Goat Milk vs. Tallow Soap: What's the Difference?
Walk any faire and you'll see soap everywhere. But not all soap is made the same way, or from the same stuff. Here's what goat milk and tallow actually are, and how they're different.
How handmade soap works
All real soap comes from the same basic reaction: fats or oils mixed with lye. The lye and fat react and turn into soap. That's called saponification. When it's done right, there's no lye left in the finished bar. What changes from soap to soap is which fats and liquids you use, and that changes everything about how the bar feels.
Goat milk soap
Goat milk soap uses goat milk in place of some or all of the water. Our goat milk bars are made with goat milk, coconut oil, and olive oil, plus whatever the scent calls for.
- Lather: creamy and soft, with a gentle, rich feel.
- Feel: moisturizing rather than stripping. Goat milk contains natural fats and lactic acid, which give the bar a smooth, gentle feel.
- Color: the milk sugars warm the bar to a light cream or tan, which is why our goat milk soap is never stark white.
Tallow soap
Tallow is rendered beef fat. It's one of the oldest soap-making ingredients there is, used long before vegetable oils were easy to come by.
- Hardness: tallow makes a notably hard bar, so it lasts a long time in the shower.
- Lather: dense, creamy, and stable.
- Feel: conditioning and substantial. People who try a good tallow bar usually notice right away that it feels different.
Our tallow bars are Thor's Essence: Myk (pine tar in tallow) and Auðumbla's Bounty (plain, unscented tallow).
Cold process vs. hot process
That's the other thing you'll see on our labels.
- Cold process: the soap is mixed, poured into molds, and left to cure for weeks. It makes smooth bars with clean lines, swirls, and color. Most of our soap is cold process.
- Hot process: the soap is cooked in the pot until the reaction finishes, then packed into the mold. It makes a more rustic, textured bar that's ready sooner. Thor's Essence: Forge Fire and Freyr's Harvest Hot Process are made this way.
Which should you pick?
If you want a gentle, creamy bar in a huge range of scents, start with goat milk. If you want something hard, long-lasting, and old-school, try tallow. If you can't decide, grab one of each. Our buy 2, get 1 free soap deal makes that easy.
We don't make medical claims about our soap. It cleans, it smells good, and it's made by hand in small batches in East Tennessee.