Beer and bacon soap

[ourwolfden]

A couple of time a year I buy 10 lbs of bacon from Sam’s and spend and afternoon deep frying the bacon in olive oil (I then portion the bacon out in single serving bags and freeze, but that is a different topic for a different forum). I end up with more oil then I started out with from the grease off the bacon. I normally pour what will fit into the container and toss the rest. I then use this bacon grease / olive oil for sautéing.

My question is can I run this oil through a coffee filter to pull out the chunks and then use this bacon grease / olive oil mix to make soap with? I was thinking using also to use beer instead of water and this would make a great gift for men.

Any thoughts?

 

[CP_soapery]

Hmm curious to know too now. Bump..


Belle

 

[Lindy]

The problem is going to be that you have 2 oils mixed together and unless you know the proportions of each it is pretty hard to get your SAP values. It can be done, but how are you going to know the percentages?

By the way the bacon oil would be lard....

 

[ourwolfden]

Yeah that was my hang up as well. The only thing I could think of would be to just experiment and hope to get it right, but you could never have something that you were able to duplicate.

Unless you baked the bacon and then then saved that to add to your soap. Is using the SAP for lard okay? I know nothing about lard (other than apparently it makes wonderful cookies). There isn’t any extra steps for rendering the fat out to use for soap, just the same as you would when cooking only instead of tossing the grease you soap with it? It so that makes it a lot easier to figure out.


Sorry if they questions seem dumb!

 

[girlishcharm2004]

I was just going to say the exact same thing, Lindy!

OurWolfDen, the problem with the fats you want to use is that you don't know the proportion. So, you wouldn't get an accurate lye measurement and that could result in a lye heavy soap or a very oily soap -- neither of which you want. But, good news! Lard and bacon grease are one and the same. If you want to fry your bacon in lard and then filter the drippings, that would be a very economical and upcycled soap! You can save a small portion of those drippings for the next time you want to fry your bacon so you don't need to get more lard. However, don't just pick up any ol' bucket of lard from the market. Those are mostly hydrogenated, which again, contributes to a different saponification value. If you can't find true lard, you could fry your bacon without any oil. The lard will render out in the cooking process and fry the bacon anyway.

Don't throw out that fat because you can use it for soap! I'm sure it would be delicious to fry other foods in!
Hope this helps.

 

[pamielynn]

Actually, my concern would be the olive oil you used to fry the bacon in. OO starts to break down at high temps and could go rancid pretty quick in the soap. IMO

 

[Lindy]

You would need to clean it a bit more than filter it, but I don't know what the rest of it is.

These are not stupid questions and yes you would use the SAP value of lard.....

 

[ourwolfden]

I may try a small batch. I go two ways when I cook bacon I either deep fry (blame spending my high school and collage years being a fry cook at a local greasy spoon) or I lay it out all nice and neat on a wire rack over a baking sheet and bake it. So maybe a two pound batch with no scents or colors just the homemade bacon lard used in place of lard in some recipe using some other oils and beer for liquid and then let it sit for a year and see what happens to it. If it doesn't turn rancid (or leave a person smelling overwhelmingly of bacon) I could then remake the recipe to give away after it cures.

 

[JaimeM]

LOL! How funny! My one and only batch of beer soap I insisted HAD to be made with lard for the beer/bacon vibe (but with less fat straining!). No FO/EO at all, but it ended up smelling just like pretzels! It is weirdly awesome and everyone (especially the guys) love it.
Good luck with your experiment!

 

[ourwolfden]

Pretzels? lol That's awesome.

 

[Lindy]

A fab experiment! Both of you...

 

[soap_rat]

I saw an Instructable on making soap from bacon drippings: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Bacon-Soap/

If you solidified your oil and fat in a clear container, would the olive oil separate out, or does it mix in with the lard?

What is the difference in NaOH number for each oil? Ooh, on Soapcalc lard is .134 while olive oil is .135 (g of NaOH per g of oil). These values are actually a range, not a pinpoint value like this, so I would regard them both as being .134 so you err on the side of extra superfat. Also you have very little OO compared to lard, right? Maybe even...negligible? (not sure how much OO you start with and how much grease all that bacon makes).

Anyway, I'd feel comfortable running the experiment assuming all the oil has the value of lard. Is there anything I missed that makes this not work?

 

[ourwolfden]

Soap rat – so since the SAP values are so close I can use the same number for each. Why didn’t I think to run that through soap calc? Normally when I deep fry bacon I use a fry baby and fill that up with oil. When it is all done I have lost some olive oil but I have rendered more fat out of the bacon then I lost – I hope that makes sense. And yes it normally separates out. I may have to try it both way just to see… my hubby is going to be happy when I come home with all this bacon when I go grocery shopping next!

 

[judymoody]

What soap rat said. I was going to recommend something similar.

I would chill the fat and the particulates should clump together, scrape that off and you'd be good to go. I'd make a small batch in case it's a bust.

 

[ourwolfden]

Okay here is what I have come up with. It is just under 3 pounds but it will fit into my silcone mold perfectly:

Coconut Oil (Fractioned)
6.70oz
27.92%

Lard
10.60oz
44.17%

Olive Oil
6.70oz
27.92%

5% Lye (Sodium Hydroxide) Amount
3.719oz

Ounces of liquid recommended
7.92oz

Yields
35.64oz

Edited - To fix weird table formatting issue

 

[soap_rat]

Oh, that is more olive oil than I was thinking, I forgot how you wrote you deep-fry it sometimes (I had no idea...). But no one has come in here shouting that I'm wrong about the lye values being virtually identical so I think you're good to go!

(Sorry for not checking your recipe on soapcalc but I find the site fiddly and I often accidentally delete what I'm doing by accident). But when you write "5% lye," do you mean 5% superfat?

 

[ourwolfden]

Soap Rat - I copied that from Bramble Berry's lye calculator page. I did put in a 5% superfat, I'm not sure why they put that number before the lye. Hmmm. I will be stocking up on bacon on the next Sam's run.

 

[soap_rat]

Great, I just wanted to make sure the numbers were right!

 

[CaraBou]

What a great experiment! Looking forward to hearing your results. Are you going to scent it? I'd like to know if you get a pretzel smell like JaimeM reported. That sounds perfect!