Lathering varies from soap to soap, depending on the ingredients used. It cannot be said that all soaps that use fat lather well or all soaps that use oil lather the best. Since soap combines a lot of things, lather depends on three factors –
1.the ratio of lather-inducing ingredients present,
2.the type of soap (hard or soft) and
3.the nature of water in which the soap is used.

Two types of soap lather: Lathering can be seen in two different types among tallow and oil based soaps – one kind of soaps produce foamy, fluffy lather which may even appear to be a little excessive; another kind produce stable, sufficient lather to rinse and remove dirt from the skin or clothes. Tallow soaps are said to produce the latter kind of lather owing to their hard bar nature and reaction with lye.

Which soap lathers well – Oil or Fat soaps? For some soapers, soap means tallow and nothing else. For some, tallow is a beastly ingredient to be included in such a soft product like soap. Animal Rights activists would swear by vegetable or essential oils for soap making. Hence soap lather is closely associated to ingredients used. It is generally believed that tallow soaps make stable lather compared to other animal fats. On the other hand, oils like coconut oil or avocado or castor oil too make good lather, in fact, better lather compared to other animal fat based soaps. To produce both fluffy and stable lather, some soapers use both tallow and castor or coconut oil in their recipes. This balances the lather quality of the soap and offers rich, creamy, dirt-cleaning lather, irrespective of the water or other ingredients used.

Lather based on soap’s nature: Lather differs based on soap’s nature too. Hard soaps like tallow or lard soaps produce stable lather, while soft soaps produce foamy froth. Tallow, coconut oil, palm oil, lard etc will produce hard soap, while olive oil, almond oil and jojoba oil will produce soft soaps.

Water influence on lather: If your water is hard, it has a high level of calcium and magnesium. These minerals react with the oils present in the soap and have a negative impact on your soap’s lathering quality. Since soft water does not contain measurable amount of minerals, it produces good lather, compared to hard water.

On the whole, tallow soaps (next only to coconut oil soaps) provide stable lather that has the potential to raise the dirt and remove it.

Tallow nuances: Fat or beef suet, as such, is not pure. You need to render it to tallow to free it from impurities. If you do not render properly, you may end up making a soap that carries an ugly or stinking smell (this maybe because of a rancid fat/tallow). Sometimes overuse of fat and little use of lye can delay the saponification process or cause unusual soap formation. Avoid all these by using the right amount of ingredients. Above all, ensure that your tallow is stored properly before you make it into soap. Unkempt tallow means smelly, useless soaps that do an awkward cleaning job.

Below are a few tallow soap recipes you can use in your soap making business at home:

1. Tallow Resin soap: Resin can be used together with tallow in soap making. While some prefer to melt the resin and tallow before the saponification, it is better to make a soap of each (separately) and then, mix them and boil for half an hour and strain through a sieve. About 15% of resin can be mixed with tallow. Overuse of resin results in inferior quality soap formation. To make resin soap, you may need the following: 12 gallons of caustic soda, 100 pounds of pulverized resin and water and tallow.

Boil caustic soda in a kettle and add the resin (15 pounds) at a time to it. Heat to the boiling point while constantly stirring the mixture. In two hours time, you can see the saponification happening. The lightest resin is the best for soap.

2. Tallow Coconut Oil soap: A mixture of equal parts of coconut oil and tallow will make a fine filled soap.  However, coconut oil should not be mixed in large proportions as it can spoil the fat and result in improper saponification. In a filled soap, excess water is separated from the soapy mixture (cold soap) by means of adding salt. This tallow coconut oil can be made hard by following the same procedure. For this, you may need 100 pounds of coconut oil (equal amount of tallow) and 100 pounds of caustic soda lye. Boil the mixture at 27 degree Celsius and stir thoroughly for 2 hours or so. The paste will thicken and a white, half-solid mass will be formed. Reduce the heat and transfer it to molds.

3. Tallow Palm Oil soap: Palm oil cannot be used in soap all on its own. It is not fatty enough to induce saponification. Hence, it should be employed with other fats like tallow. When you mix palm oil with tallow, saponify both separately and then, mix them later (just like what you did with tallow coconut oil soap). Tallow palm oil soap works best with the following proportions of ingredients: 30 pounds of palm oil with 20 pounds of tallow and 2 pounds of resin or 30 pounds of palm oil with 50 pounds of tallow and 20 pounds of resin.

Why soap means so much: Soap has meant so much to human beings down the ages. Ancient people made soaps with tallow or lard adopting to crude methods like stirring-pots and making ash-water in the outdoors. The Sumerians rubbed  themselves with ashes and water to cleanse the grease from raw wool and cloth. Romans argue that the term ’soap’ was derived from Mount Sapo where animals were sacrificed and rainwater mixed the ashes with water and fat to flow down as soapy substance. Tallow was the only ingredient in soap making then. Coarse soap was made from train oil, sweet soap was done with olive oil, while speckled soap was a product of tallow. Later, modern soap makers enhanced the art by using a lot of ingredients like animal fat, vegetable oils and other essential oils.

With advancement of soap making, many have taken up to the practice at home. There are different kinds of soapers around and this article is a rib-tickling take (most of which are referred to by many soapers in forums) on soap making with tallow and without tallow .

1. Naturalist soapers: These are the type of soap makers who swear by natural ingredients. They stick to essential oils, home-rendered animal fat and wood-ash lye. They include no artificial perfumes or coloring pigments in their soaps. Just tallow, lye and water is sufficient for them.

2. Vegetarian soapers: These soapers stick just to vegetable oils or essential oils. There is strictly no animal fat in their recipes. Even palmitic acid or musk or beeswax is abhorred in their soaps. They make pure “vegetarian” soaps without even a trace of animal fat.

3. Ranchers or Non-veggie soapers: These people vouch everything by fat. They belief that tallow or lard has a better standing than olive oil or coconut oil and try no recipe that does not have fat in its list. They make soap in the ancient way, relying only on the froth that fat can bring to soap.

4. Castile Makers: These are olive oil worshipers. They stir, stir and stir and go for a three-day trace period believing in the ancient wisdom – longer the time to trace, better the soap.

5. Latherists: These soapers believe that only soaps with rich lather cleanse well. If a soap does not froth  to their expectations, they add coconut oil or palm kernel or castor oil to make it lather. They trust too high on tallow-coconut oil combination to offer rich, creamy lather.

6. Oils-only soapers: These are people who work only with vegetable oils and say a strict NO to animal fat. They live by theories against beef tallow and believe that even an iota of it can lead to serious dangers like arteriosclerosis and other ailments. So, they do soap only with soap making oils.

7. Hard bar soapers: These people think that soap is soap only if it is as hard as rock (with froth). They love to use tallow or lard as it is one of the best ways to make hard bar soaps. Some modernists in this group work with palm oil and tallow combination.

Tallow blend soaps: There was a time when soaps were synonymous with beef tallow. Now, things have changed and tallow is no more the only fat ingredient in the soap making industry. Several blends of tallow soaps have arrived in the market, thanks to innovative discoveries on the various uses of essential and vegetable oils. This article will offer a few tallow blend soap recipes that are commonly used by soapers. The first three of these recipes were created by a popular soaper named Kathy Miller.

1. Tallow Blend Soap: The best tallow for this soap is freshly rendered tallow. You can render tallow at your home by melting it and then removing the impurities. Once rendered, you can blend it with lard and use it in soap making. The ingredients for this recipe are:

• 44 oz of beef tallow
• 20 oz olive oil
• 20 oz of coconut oil
• 32 oz of very cold water
• 12 oz lye crystals
• some lard fat for blending with tallow

As mentioned earlier, blend lard and tallow and add coconut oil to it for lather. Add olive oil to reduce the harshness and make the soap mild. If you want a milder bar in order to add fragrance oils, add 2 more ounces of water. The resulting soap will have the best qualities of all the ingredients – lather, creaminess, cleaning ability and a soft touch on skin.

2. Blended soap with tallow (without coconut): Tallow works well with castor oil too. This soap recipe uses olive and castor oil to replace the effect of coconut oil. Though this has a different lather than what coconut provides, it is smooth, silky and soothing to the skin. It is excellent for shaving (legs and face) and even soybean oil can replace olive oil and castor oil. To make this soap, you need:

• 64 oz of tallow  (you can use tallow and cottonseed blend)
• 24 oz olive oil
• 4 oz of castor oil
• 32 oz of cold water
• 12 oz of lye crystals

3. Blended soap with tallow (with coconut): This is the best tallow blend soap you can ever make. Tallow will give your soap hardness, while the coconut ingredient will bring forth the froth. Add some olive oil and you make a perfect soap with good cleansing and conditioning properties. The ingredients needed for the soap are:

• 45 oz of tallow
• 20 oz of olive oil
• 20 oz of coconut oil
• 32 oz of cold water
• 12 oz of lye crystals

This is almost similar to the first recipe, except that there you make a blend of tallow and lard for extra hardness and effect.

4. Tallow tea blend soap: Created by Lorien Carney, this soap recipe has both tallow and lard as separate ingredients. Added to this are two tea bags from Nutcracker sweet. The ingredients for this recipe:

• 16 oz of lard
• 16 oz of tallow
• 4.45 oz of lye
• 1 5/6 cups of water
• 2 celestial seasonings Nutcracker Sweet tea bags

Make soap using the usual method – prepare lye water and then pour it into the fat. Then, when you see a thick trace forming, add the tea to the mixture and pour into a suitable mold. The soap, when formed, is pink in color with specks of green and brown. It offers good lather and fair cleaning abilities.

Like all homemade, do-it-yourself-stuff, soap making too has its share of difficulties. Before venturing into the difficulties realm, let’s take a look at what saponification exactly means.

Saponification process: Saponification is the chemical term for the reaction between lye and fat and the formation of soap. When animal fat meets an alkali, the alkali first splits the fat into two major parts – fatty acids and glycerin. After this, the sodium are potassium part of the alkali joins with the fatty acid part (of animal fat) to form a potassium or sodium salt – which is nothing but soap. From this you can gather that the constituent of alkali is a decisive factor in determining the quality, texture and nature of your soap. Soap making’s favorite alkali is lye or liquid potash or sodium hydroxide. You can use whichever is convenient for you, but you need to be careful about the strength and amount of lye solution you use. This is because lye is one of the first bottlenecks faced by soap makers:

1. Strength of lye: The strength of your lye solution determines the nature and solidity/liquidity of your soap. Inappropriate quantity or low/high strength of your lye solution can mean problems like – curdling of mixture, grainy soap, spongy soap, soap with air bubbles,  lye pockets in soap etc. To avoid this, the colonists used a method. To determine if the strength of their lye solution is perfect, they let a potato or egg float on the lye water. If the object floated with specified amount of its surface above the lye solution, it was declared as a fit solution for soap making. To weaken the strength of a strong solution, water was added. To increase strength, the lye water was poured into the ash hopper once again.

Today, you need not make things floppy with potatoes or eggs. There are lye calculators to determine the strength of your lye solution. You can use them after you mix lye with water. You can follow the recipe letter for letter and make your lye perfect without the need to check with a calculator.

2. No saponification: Happens with almost all first-time soap makers. The reason can be many things – excess water, insufficient lye, not enough stirring, rancid tallow, high amount of polyunsaturated fats in tallow etc. Check your ingredients if you do not see any trace of soap formation.

3. Rancid tallow: Beef tallow can go rancid if not well kept. It always better to go for grass fed beef and then render it on your own than opt for a packaged suet. A store-sold packaged suet is processed beef fat which may not contain the necessary elements to help in soap formation. It is ideal as a bird feed only. In order to get better soaps, order your beef from your butcher and render it into tallow yourself. Ensure that it is cleansed of impurities and store it in appropriate ways to prevent rancidity.

4. Unusual soaps: Sometimes the end result maybe a warped or a freckled or a mottled soap. Your soap may carry unwanted colors (without you coloring it) and smell rancid. Sometimes air bubbles may abound in the soap mixture or a small amount of white powder may stay on top. All these are common problems and can be troubleshooted if you double-check  the quality, strength and amount of ingredients you use. Air bubbles happen when you stir too long or whip while stirring. A warped soap means you have not followed the right drying process. Mottled look is a result of uneven stirring or temperature changes. A rancid smell occurs when you add too much fat and too little lye.

5. Coloring and scent: Some may add too much scent to their soaps. This is not required. Few drops of essential oils or perfumes (approved ones) can do the trick. See to it that you get the right color and scent you require. A very strong smell can often be a source of headaches and migraines. So, ensure you use the appropriate amount of perfume suitable for your body.

Soap making in no-store land: Suppose you live in a remote town where the stores are closed for holidays or you have gone on a holiday to some lonely corner of the earth where you want to pursue soap making, you can do it with just a few basic things. Below are steps to make soaps in the outdoors:

1. Making wood ash lye: Since lye is the alkali used to break animal fat into fatty acids and glycerin, you need to make lye solution first. Lye is nothing but a liquid solution of potash which reacts with tallow in the saponification process to form soft soap. Two methods – Barrel Method and Ash Hopper method can be used to prepare lye solution.

2. Barrel method of lye preparation: In the pre-technological era, people used bottomless barrels to make lye. Usually, the barrel was set on a stone slab with a groove and a lip carved in it. The stone rested on a pile of rocks, underneath which was a clay or wooden utensil to collect lye water. To prevent ashes from collecting, straw and small sticks were placed in the barrel. Then, ashes were put on top of barrel and water was poured on them. A brownish liquid collected at the clay vessel. You can use this method if you do not have the means of an ash hopper.

3. Ash hopper method: Most of the colonists found this to be a suitable method to keep a continual supply of lye. An ash hopper was usually kept in a shed to prevent the ashes from rainfall and other climatic conditions. Ashes were added periodically and water was poured over at intervals. The vessel beneath the hopper collected the lye solution. You too can follow this procedure if you have an ash hopper at your convenience.

4. Fat preparation: Cattle fat was the readily available fat those days. Most of the soaps were formed using beef fat (suet) rendered into tallow through a cleansing process. To render your raw fat, allow the fat to boil in a kettle with equal amount of water. After all the fat has melted, add water again and allow the mixture to cool overnight. By the next day, you can see the clean layer of fat floating upstairs, while all the impurities lie underneath. Collect the top layer by separating it from other impurities.

5. Making soap: Place the fat in a large kettle and add lye solution to it. Boil the kettle until you get a thick frothy mass of soap. You can notice the formation of soap (saponification) or what is called trace when you stir the mixture. However, this may take six to eight hours, so have patience. You can identify soap is formed if there is no noticeable “bite” sensation when you place an iota of the frothy substance on your tongue.

6. Soft and Hard soap: The thick substance that is formed is soft soap. It makes a lot of lather and cleans pretty well. If you want hard soap, like the colonists, you need to mix common salt to the your soap at the end of the process. Addition of salt can turn soap hard and allow you to make bars out of the liquid soap. The bars or the liquid soap can be scented using essential oils or other flavor substances.

Amateur soap makers are at a loss for soap recipes. With almost everyone around taking up soap making, it is hard to find good old basic soap recipes in the local library or bookstores. Sure, the Internet is a great source, but there again, people hardly get to find a recipe that requires the most basic of ingredients and demands the shortest of our time. This article will detail a step-by-step process on what all you need to make a very basic soap using a basic method of tallow soap making.

Basic method of tallow soap making: This basic method has been referred by Hulda Clarkis in the book, The Cure For All Diseases. To make a basic soap, you would need the following ingredients:

• A small plastic dishpan
• A glass or enamel 2 quart sauce pan
• 12 ounces of lye (Sodium Hydroxide)
• 3 pounds of fresh, rendered beef tallow
• plastic gloves and goggles
• gallons of very cold water
• wooden blender or any other plastic stirring equipment

1. Prepare the previous night: If you have bought suet from your butcher, you can render it the previous evening and refrigerate it overnight so that your tallow is fresh and ready for soap making the next morning. Also refrigerate water overnight to freezing temperatures. You would need very cold water in order to reduce the heat of lye solution.

2. Lye solution: Pour 3 cups of cold water into the 2-quart sauce pan and slowly add lye to the water. Have your protective covering (gloves and goggles) on and it is better if you make this lye preparation outside your house. This is because lye has the habit of spoiling places. Keep it out of reach of children too. Never breathe in the vapor or lean over the container. Since the mixture will be very hot, allow it to cool for at least one hour in a safe place.

3. Tallow preparation: Meanwhile, unwrap your tallow and allow it to melt in the dishpan. Then, slowly mix it thoroughly with lye by pouring lye into tallow. Stir the mixture for at least 15 minutes until you get the texture of a thick pudding.

4. Allow it to cool: Let the mixture set till next morning. When cooled, the soap would have become solid and you can then cut it into bars and package it for sale or as a gift.

5. Liquid soap: You can make liquid soap out of this basic soap. All you need to do is, cut the bars into small chips, dissolve them in enough hot water and add citric acid to balance the pH value. This is to reduce the harshness of the soap on your skin. Once done with mixing, allow the mixture to cool. The result will be a liquid soap which you can use for cleaning.

Soap making crossed continents and reached Arabian and middle east regions too. The Palestinians used soap in the 7th century. At the same time, the people of current Iraq learned the art and used soaps as part of daily routine. The first producers of soap in Europe were the Italians and the Spanish. They made and sold soaps around the 8th century. Around 14th century, most of the European countries were into the soap business, most prominent amongst them were the French and the British. From the 18th century onwards, soap making became an industrial product. Several factories were set up to make and sell soaps commercially.

Tallow soap making: All through the medieval times, beef tallow and other fats (like lard) were used in soap making. Only later, vegetable oils (like olive oil) were used in soap making. Recreating a medieval soap is not that difficult. If you want to use a medieval soap, here are a few tips. Follow the instructions carefully and create an exact replica of a soap used by our ancestors:

Medieval soap making tips: The European version of soap making is different from the Arabian or the other versions. The European version used mostly animal fat for soap making. Here’s a glimpse:

1. Things you will need: Ashes from burnt logs, fine-meshed sieves or wickerwork with tiny withies, pot, beef tallow, lime, large spoon, olive oil or wheat flour (optional), knife or spatula-like thing.

2. Clean your pot and place it under wickerwork or sieve. Beforehand, spread the ashes you have got into the wickerwork or sieve. Pour hot water over the ashes so that it gently drips into the pot. Heat such collected water (it is actually lye water). Pour water over and over the same ashes to strengthen the lye water and improve its color.

3. When you are done with the making of lye water, boil it till it thickens. Add beef  tallow and stir very well. If you can, add lime to the mixture.

4. Allow lye mixture with tallow to boil until you get a stable thickness. Allow the mixture to cool and work the soap with spade for two to four days until it is completely de-watered or coagulated.

5. Once everything is over, you can cut the hard soap into pieces that are convenient for your use. You can even add wheat flour along with tallow. If you want, you can replace the tallow with olive oil and follow the same procedures.

A legend has it that soap was actually “discovered” after heavy rain saturated in the slopes of Mount Sapo, an ancient site of many animal sacrifices, where rain, ash and fat had mixed to form soap. It is said that the soap thus formed drained down from the slopes on the banks of the Tiber river where washerwomen were laundering clothes. The mixture that flowed cleaned the clothes immediately much to the surprise of the women. Then was born, the cleansing agent call soap.

Soap making precautions: Soap making is not as easy as it sounds. You can lose track of the process or hurt yourself if you are not careful of what is to be done. This is especially true when it comes to making soaps by mixing tallow and lye. The following precautions may help if you are new to soap making:

1. Read instructions for the soap recipe to make sure you have the required ingredients. Get ready with all the gear you require.

2. Arrange in order of use the ingredients and the equipments you require. You would definitely need the following – two heavy plastic pitchers, one big stainless steel container or pot, safety goggles, neoprene or rubber gloves, heavy apron, stick blender (to blend the mixture), soap molds, gallons of water, heating or cooling equipment, wooden spoon, weighing scales, tallow, lye crystals and fragrances or other fats (if required).

3. Read all the safety precautions and familiarize yourself with the tallow soap recipe before you start anything. This would avoid wasting precious time in looking up for instructions over and over again.

Soap making process: You need to prepare soap with the utmost precaution. This is because the lye used in soap making has caustic properties which can damage your skin or your house. Here’s a step-by-step procedure of how to make soap:

4. Use diet scales to weight both the empty pitchers. Then, add water in one of the pitchers and weigh it. Make sure your water is very cold, because mixing it with lye may cause a sudden rise in temperature. This can be avoided if the water is cold.

5. Put on your rubber gloves and goggles and weigh the lye using the diet scales. Then, go out of the house and slowly pour the lye into the water pitcher. While doing so, stir the water to keep the lye from solidifying. Cover yourself completely during this step as lye can be harmful. You can use a wooden spoon to mix lye with water. Don’t pour everything all of a sudden. Pour gradually, as spilling may cause serious effects in the place around.

6. Take tallow and weigh it with diet scales. Heat it to get the desired temperature. When both the lye water and the tallow are in the desired temperature, pour the lye into melted tallow.

7. Continue to stir to avoid splashing. To ensure total absorption of the lye into the fat, you should keep stirring and for about 15 to 20 minutes non-stop. As the mixture thickens and becomes opaque, you can see “traces” of the saponification process. However, there can also be a false trace sometimes. It may even take hours to find real traces, depending upon the ingredients you use. Wait with patience for your soap to form.

8. Once the soap reaches the trace stage, you can slowly add fragrance or other fats if required. Colorings, if needed, should be added at this stage. Allow the mixture to cool and then, later cut them into bars for use.

Soap recipes: Soaps are generally formed when animal fat (tallow) is combined with caustic agents like lye (sodium hydroxide) with water as a catalyst. Since you are using a caustic agent, you need to be careful during the soap making process. Here are a few easy recipes for making soaps:

1. Basic Soap: Before you start, get to know the basic procedures involved in soap making. This includes preparation of lye water and then blending it with the melted tallow. To prepare the basic soap, you need the following ingredients:

• 32 oz of blended vegetable oil or olive oil
• 74 oz tallow fat (beef fat)
• 3 oz cocoa butter
• 14 oz lye
• 41 oz cold water (rainwater or distilled water)

To make this basic soap, follow the usual soap making instructions. Prepare your lye solution and then slowly pour it into oils while stirring. Then allow to cool and follow the other saponification instructions. You will get a soap that has creamy bubbles and rich lather, but is mild and soft. If cured, this soap will turn hard.

2. Clear soap: To kick start soap making, you will need the following:

• 1 cup of beef tallow
• 2/3 cup glycerin
• 1 cup of melted coconut oil or olive oil
• Adequate water (rainwater or distilled)
• lye flakes
• 1 cup isopropyl alcohol

Start with melting the tallow and coconut or olive oil. Cool to a lukewarm temperature and float the pan of oil in a warm bath. Then, prepare lye solution by stirring it into cold water. Once the lye solution is ready, pour it slowly into the melted tallow and allow it to emulsify. Add glycerin and then pour into mold greased with petroleum jelly. After about 3 or 4 days, grate the formed-soap into top of double boiler and begin heating soap over gently boiling water with some alcohol. If you find traces, remove from heat and pour into molds. You will get a clear soap that cleanses everything pretty well.

3. Pure Tallow Soap: This would bring a pure white tallow soap with rich and creamy lather. Your will need the following for this soap:

• 64 oz tallow
• 24 fluid oz distilled water
• 8.5 oz lye

Making a tallow soap is the easiest. You need to follow the basic soap making procedures and prepare your lye solution. Once that is done, heat your tallow and pour lye water into it slowly. When the soap starts to saponify, you can find trace formation. The end result: you will get a pure tallow soap with good cleansing properties.