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As much as I love lard, I don't like it at 100%. The lather is dismal and the bars develop a old stale scent fairly quickly.
A 80% lard, 20% coconut is nice though. Long lasting, gentle, more lather and it doesn't get the stale scent.
These bars last so long I get tired of looking at them in the shower lol.
oh good to know' nothing is worse then a bar that smell's icky.
 
I have always used lard OR tallow OR palm, never a combination. urrent recipes use 40% of lard, tallow, or palm. I only use palm for my vegetarian friends, especially my Hindu friends. We have a vibrant Indian community in my town. There seems to be a slight texture difference in the palm oil soap. I think tallow and lard make better soaps, plus the fats are a byproduct of the meat industry.

This evening I am going to render my own tallow from suet, which is now available in some New England supermarkets. Does anyone know off the top of their head if high-quality suet has a different FA profile from other animal fats? Suet is a much whiter fat, harder at room temperature, too.

I may have to try upping the animal fats to 50% to see how that formula compares.
Why not combine Lard & Palm in the same soap recipe? Maybe a big mistake i've been making?
 
I love my lard soaps. Tried some no-stir palm last year and was not impressed. I probably won't buy any more. Lard from 20% to 80% and anywhere in between. The only time I ever got a thumb's up from my grandson was a 80% lard and 20% CO for testing scents. He wasn't impressed with the scent but said he loved the soap. I need to make a small batch just for him one of these days as the 20% CO is too high for my old skin. I'm pretty much into lard, RBO and maybe a butter or another soft oil. I play with the percentages of the oils all the time and pretty much can't tell the difference. I usually leave my soaps all cure 3 months and after supplying family with them, I rarely have any left after 6 months. Currently I have a lot on hand all within the 4-6 months stages as I had to move my oils to the garage this summer in order to house my daughter and grandson after a fire. I didn't want any of the oils to go rancid in the heat. So I had a huge soaping binge before the heat of the summer hit us. I do have one bar from Sept 2020 and another from Dec 2020 that are both 40% lard and neither of them have any issues. Love the creamy lather.
 
I dont like anything that comes from a pig, but i have liked the Tallow, the only reason i would eliminate it is if i was making a soap bar that may ward off mosquitoes, as i would not want any animal smell to atract the bugs, I have never used palm, yet but use coconut oil , olive, and tallow,
 
No mistake. I just personally only use palm occasionally, when I want an animal fat free bar.
Thank you Dear' i've not used lard in my vegan bars too, though I do love lard in soap & w/ all our country enjoying pork products we generate a lot of pork fat. Were doing our country a favor imho lol 🤣.
 
"I've never used palm oil." A heretic in our midst!! o_O

Count me in - never used the stuff, not.even.once.
Lard all the way for me, but I don`t judge those who wish to use it!
As I told you in the other thread of yours I use it in 50-60%. So you know where I stand, lol:dance:

As much as I love lard, I don't like it at 100%. The lather is dismal and the bars develop a old stale scent fairly quickly.
A 80% lard, 20% coconut is nice though. Long lasting, gentle, more lather and it doesn't get the stale scent.
These bars last so long I get tired of looking at them in the shower lol.

I agree, a 100% lard soap is not much to write how about! At least not the first coupple of years... I have one that is 7 years old (no stale scent though) Wowzah, it is great! The fragrance has long faded (lemon essential oil, yeah...) I have it next to my kitchen sink that I use before washing up when I am making dinner, It sure took its time to get there, so I agree, it really needs a bit of help from cocnut without waiting it out for half a decade for it to get decent... :hairpulling:
 
Why not combine Lard & Palm in the same soap recipe? Maybe a big mistake i've been making?
There’s nothing wrong with combining them. Lard, palm, and tallow have similar fatty acid profiles, so using combinations seems redundant to me. I would choose just one to weigh out when it’s time to make soap. Less work. 🙂 I’m not sure what the advantage would be in combining lard and palm instead of using one or the other.
 
I may have to try upping the animal fats to 50% to see how that formula compares.

My two favorite recipes that I’ve made over the last year have 48% and 60% lard. They’re great on my skin and in the calculator. I’m using mostly lard, coconut and moderate linoleic soft oils (no butters) so I have a difficult time finding values that I like with anything less than 40% lard. In response to the original post, I wouldn’t hesitate to try completely replacing your palm! You might love it. And as previously noted, anything up to 100% lard can make an excellent bar. Lard seems to be one of those oils that has a 1-100% range (or 5-100% 😉)
 
Love my lard in soap. We only had lard growing up on a farm so that’s what we used. Then, with the introduction of the internet, Palm became more popular and accessible. I bought some, used it, and went right back to Lard. Haven’t used Palm in at least 20 years.
 
My late lard adventures were an opportunity to develop a theory towards the proverbial reputation of lard as The Soaper's Delightful Blessing™, when it comes to workability, swirl times, and general well-behavedness.

In my experience, lard is not particularly slow-moving and not even exceptionally well-behaved (amongst the hard oils) when it comes to false trace.

BUT what really makes a difference is its manners when it comes to the texture of trace (true just as false trace): It does not “freeze” into hard lumps of fat, but the solids (be it the soap droplets about to form with lye, and/or the lard crystals, in the cold) can move past each other rather freely, even when there is a lot of them. Lard is an excellent “lubricant” for its own solids, noticeably better than any other hard oil I know. This is where lard really shines at! Even if it is tracing, the trace is very well-behaved, easy to control, and well to beat up back to a liquid-ish state.

And it doesn't even stop with saponification: lard-based soap dough is also really well-behaved, easy to knead up, pliable, yet non-sticky.

Too bad lard (just as any other ingredient) has its downsides, that keeps it from being the ultimate soapy no-brainer.
 

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