Beef Tallow per Kg/lb

[nmacholl]

Hey there!

First time soap maker. Just wondering how much tallow I can expect to render from a pound/kilogram of beef fat. An estimate is all I need. I'm planning on making about 1.5kg of soap on my first batch. About half of the oil I'll be using is beef tallow.

Thanks!

 

[Soapmaker Man]

I used to render all the time. If I remember correctally, and since I used the boiling method of rendering, I would get about 25 to 30% tallow from the beef fat. Welcome to the forum, also! :wink:

Paul

 

[gsferg]

I rendered 17 pounds of pretty clean beef suet recently and got 14+ pounds of tallow. That's about 80%. I'd expect you'd get less, maybe a lot less, from beef fat proper depending on how you rendered it.

 

[nmacholl]

So I rendered the fat I bought from the grocery store and am sad to say I'm disappointed with the amount of tallow I recovered. I bought 5 pounds of fat from the Jewel and came out with maybe a pound of tallow.

The fat came in long strips which I cut into small cubes and put in a giant pot. I then added enough water till the pieces started to float. I boiled this for about 90 minutes and then strained it into a container and put it in the refrigerator.

Am I doing something wrong? The only thing I can think of is if perhaps the fat I bought was more meaty than it should have been. My little cubes I cut up never sank to the bottom so does that mean that not all the fat was liquefied?

Should I have covered the pot?

Thanks in advance.