Why tallow

Most lotion is mostly water

You rub it in, the water evaporates, and an hour later your hands feel the way they did before. Tallow is solid fat. There’s nothing in it to evaporate. It goes on thin, warms up on contact, and stays where you put it.

Water is also what grows bacteria in a jar, which is why water-based lotion needs a preservative system to stay safe on a shelf. Take the water out and that whole problem goes with it. That’s most of the reason our list runs six lines instead of twenty.

Nothing is farmed to make it

Tallow comes off cattle already raised for meat. It’s the part that used to get thrown out. No additional land, no additional animal, no crop grown specifically to end up in a tin.

It’s also the reason this costs twelve dollars instead of twenty. The base ingredient is a byproduct, and we didn’t build a price around making that sound exotic.

Essential oils, named

“Fragrance” on an ingredient list is a legal catch-all. It can stand in for dozens of compounds nobody has to disclose. We could have used it, and most brands do.

Instead both oils are printed by their botanical names, so you can look them up.

Cedar runs dominant because orange fades first. We’d rather the scent last than open loud.

It’s built for a hot car

A third of this bar is beeswax, which is a lot more than most solid lotions carry. That was a deliberate correction after the first batch came out too soft to use, and it’s why this one holds up in a glovebox in August.

It still isn’t a rock. It’s fat and wax, and enough heat will soften anything. If it does go soft, put the lid on and let it set back up at room temperature. Nothing’s wrong with it, it just won’t be as pretty.

Two other things worth knowing before you buy: it’s animal fat with beeswax in it, so it’s neither vegan nor vegetarian, and because it’s a hard bar it takes a few seconds of rubbing to get going in the cold.