Tallow Based List

I had my first experience with a tallow based soap last night (Arko stick) and it was excellent. Great lather, and my face felt very nice post shave.
Too bad it doesn't come in other scents.

So, I started searching the forums for other tallow based soaps and came up with the following:

• DR Harris
• MWF
• Tabac
• Erasmic Stick
• Penhaligon's
• Palmolive Classic Stick
• Arko Stick
• Speick Stick
  [*]AOS
  [*]Valobra Stick
  [*]Cella
  [*]Williams

Help me out, which ones did I miss? Also, I'm assuming tallow based creams will perform similarly? Feel free to throw some of those in there too. Thanks in advance.

Valobra Shave Stick

I believe that AOS soaps are tallow based.

Chris

Williams Mug Soap.

Mitchell's Wool Fat soap is tallow based also.

I make soap as a hobby and I render my own tallow - tallow is made from suet, the fat surrounding the beef kidney, and it's the best kind of fat there is. When there used to be neighborhood butchers you could get suet from them but now most supermarket butchers get their meat cryovac'd from the factory processing plants so they don't have it. Luckily I have a Halal butcher nearby who keeps me stocked and I give him soap in return.

Our society is so PC these days people freak out about anything that smacks of animal "exploitation", but soap has been made with tallow and lard for hundreds of years for a reason - they make extremely mild, long-lasting soaps, and by and if they weren't used for soap or other products, they'd just go to waste. The PC soapmaking crowd prefers palm oil to tallow, but there's a lot of deforestation going on just to produce and harvest the palm - so I guess you can't win.

Didn't mean to get on a soapbox

Pretty much any vintage soap is tallow based. Until fairly recently, most of the classic English makers used tallow. I believe Penhaligon's and Harris are the holdouts. The rest have gone veggie.

Cella soap

Is floris still tallow based? It perfoms like no other soap I've used.

Also, the valobra shave stick is

The only soap I have that makes my skin feel as good as when I use tobs avocado or trumpers coconut.

Is floris still tallow based? It perfoms like no other soap I've used.

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Floris too have switched from tallow to veggie based. However, it still is an excellent soap.

murchmb said:

Pretty much any vintage soap is tallow based.

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Don't tell this to anyone around the Mediterranean, e.g., in Provence...

Best - MM

I read on another forum that Valobra makes the AOS soaps.

Has anyone here heard the same?

I've heard the same, likely from the same place, so I can't really confirm.

What I can say, though, is that if its true, I think the value of AOS becomes much closer for me to what it actually costs. For a long time, I've loved the Valobra shaving sticks, and wondered why the soap wasn't available in a more traditional form. Super stuff.

I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure that Colleen's soaps are Tallow.

-Mo

Tallow rocks. I wish they'd use it to make french fries again.

moses said:

I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure that Colleen's soaps are Tallow.

-Mo

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Tallow or not, our artisans can't triple mill a soap. It would be quite a different beast.

How abour De vergulde Hand and the La Toja?

ScottS said:

Tallow or not, our artisans can't triple mill a soap. It would be quite a different beast.

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Excellent point. It definitely is not the same thing as a hard milled soap, which most of the above are. I just figured it deserved a mention since it is (I think) tallow, and supposedly pretty excellent to boot.

-Mo

elveeskee said:

How abour De vergulde Hand and the La Toja?

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Vergulde Hand is veggie based.

Palmolive sticks don't contain tallow, at least not any more. I'd prefer soaps to be tallow based- it works a treat, lasts longer than castile, it's cheap because its a (natural) waste product, and it doesn't deforest the last habitats of wild pandas, which palm oil does. May as well be panda fat as palm oil.

William's Mug Soap!