeswax pellets at home? I find it is to use a process similar to the commercial machine above, but on a smaller scale. As follows;
Step 1: Melt your block of beeswax. I like to put a pyrex glass jug into boiling water and place the beeswax inside (otherwise known as the double boiler method).
Step 2: Cover your kitchen counter with a large piece of parchment paper, making sure it is flat and even.
Step 3: Once the wax is melted, simply use the glass jug to pour out small ‘blobs’ of beeswax onto the parchment paper.
Step 4: Wait for the beeswax to dry, then it should peel off the parchment paper.
Step 5: Store in a container of your choice.
Although these beeswax blobs are not as uniform or nice looking as those commercial pellets, they do the same job and can be a lot cheaper (especially if you already have access to beeswax in your household).
Ways you CAN’T Make Beeswax Pellets at Home!
When you think about how to make beeswax pellets at home, you will probably think of the same ways that I did at first. The problem is, a lot of these methods don’t work! So, to save you time, below I will tell you what NOT to try when making beeswax pellets at home. Don’t underestimate how hard beeswax can be to clean up if you put it on the wrong surface!
Dropping Hot Beeswax into Water
This method of dropping a hot material into water to make something pellet like was a technique used hundreds of years ago to make bullets. So this is something that should work with beeswax, right? Well, for me it didn’t. I tried several ways but didn’t really get anything that was ‘blob like’ enough. What I ended up with was very uneven and not really usable. I think the problem is that you need to drop the beeswax from a great height for it to work well, something that is hard to achieve at home. And the cleanup was way worse for me than using the parchment paper method above.
Cheese Grater
Some people swear by using a durable cheese grater for grating hard blocks of beeswax. For me, the hassle was so much I would rather buy those commercial beeswax pellets! ha ha! It is a slow and wrist breaking procedure that would only work for very small pieces of beeswax. Anything bigger and it will literally take you all day!
Ice Cube Molds
There are various molds that you can buy, such as ice cube molds. They are available in both plastic and silicone, so surely one of these would work. Simply pour the hot beeswax into them, let them dry and then pop out like an ice cube. There are even molds available that are tiny cubes and more pellet like. However, all of this is dashed when you dry to pop those suckers out! You will end up wrestling with the darn thing for hours. So trust me, this method is totally not worth it and don’t waste your time!
Sawing with a Knife!
It sounds so easy to saw-off small chunks of beeswax with a knife. But any knife I tried was feeble up against rock hard beeswax. As with the mold method, it is so much effort and hassle I would rather just buy my beeswax pellets at this point 🙂 I have even heard of people trying this with electric carving knifes with no success!
Food Pellet Makers
There are a few manual and electric home pellet makers available, mostly advertised as for making bird or pet food pellets. However, these do not work for beeswax. These food pellet machines are designed to work with firm dough, which is then turned into pellets. Try doing this with melted beeswax and you will just get a big mess. Commercial machines that work in this way do so at exact temperatures!
Below is an example of one of those pellet makers you shouldn’t use. Click the image to view it over at Amazon.
If all else fails?
If you have tried my best method above and still feel it is a drag, don’t worry. If you don’t want the hassle of making beeswax pellets yourself, there are many types of beeswax pellets available to buy online. The example below is a cosmetic grade yellow beeswax from Amazon. Click the image to view it over there.
Pop the ice cube tray in a sink of water just as the wax is starting to cool. The wax will shrink and they will pop right out!