Tallow soaps and background scent

DamianJ

Forum GOD!
I've been working my way through a couple of samples recently and have noticed that the background tallow scent seems to not really be covered up by the main scent.

Stirling Arkadia and Tallow & Steel Boreal seem to have it. The Stirling wasn't as bad though. I've had a couple of P&B soaps and the main scent covered the background tallow easily.

Is this common with tallow soaps? Or is it more noticeable with samples?
 
I think it's a some do some don't sort of thing, I notice it with Ingram's quite strongly for example whereas with Tabac I can't smell anything but the scent for at least five minutes. Whether it varies across batches of the same soap ...?
 
I have used a lot of tallow soaps and the only ones I ever found to have a weird background scent were earlier versions of Stirling . A few complained about it to Stirling and they remedied it as it was something to do with their tallow supplier.
I have had two Stirling soaps recently and they were both excellent..in terms of scent and performance. No weird smells at all.

Can't speak for Tallow and Steel as I have never used them. Hope this helps..
 

halvor

a most elusive fish
My soap making skills are probably below beginners, so I couldnt' say what goes on when this happens. But +1 on Stirling carrying a faint tallow note in the background. Scots Pine Sheep bought a good while back the worst offender in this regard. On the other hand all Stirling soaps perform wonderfully, and said worst offender is the best of the bunch. I haven't tried recent iterations, all mine are/were from 2015 or 2016.

I also have an old Neroli soap from OSP which largely due to zip strength of the neroli, smells very vaguely of tallow. Haven't noticed it with any other makes of soap.
 

DamianJ

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Thanks for the input gents. Not knocking the performance of the 2 samples, I was just curious whether it's the lack of scent strength that let me notice it.
 

pimple8

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So far I have encountered the tallow scent a couple of times. Is it a bad batch, different kinds of tallow, whatever, i don't know.

Regarding Stirling I have Atm Ozark, Glastonbury, Arkadia, Mountain Man, Stirling Spice, Sharp Dressed Man & Executive Man.
Of all of them, only my Executive Man smells kinda odd. Other smell wonderful.
The "aventus" smell in my ExecMan is not so dominant and is mixed with something playdoh-like.
I came across a couple of similiar experiences on the forums, and i concluded that Executive Man and Sharp Dressed Man are most likely for that to happen cause they are very mild scentwise.
Also, since Executive Man is their bestseller i think this is something normal. don't think the bestseller would be aventus/tallow scent so my guess is lower quality tallow batch or smth like that.


Arkadia smells wonderful to me, it's strong and no tallow scent anywhere in my case.
I think I read somewhere something like airing the soap could help, try living the lid off for a day or two, maybe it will go away and you'll feel the beauty of the Arkadia :)
 

Petronius

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I exactly know what is OP talking about. Have for example Boreal and have much more worse soaps from this point of view. But on the other hand have 3 tallow based Eufros soaps and they are really great from fragrance point of view. It means, depends on producer and it is not case samples only.
 

DamianJ

Forum GOD!
So far I have encountered the tallow scent a couple of times. Is it a bad batch, different kinds of tallow, whatever, i don't know.

Regarding Stirling I have Atm Ozark, Glastonbury, Arkadia, Mountain Man, Stirling Spice, Sharp Dressed Man & Executive Man.
Of all of them, only my Executive Man smells kinda odd. Other smell wonderful.
The "aventus" smell in my ExecMan is not so dominant and is mixed with something playdoh-like.
I came across a couple of similiar experiences on the forums, and i concluded that Executive Man and Sharp Dressed Man are most likely for that to happen cause they are very mild scentwise.
Also, since Executive Man is their bestseller i think this is something normal. don't think the bestseller would be aventus/tallow scent so my guess is lower quality tallow batch or smth like that.


Arkadia smells wonderful to me, it's strong and no tallow scent anywhere in my case.
I think I read somewhere something like airing the soap could help, try living the lid off for a day or two, maybe it will go away and you'll feel the beauty of the Arkadia :)
I've just got a small sample of Arkadia and like the scent apart from the background. Not got a full tub so might not last long enough to air it. Nice scent though.
 

Matsilainen

Forum GOD!
Some soaps will just have a bit of that tallow scent, unfortunately. In my experience, they are few and far between, thankfully. Some of the Grooming Dept soaps I have smelled have a not-so-great scent lurking in the background. I recently also bought a Stirling Soap Company soap [the Dirty South Shavers 2017 (Fierce)] that has a bit of the tallow going on in the background. Usually, the scent seems to vanish when these soaps are lathered.

I believe that years ago, Stirling not only changed their supplier, but the whole cooking process, to try to mitigate this issue. I’ve never encountered a soap where the scent would have been strong enough to bother me. Usually it is mostly gone after airing out the jar for a minute or two.

I also have an old Neroli soap from OSP which largely due to zip strength of the neroli, smells very vaguely of tallow. Haven't noticed it with any other makes of soap.
This was interesting, as I have both a sample and a full-size of OSP’s Neroli, and the neroli scent is so strong that I can’t detect anything else. Sometimes I do wonder how much variation there perhaps is between one batch and the next of all the small-batch artisan soaps that are being produced today…
 
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