What is a "Hot Rinse" and how do you do it? - Dreadlocks FAQ's

A "Hot Rinse" is when you remove the majority of the Dread Wax from your dreads. This will be done 2-4 times through the coarse of your dread maturity - usually at the end of each month that you use wax and one last time after your dreadlocks have locked and you're done using wax.

After 3-5 months your dreads will be compressed and tight enough that you'll no longer need dread wax and you can begin using Dread Butta as a moisturizer.

The first Hot Rinse is the most important since you'll be preparing for your very first "A" Week. You'll want to begin your first "A" Week with as little wax in the dread as possible. Since the initial serving of dread wax happens during the first month when you put in your dreads you will have more wax in your dreads during the first month than in the following months so subsequent hot rinses will be much faster. You can expect the first hot rinse to take a while.

You can remove Dread Head Dread Wax with a hot shower and DreadHead Dread Soap or with a Hair Dryer. The recommended technique is to combine the two as follows:

Heat each dread nice and hot with a hair dryer. After the dread heats up, the wax will liquefy and you can squeeze the dread with a paper towel to absorb it. This works well, especially in cases where too much wax was applied to begin with. You can remove about 95% of the dread wax with this technique. If you know that there is very little wax in the dreads you can skip this step and move right to the next.

You can follow this up by washing the dreads with nice hot water and DreadHead Dread Soap. Combined with the hot water the Dread Soap does an excellent job of removing the wax - especially after excess wax has been removed with the hair dryer.  Work the dread soap and hot water through the dreads with your fingers as if you were cleaning a sponge and then rinse them well. Two hot washings back to back like this will leave your dreads clean and ready for your first "A" Week.

Regular showers with Dread Soap will always remove some wax on their own but by performing a Hot Rinse at the end of each month you use wax you can be sure that you don't have more wax than you intend inside the dreads.