Lard Smell

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jay_bird

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Ok I made a lard based soap for starters and it came out beautiful, it's really hard soaps up perfectly except it smells like bacon fat! Any suggestions on what could be dun for removing the smell?
 
Sometimes if you soap at too high a temperature I get that pig smell. Shouldn't be bacon though unless you used bacon fat. It will likely mellow with cure. Did you use an EO or FO. That should help too.
 
I've gotten that "almost-bacon" smell from Armour lard (Walmart) before, but it has faded completely during cure (I use FOs). Hubs got it pretty bad his first lard batch that he heated a bit high to melt. It faded mostly, but the FO he used that time wasn't enough to cover it. I'm very careful to not heat too high, and since my nose is sensitive, I don't use lard on my unscented batches.
 
I made a lard/coconut soap for my first batch and it smelled pretty piggy to begin with. The smell faded a lot during the cure.
 
Well it's cured out completely and I think I'm moving on to beef tallow. I just thought I read somewhere that you can oven render the smell out! And yea it was wall mart lard.
 
Just to go on a bit, the Walmart "Armour" brand lard is the cleanest smelling lard I have found. I used some "Emge" lard from Kroger one time and that stuff was very strong smelling. But even the strong one mellowed out after a good cure... at least for me.
 
That's one of the reasons I switched away from lard myself. Didn't smell it in the finished soap, but it made the soaping process unpleasant, and since I do this as a hobby I want it to be as fun as possible.
 
I think it depends on what you start with. If there is a lot of bacony smell to it at the begging it might take a bit of time and FO to cover it up.
Lard I used did smell a bit piggy, but it cured out. Even in 50% lard, unfragranced bars.
 
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