Will it Stink?

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Although I have never intentionally hot processed any bar soap, I have had to rebatch several that contained lard(90% of my soap does), and I have made liquid lard soap. No lardy smells in the house. Just smells like soap, then whatever EO/FO you use.
 
Never hot processed, but I render my own tallow. The first cleaning fat has bits of meat and some other impurities left behind. Now THAT stinks! Awful, plain awful.
Second cleaning I do still smells some, but not nearly as terrible as the first.
The third cleaning has a faint meaty odor, but not terrible. Very very faint.
The last cleaning, for good measure, is almost odorless.

All this is done on a heated stove, so heat is involved. That's why I mention it.

Assuming your tallow and lard are cleaned well, it shouldn't smell. Once I have my final tallow, it smell is nonexistent for the most part, and when I remelt it before adding lye water, it most definitely does not stink up the house.
I should mention I'm not sure if your tallow is suet, but if it is it will be much cleaner and more odorless than what I have to render down. I get beef trimmings from my butcher.
 
I make hot process almost exclusively, and I use either lard or tallow in almost every recipe. No stinky smells at all, just soap!
 
If I hot process with either tallow or lard, will it stink up my house?

I've hot processed several soaps with 20 - 40% lard in the recipes, and did not notice a lard smell at all. I use store bought lard like Armour, which has a lot less odor to it than "real" lard. Actually, store bought lard doesn't smell much like lard to me at all. (as a kid we raised and processed our own hogs, so had fresh untreated lard which is very, very different from store bought. I'm sure the house would have definitely smelled from that!).
 
Never hot processed, but I render my own tallow. The first cleaning fat has bits of meat and some other impurities left behind. Now THAT stinks! Awful, plain awful.
Second cleaning I do still smells some, but not nearly as terrible as the first.
The third cleaning has a faint meaty odor, but not terrible. Very very faint.
The last cleaning, for good measure, is almost odorless.

All this is done on a heated stove, so heat is involved. That's why I mention it.

Assuming your tallow and lard are cleaned well, it shouldn't smell. Once I have my final tallow, it smell is nonexistent for the most part, and when I remelt it before adding lye water, it most definitely does not stink up the house.
I should mention I'm not sure if your tallow is suet, but if it is it will be much cleaner and more odorless than what I have to render down. I get beef trimmings from my butcher.

i know this is an older post but i just found it and am interested in your "cleaning" method. I have just started rendering fat from the butcher and its full of leftover bits of this and that.. not the perfect suet stuff, but good grass fed local beef fat. i get it free, i love using it. but the first, second and third cleaning you speak of? are you rendering it, pouring it through a sieve, allowing it to harden, then repeating this two more times? I am rendering mine, then pouring it through a mesh metal sieve and its fully clear of bits but smells of beef... im just wondering if there are more steps i should be following.
 
i know this is an older post but i just found it and am interested in your "cleaning" method. I have just started rendering fat from the butcher and its full of leftover bits of this and that.. not the perfect suet stuff, but good grass fed local beef fat. i get it free, i love using it. but the first, second and third cleaning you speak of? are you rendering it, pouring it through a sieve, allowing it to harden, then repeating this two more times? I am rendering mine, then pouring it through a mesh metal sieve and its fully clear of bits but smells of beef... im just wondering if there are more steps i should be following.

Hi! I take it and cut off all meat bits I can. Then I cut it into small inch sized pieces or so. Someone here mentioned baking soda to help the render smell, and another mentioned salt for helping get impurities out.
So.

I put into a pot of water that's filled halfway up the fat. I pour a good half cup or so of salt into it. I mix oh about 2-3 tablespoons of baking soda into water and pour it on as well. It creates a reaction and releases carbon dioxide, so beware as it heats of spilling over. After its done reacting, you don't have to worry about it again. I just do it this first render, and not being a chemist and doing a little poking around, I realized the salt may be reacting with the sodium bicarbonate and in essence neutralizes it thus preventing it from helping with the smell :shock: I'm no scientist lol, so hopefully one of our science savvy persons, thinking deeanna....can better explain the chemical reaction of sodium bicarbonate and sodium chloride in a heated water type situation.

I heat it on medium low for a good half hour, and then lower the temperature to full low. I simmer for, oh, 4 hours or more, until the fat looks like a gelatinous gooey sinus infection lol. I strain it through a sieve into a glass Pyrex baking dish, used cheesecloth in the sieve once but can't find it anywhere after I ran out, so sieve it is.

I refrigerate it for at least 4 hours or so. It needs to cool completely through.

Look at the liquid now. Below the fat in the dish after its cooled, the water is a deep muddy brown and STINKS like what I would *think* a dead body smells like. I almost gag at this point when I go and dump it in the field for the coyotes to sniff out haha.

It looks like it's pretty clean fat now, but there's more cleaning that can occur, and I want it very very clean to prevent smell, dos development, and just the yuck factor of bits being left behind. That water was so nasty, and if it was that bad there's more cleaning throughout the fat that needs to happen.

Pop out the solid fat disc and place in the pot. Fill with water to cover to the top of the fat. Add about a quarter cup of salt. Heat on low, and melt it. I keep it here for a couple hours or so. I strain it out into the cleaned out Pyrex. Cool for at least 4 hours. It just needs adequate time to harden completely through. If you pop it out too quickly, the bottom of the disc will still be water logged. The water beneath the fat disc this second render is a murky slightly tinted white. Very murky.

I do it again. This time I use about between 1/8 and 1/4 cup of salt. The water after cooling is a cloudy white, but getting cleaner looking.

I do it the fourth time. The water is almost clear after this render and cooling. This is how I know most of the impurities are gone. I don't use salt this final render. The salt may be what clouds the left over water in the above rendering, but I know it still needs the extra rendering based on the smell too. The smell is nonexistent practically by the fourth render and cooling. The water left beneath the disc doesn't smell either by the fourth time. Is four necessary, probably not. I just want a clean clean product if I'm going to do it myself and not purchase it.
 
Yes. I neglected to mention.

On the bottom of the disc is little soft round pieces of fat. It isn't clean and hard, but kind of a textured softer round beads of fat.

I take my knife I used to pry loose the fat, and I scrape off this stuff. I wipe my knife off onto the foil I covered the Pyrex with, and I toss that foil. After the next rendering, I recover with clean foil since I don't have a lid for this particular dish. I thought I was being overly cautious and didn't write that part. I'm glad I've been doing that and sorry I didn't mention it earlier!!

Sorry to hijack Katie...just one more thing. I currently have 3 pounds 6 1/2 oz sitting in my fridge. I rendered 4 times yesterday and the water is still cloudy like a typical third render. I usually only get a pound and a half, a pound and 3/4...this batch is huge! I'm doing once final fifth render today seeing as there's still a faint meaty smell and the cloudy water. I want it super clean. So based on size, I do 4 for a 2 pound or less, and 5 renders/cleaning for a 3+ pound batch. I'd post pics but don't want to completely derail here lol!
 
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Hmm, I render my own lard in the crock pot and there isn't any bad smell at all. It just smells like I have porkchops baking for supper. And I strain it through cheesecloth, and only have to do one rendering. The resulting lard is perfectly white and has a really faint porkchop smell to it. The soap I make is CP, but at 40% lard there isn't any smell from the lard at all. And I have a very sensitive sense of smell too!
 

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