# Lard smell help



## fun_4_me_now (Feb 20, 2010)

Hello everyone.

My lard/coconut/borax/washing soda laundry detergent smells mildly piggy. I am using great value brand from walmart. What can I do?

The (small test batch) recipe is:
50 grams coconut oil
150 grams lard
30 grams lye
66 grams water
Hot process, powder, and
add 1/2 cup borax and 1/2 cup washing soda.

It washes quite well.

My search of this forum tells me that maybe I overheated the lard when melting it. I used a double boiler. 

How hot is too hot? 

Can I deoderize it some other way? Will I have the same issue with beef tallow? I have a store bought tallow based laundry powder with tallow/coconut/borax  that doesn't smell at all, it is my benchmark.


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## carebear (Feb 20, 2010)

did your lard smell piggy - or at all - before you heated it?


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## fun_4_me_now (Feb 20, 2010)

Hello Carebear.

No, I don't think the raw lard smells (I have the other half # here), but I cannot tell for sure.  Even the aftersmell is just vague and only noticable when the clothes are wet and in the machine after. It is quite offputing though. I don't actually eat pigs.

Still, is there a way to make/use soap out of store bought lard and not have the clothes/machine smell like pig?

What would the solution be if the "fresh" lard  does have a mild piggy smell?

What can I do to avoid it if it is only there after DB hot process soaping?

Is there a simple way to deodorize lard? 

I love dogs, but don't want to attract their attention for the wrong reasons.


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## Maria (Feb 22, 2010)

When I make soap with lard, I cook it until the smell is gone. It seems to take longer to cook than my other soaps without lard but maybe it just seems like it because I really hate the smell of lard. 
If you smell it in your laundry mix, you may be using too much soap. It only takes a tiny bit of soap per load, the washing soda and borax do the cleaning.


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## fun_4_me_now (Feb 23, 2010)

Hi Maria

When you say cook, do you mean before soapmaking or during hot process?

Can I simply put  in the oven at 160F and cook off the smell of the powdered soap I have?

I am using between one and three tablespoons (15-45ml) of the above recipe per load in my front loader. Could that be too much? 

The pig smell got worse after the comforter dried. Tiger, my friends cat fell in love with my lard smelling coat and left it covered with her fur. 

If the borax and soda do all the cleaning, what is the soap in there for?


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## MorpheusPA (Feb 23, 2010)

fun_4_me_now said:
			
		

> The pig smell got worse after the comforter dried. Tiger, my friends cat fell in love with my lard smelling coat and left it covered with her fur.
> 
> If the borax and soda do all the cleaning, what is the soap in there for?



Well, at least Tiger's enjoying it.

I've had decent luck adding about an ounce of vinegar as a rinse and it gets rid of the smell.  However, I use shaved Dial at the moment to get rid of what I have left.  Next up, Ivory.  Still, it's a slightly soapy odor that the big name companies seem to cover with excessive fragrance.

Peppermint oil will cover or cancel almost any fragrance as well.  I tend to add 25 drops per quart to my mix as I like the fresh, minty scent.  But I also throw in a touch of ylang-ylang or lavender to break the sharpness of the mint.

The soap itself grabs onto both water-soluble dirt and oily dirt, removing it when rinsed out.  Really, the soap is the workhorse in the chemistry, the other two help out or perform other actions.

The soda's there more as a surfactant.  If you have extremely soft water, you technically don't need nearly as much of it.  It breaks some of the molecular bonds with the water, and the alkalinity (pH of 11 or so) also helps loosen grease (an acid) by starting to saponify it in the wash (no, you don't get soap as that requires the pure hydroxide, but you do get something water will be able to dissolve).  It can be kind of hard on clothes in larger amounts (it's used to pre-treat cloth for dyeing as it roughens it so the dye can stick).

Borax is another water softener and whitener that's safe for colors.  Since we're not using massive phosphates in our mixes, we need the whitening (phosphates glow in UV light, making whites look whiter).  Borax can be reduced or cut totally if you use greywater in your gardens or lawn.  Concentrations of boron (borax being 11% boron) above 1 ppm are toxic to some plants, amounts above 5 ppm are toxic to almost all plants.  It's not very toxic to animals, though--about the same as table salt.

(Yes, I do like chemistry.   )


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## fun_4_me_now (Feb 23, 2010)

Hi MorpheusPA.

Tiger did like it, but ignored ME!! I cannot say I was pleased.

I want to make clean smelling soap. I hope that is possible. If I cannot, I may as well use the store bought stuff. It uses tallow/coconut/borax and leaves my laundry so soft, fresh, and clean. I use tide too. I have a ton of it, it was on sale.

I know I can cover up the smell, but the goal is to not use things that aren't required. 

On one hand, I can tolerate all sorts of chemicals. On the other hand, removing them just because they are toxic to some degree (in food, air, body products, home environment, etc),  has improved my health dramaticly. I am in better shape at 36 than I was at 16. For me, it is not about riding the edge of tolerable, it is about keeping things as pure as possible and not creating a toxic workload in the first place.


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## mandolyn (Feb 23, 2010)

I would say that you might not be getting all the soap rinsed out of the clothes. Try using less with a vinegar rinse.

I didn't run your formula through soapcalc, but I'm assuming you have a 0% SF right?


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## fun_4_me_now (Feb 23, 2010)

Hi Mandolyn.

I am sure that I did get all the soap rinsed out. That is not the problem. 

I tried washing the comforter again with 15ml of powder and an extra rinse. Still piggy. Then I washed with tide HE powder and an extra rinse. Better, but I could still smell the lard on the comforter and inside the machine. I ran the machine with vinigar/tide/woolite(for bubbles) on the sanitary cycle and that may have removed the smell from the machine, but all I smell is the woolite now.

If I have to use vinegar to rinse off my stinky home made soap then there seems little point in using it in the first place.


I still hope I can make clean smelling lard soap, but I am getting mixed/vague messages.

If I have understood, rendering is a hot process and yet if I use too much heat melting the rendered fat I will bring out the smell, and if there is a smell I should cook it until the smell is gone. 

Does that mean cook (recook?) the lard before using it, or cook the soap until the smell of pig is gone?

Oh, and I am using the soapsheet spreadsheet and yes, 0%SF (the recipe is in the first post). Just ran it through soapcalc and it agrees. It didn't feel fatty/oily either. It seems to clean well, just smells like fat.


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## mandolyn (Feb 23, 2010)

This is an interesting dilemma. One I hope there's an answer for. I did a 100% 0%SF coconut oil laundry soap. I had the same problem. I could smell the coconut oil. It was fresh oil I'd used in regular soap, but my clothes all smelled rancid oily, so I just stopped using it.

I guess the over-scented commercial soapmakers are trying to cover up the same odor?!


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## fun_4_me_now (Feb 23, 2010)

I guess I could use olive instead of the lard. The cost isn't that much more. $2/lb VS $5/liter(about 2 lb?). I wonder if the coconut or olive smell will rise to the surface. I don't mind smelling like a cookie, but do mind smelling like a barnyard.



> I guess the over-scented commercial soapmakers are trying to cover up the same odor?!



I think that is to cover up whatever is left in the fabric and give consistent results. Even clean fabric has a scent.

Soapworks laundry powder (available locally) is tallow/coconut based and scent free. They are specific about the ingredients "PURE LAUNDRY SOAP POWDER – Sodium tallowate, Sodium Cocoate, Sodium Borate (Borax)". It  has no offensive smells that I have detected. If they can do it, we should be able to as well.

Is there such a thing as refined lard?


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## Maria (Feb 23, 2010)

I find it easier to mix borax and washing soda together and use about a 1/4 cup per load. One squirt of liquid soap is enough to work as a surfactant. I have used this for several years with success. 
We have an inspection company so the work clothes are pretty dirty. The white shirts stay white. The black and navy pants don't fade as quickly as they did when I used detergent. Once a month or so I add a scoop of sodium perborate to the whites.
I made some lavender sachets which I put in the dryer. When the scent fades, I put a few drops of lavender essential oil on the muslin bag to refresh it.
Lard is not my favorite thing to work with even if it is nice in soap once the smell is gone.


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## MorpheusPA (Feb 23, 2010)

fun_4_me_now said:
			
		

> Hi MorpheusPA.
> 
> Tiger did like it, but ignored ME!! I cannot say I was pleased.
> 
> ...



I'm tapping my teeth here and wondering if an oven process of 160 or so for 24 hours would help.  All my soaps smell of their base oils (not unpleasant when it's coconut, olive, palm, and castor), and I wouldn't want that in the wash.  For human use, I add fragrance or essential oils, but I get that some people don't like to do that.

Heating it to drive off the scent might work.  Neutralizing the scent by substituting baking soda for washing soda in the mix might do it, too--but expect less cleaning power from your detergent.  The baking soda isn't as good at getting grease out.


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## ilovedoxies (Feb 24, 2010)

I have a friend who uses laundry detergent w/lard soap religiously and loves it.  I tried it a few  times and I didn't much care for it.   I also use Walmart lard and have never experienced piggy odor.  

We have dogs and often results in some stinky laundry.  The home made detergent did not remove the odors.  Perhaps adding a considerable amount of baking soda to the mixture would help. 

Keep us posted


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## fun_4_me_now (Feb 24, 2010)

Ok, I got more advice that may or may not be helpful.

I called Majestic Mountain Sage because I always like to talk to a person and get the feel of a place before placing an order. I spoke to a tech support rep who advised me to make the lard/coconut soap cold process and 4% superfat. Then at light trace, add 2% borax and keep stiring over days until I get a flaky soap. That is where it gets sketchy because I may have missed some part of the instructions while thinking "won't SF make the smell worse?" 

As she explained it, I need to SF because oils and scales arn't perfect and what I don't want is lye left to age/burn my laundry. She also explained that the borax at the end will "absorb" the remaining oil. It is worth a try I suppose. Maybe I should wait a couple of weeks and send a tech support email so I can get actual written instructions.

MorpheusPA:
I am wondering the same. I should make a batch, then split it up into a cold process bar, a dbhp bar and a dbhp with extended oven time after. The problem is that I then have to test each in the actual wash because the soap itself doesn't seem to smell piggy (enough to notice). Arg. In addition, do I use bare minimum heat in melting the fats, or try to cook the smell out before I add the lye?

Punching it into soapcalc, I noticed that olive and lard have similarities in their profile. Maybe I should just give up on the lard altogether, but I don't want it to beat me.

Ilovedoxies:
If you want to get the dog smell out try Pink Solution. It worked wonders for me when my dog was still around. It's the only thing I ever used that actually took the dog smell off the dog too!! Her coat and skin loved it. If I knew more about it, I would continue to use it. It's great on laundry too, but I don't really know what is in it.


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## ilovedoxies (Feb 24, 2010)

Pink Solution.. Looks interesting I'll check it out, thanks!


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## xyxoxy (Feb 24, 2010)

I'm not sure if it is the same recipe but I use this...
http://soapmakingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5223
recipe from PDXMike and it works great. It's cheap and a batch lasts me a long time.

I have never noticed a piggy smell before or after the wash nor when the lard is melted when I make it. I do add a small amount of a clean smelling FO (not much at all). I do also use a vinegar rinse in almost every load... but that is for keeping the soap scum buildup away and as a fabric softner... not for the smell. You don't notice the vinegar smell after the wash... only the FO.


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## MorpheusPA (Feb 25, 2010)

fun_4_me_now said:
			
		

> As she explained it, I need to SF because oils and scales arn't perfect and what I don't want is lye left to age/burn my laundry. She also explained that the borax at the end will "absorb" the remaining oil. It is worth a try I suppose. Maybe I should wait a couple of weeks and send a tech support email so I can get actual written instructions.



That sounds reasonable, but the sap values of oils are usually set high, aren't they?  Basically they're building in a minor superfat even if things aren't perfect.

I just made a high coconut (70%, with 30% palm) by request for pot cleansing.  I superfatted at 0.5%, and 24 hours in, there's no zap.  My scale's accurate to 1 gram, or about 0.2% per pound, so the excess was just to make completely sure.

That stuff is already hard as a rock, too.  Note to self:  don't bother water discounting that.

Er...um...OH!  (trotting down to laundry room)

I just realized that I threw that towel I soaped with into the washer today with some really nasty cloths and a scarf I haven't washed in rather too long.  I used my base detergent mix, which does tend to leave scent behind as it's not quite strong enough.  The towel had plenty of the yellow/blue soap mix on it as the stuff was going to heavy trace, I was moving fast, and it spilled a bit. 

Absolutely nothing has ANY scent remaining except that of clean clothes.  Nada.  Zilch.  The only variable that differs is the soap, and the fact that I did this on ice-cold water on gentle on a hyper-short cycle (Mom made me that scarf and it's velour).  If anything, I expected to have to wash that stuff a second time.

Anybody care to chime in on coconut's cleansing power?



			
				fun_4_me_now said:
			
		

> MorpheusPA:
> I am wondering the same. I should make a batch, then split it up into a cold process bar, a dbhp bar and a dbhp with extended oven time after. The problem is that I then have to test each in the actual wash because the soap itself doesn't seem to smell piggy (enough to notice). Arg. In addition, do I use bare minimum heat in melting the fats, or try to cook the smell out before I add the lye?
> 
> Punching it into soapcalc, I noticed that olive and lard have similarities in their profile. Maybe I should just give up on the lard altogether, but I don't want it to beat me.



I know, I hate being beaten by a recipe.  Palm oil is actually the vegetable world's answer to lard--olive is merely close.  Palm is almost spot-on (soapcalc having some really funky numbers for stuff sometimes and I'm starting to use my own experience instead of their numbers, except as a general guide...and for lye calculations, where I don't play games ever).  

I don't have any experience here, so I may be over-ruled.  If so, listen to them, not me.  My chemistry intuition says that heating the fats overmuch is going to start to smell like bacon grease (not that bad, of course, but the transformation from one to the other is an oxidation process).

That intuition also wonders how well-rendered the lard was.  

Dividing it into four tests might be better...including one with CP and not allowing a gel phase.  Drop the mold directly in the fridge, or surround it with cool water to suck out the heat.

You can probably test the soap by rubbing some onto a cloth and dropping that into a pot of hot water.  Sniff.  The scent, if any, should be pretty obvious.

Alternately, try a coconut/palm one and see if the scent is more to your liking.  [/i]


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## fun_4_me_now (Feb 27, 2010)

Good call MorpheusPA.

I made another batch. I didn't want to give up till the lard is all gone. 1lb to go. 

Can anyone save me by suggesting something (fun) to do with a pound of lard and some time to kill? I really don't want to soap it. 

At heavy trace there was no pig smell, I almost waited too long. I poured one bar that went into a chilled water bath, one that got wrapped in a towel, and DBHP'd the rest. The, when it was ready, I poured one bar that I just let cool and one that went in the oven.

All except the cold water bar smell of pig now. Maybe the heat is just allowing me to smell it and the cold one smells too. Maybe the cold one is fine.

This time I will age them all for a month or more and see if I get the stinky piggies in my machine then.

In the mean time, I will try my hand at olive/coconut laundry powder. 

I wonder if the olive will soften my cotton like it does my hair. 

Remind me again why we all try use the cheapest stuff we can on our expensive clothes? 

I sure didn't save anything messing with the lard.


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## ilovedoxies (Feb 27, 2010)

Do you not want to soap w/it because you're put off by the smell?  Why don't you use some FO or EO and make some soap to use in the shower?  I use it quite a bit... it's cleared up my face.


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## fun_4_me_now (Feb 27, 2010)

ilovedoxies said:
			
		

> Do you not want to soap w/it because you're put off by the smell?  Why don't you use some FO or EO and make some soap to use in the shower?  I use it quite a bit... it's cleared up my face.



Because then I will smell like a pig in a flower shop. Its like the clean  dog smell, nice and orange but still wet dog. Aside from that I want to use my best soap in the shower.

I think it is a pig thing for me. I rarely eat it either. I don't mind the tallow or the emu smell. Hate that chicken fat smell though.

I love lamb. Maybe I should see if I can get some organic lamb fat to render with my next half.


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## ilovedoxies (Mar 5, 2010)

I used a really cheap lard once it was soft in the bucket when I opened it.  
The soap started to smell piggy after a curing for a couple months.

I tried a different more expensive brand and it was much better.  I stick w/Armour brand now and it doesn't smell and it is much more solid out of the bucket, makes a better soap, too.  If you use fo's and eo's you'll smell them instead of the oils.   I make whipped soap and use lard as a main ingredient, once it's completed it ends up smelling like whatever FO I use. It's quite nice actually.  

Lard does make a good soap, I wonder if you just got a bad batch.  Perhaps it sat around in the store for a long time and was going rancid.  

Maybe it's just one of those smells that you're super sensitive to.  I hate the smell of dry erase markers and hand sanitizer and want to puke every time I use either one, lol! 

Oh well, there are plenty of other oils out there for you to make great soap with


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