Bacon fat soap recipe

by Angie
(California)

I am trying to make soap with bacon fat. I know how to clean the fat to make it as pure as possible. I have about 11.6 oz of bacon fat. I am not sure if that is even enough to make soap with.


I just have the slightest problem: I have no idea exactly how much lye to use. Any help is appreciated :))

Also, thank goodness for this website. So glad I stumbled upon it!!

Answer:

Your first step is to use a lye calculator to figure out the amount of lye needed. I love using SoapCalc. When you get to the site, it has instructional information located at the top of the page. Click the links and read them as well as the numbers located in each section. The guide you through the process.

The oil you need for calculating how much lye is needed for bacon fat is listed under the name 'lard, pig tallow'.

I would add some olive oil and coconut oil to your recipe as well. You might want to increase the size of your recipe a little, at least to 16 ounces. I find 32 ounces is a nice amount of soap to work with and produces about 10 four ounce bars.

Check out my page on Soap Making Oils and scroll down to the heading 'Formulating a Recipe' to read about what qualities each oil contribute to a soap and how to combine them to create a great recipe.

I think if I was to create a recipe to use up your bacon fat, I would do something like the following. This will use 32 ounces of total oil. I've listed the quantities in percentages, ounces and grams so you can play around with the numbers in SoapCalc using your preferred measurement unit.

Water - 9.60 oz, 272.16 grams
Lye - NaOH - 4.47 oz, 126.71 grams

Lard, Pig Tallow Manteca - 35%, 11.20 oz, 317.51 grams
Olive Oil - 45%, 14.40 oz, 408.23 grams
Coconut Oil - 76 deg - 20%, 6.40 oz, 181.44 grams

Good luck,
Cathy

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