Newton’s Third Law

[Punkerdoodle’s Homestead]

FYI, essential oils are not "oils" for purposes of the soap calculator. They don't change the SF, the amount of lye required, etc. You do need to check for the skin safe usage rate for every different EO used in the soap, as some can be used quite liberally, while others should be used sparingly, or not at all. EOCalc.com is a great resource to check usage rates for the most commonly-used EOs.


If one of your problems was fast tracing, then yes, any older fat or oil is going to be more oxidized, and thus will trace faster. That's true of essential oils, as well, even though they aren't being saponified, as noted above.

Thx for the info, I can see now the lard may have contributed. Allot of little nuances to learn.

Your old lard from 2022 probably did not cause the problems you had. If anything, your bars may develop DOS months down the road if the lard was going rancid.

It would be an interesting experiment to make another batch with the 2022 lard now that you fixed the recipe. I bet it will turn out the same as the batch with the new lard!

Didn’t think about testing the old lard, to late now but the dogs enjoyed it on their dog food very much. The first thing I do when opening a jar of lard is give it a sniff. Normally it has no noticeable smell at all and that didn’t when I opened it, short time in the fridge and it started with a little smell meant it was borderline. Normally don’t have any close to that old so shouldn’t be a chance of a problem going forward.