These all-natural silky body butter bars feature beef tallow alongside a blend of some other skincare favourites. You can pour this formulation into a push-up tube or use a mould to create free-standing bars.

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The ingredients

Beef tallow

The star ingredient in this formulation is beef tallow; a solid creamy fat rendered from the fat of cows. I highly recommend using grass fed tallow that’s been rendered enough times to remove the beefy smell. If your tallow smells like meat, your finished body butter bars will, too.

I’ve written a ginormous post all about making skincare with tallow, including digging into many of the claims made about its skincare benefits. Please read that if you want to learn more.

Sunflower oil

Sunflower oil helps balance the formula’s fatty acid profile. Beef tallow naturally contains high amounts of stearic (13–35%), palmitic (26–30%), and oleic acids (34–47%)—but it’s much lower in linoleic acid (~3%), a fatty acid that’s especially beneficial for skin barrier health.

That’s where sunflower oil comes in! It is rich in linoleic acid (~55%), helping improve the fatty acid blend of these body butter bars. To ensure you’re getting that linoleic acid boost, use regular sunflower oil rather than the high oleic acid version that’s often sold for soap making.

If you want to swap out the sunflower oil, safflower oil or grapeseed oil would be my top choices.

Beeswax

Since we’re making a bar, we need a potent thickener and hardener, and that’s where beeswax comes in! You can use refined or unrefined beeswax.

Coconut oil

High concentrations of beeswax can make formulations a bit draggy on the skin, so I’ve included some slippy coconut oil to ensure these body butter bars glide across the skin. You can use refined or virgin coconut oil.

Vitamin E

Vitamin E (a potent antioxidant) helps extend the shelf life of the formulation by delaying rancidicity, a.k.a. oxidization.

Peppermint essential oil

For a fresh minty pop (and to help mask any meaty whiffs from the tallow), I’ve included some peppermint essential oil. This doesn’t completely erase the beefy scent with the tallow I’ve used, but it helps disguise and distract from it. You can substitute another essential oil or fragrance oil if you prefer, just ensure it’s safe at 1% in IFRA category 5A products. If your tallow has a noticeably meaty smell recommend choosing a fairly assertive essential oil that won’t clash too badly with the smell of meat.

If you would like to use these body butter bars on your face, that would make this formulation an IFRA category 5B product. I’d recommend using less essential oil, and I probably wouldn’t choose refreshing, chilly peppermint.

Tube or bar?

For cleanliness and ease of application, I definitely prefer packaging body butter bars in a push-up tube. If you do decide to make free-standing bars, make sure you’ve got some sort of tin or jar on hand that you can store the finished bar in so it doesn’t collect lint and hair.

Relevant links & further reading

• Tallow and DIY skincare: Everything you need to know
• Tallow (beef) in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
• Sunflower Oil in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
• Beeswax in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
• Coconut Oil in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
• Tocopherol (Vitamin E) in the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia
• Troubleshooting anhydrous formulations:
  • Why is my body butter grainy?
  • Why is my body butter greasy?
  • Why is my body butter grainy?
• How long will ______ last? What is its shelf life? in the Humblebee & Me FAQ
• More body butter bar formulations:
  • Cocoa Coconut Vegan Body Butter Bars
  • White Chocolate Peppermint Body Butter Bars
  • Sugar Plum Body Butter Bars
  • Green & Gold Body Butter Bars
• More tallow formulations:
  • Creamy Tallow Body Butter
  • Light Tallow Hand Lotion
  • Rustic Clay Soap
  • Almond Oat Soap
  • Argan Rose Soap
  • Lavender Aloe Soap

Tallow Body Butter Bars

Heated phase
25.8g | 43% beef tallow
12g | 20% sunflower seed oil (USA / Canada / UK / NZ)
12g | 20% beeswax (USA / Canada)
9g | 15% traditional virgin coconut oil (USA / Canada)

Cool down phase
0.6g | 1% Vitamin E MT-50 (USA / Canada)
0.6g | 1% peppermint essential oil (USA / Canada)

Prepare a water bath by bringing about 3cm/1″ of water to a bare simmer over low to medium-low heat in a small saucepan.

Weigh the heated phase ingredients into a small heat-resistant glass measuring cup. Place the measuring cup in your prepared water bath to melt everything through.

After about 20–30 minutes everything should be completely melted through. Remove the water bath from the heat, remove the measuring cup from the water bath, and dry it off with a dishtowel. Set the measuring cup on a towel or hot pad to insulate it from the counter and stir the mixture with a flexible silicone spatula to combine everything.

Quickly add the cool down phase, stir to incorporate, and pour the product into a push up tube or mould. Leave it on the counter to set up. I used a 2oz paperboard tube from YellowBee for the tube version and a silicone honeycomb mold (USA / Canada) for the free standing bars. A 1/4 cup measuring cup makes a great, accessible mould for body butter bars.

Use as you’d use any body butter. Enjoy!

Shelf Life & Storage

Because this product does not contain any water, it does not require a broad-spectrum preservative (broad spectrum preservatives ward off microbial growth, and microbes require water to live—no water, no microbes!). Kept reasonably cool and dry, it should last at least a year before any of the oils go rancid. If you notice it starts to smell like old nuts or crayons, that’s a sign that the oils have begun to oxidize; chuck it out and make a fresh batch if that happens.

Substitutions

As always, be aware that making substitutions will change the final product. While these swaps won’t break the formulation, you will get a different final product than I did.

• As I’ve provided this formulation in percentages as well as grams you can easily calculate it to any size using a simple spreadsheet as I’ve explained in this post. As written in grams, this formulation will make 60g (roughly 2 oz).
• To learn more about the ingredients used in this formulation, including why they’re included and what you can substitute them with, please visit the Humblebee & Me Encyclopedia. It doesn’t have everything in it yet, but there’s lots of good information there! If I have not given a specific substitution suggestion in this list please look up the ingredient in the encyclopedia before asking.
• You can use a soft plant based butter like shea, mango, or murumuru instead of the tallow (though this does rather defeat the point of making a tallow body butter bar!). This swap will change the consistency of the final product.
• You can substitute another lightweight oil, linoleic-acid rich oil like safflower or grapeseed instead of sunflower seed oil.
• Swapping the beeswax for a different wax (like candelilla or sunflower) will impact the hardness and skin feel of the finished bar, likely requiring re-development work.
• Babassu oil will work instead of coconut oil.
• If you’d like to use a different essential oil, please read this.

Troubleshooting

It’s too soft or too hard

If the bar is far too soft, swap 1–5% of the sunflower oil for more beeswax. If it’s only a tiny bit too soft, just use more tallow and less sunflower oil.

If the bar is too hard, use more sunflower oil or tallow and less beeswax.