Why Does Tallow Balm Go Hard in Winter?

Why does my tallow balm go hard in winter?

Tallow balm is made of fats and wax with no water, so its texture tracks the temperature of the room it is in. In a cold bathroom in July it goes firm, like butter from the fridge. In a hot room in February it goes soft. On your skin it turns to oil either way, because skin is warmer than any room. This is not a fault, and it is not the jar going off. It is what a product with nothing artificial holding its texture does.

Why the texture changes

A conventional moisturiser feels the same in every season because it is an emulsion. Water and oil are held together by an emulsifier, thickened with a gelling agent, and the result is a cream that is engineered to be the same consistency from the fridge to the glovebox. That takes five or six ingredients whose only job is texture, plus a preservative because there is water in it.

A tallow balm has none of that. It is tallow, beeswax and olive oil. Each of those has its own melting point, and the blend behaves like any natural fat: solid when cold, soft when warm, liquid when hot. Beeswax holds it firm. Olive oil keeps it from setting rock-hard. Tallow sits in the middle. We tune the ratio of beeswax to olive oil for Australian conditions, and we have adjusted it between batches when customers told us a run was too firm, but there is no ratio that makes a natural fat blend behave like an emulsion. If there were, it would need the emulsion's ingredient list.

A rough guide to what you will see

• Cold room (unheated bathroom, winter mornings): firm. A fingertip will not sink in. Scrape it rather than scoop it.
• Normal room temperature: a firm-set balm that gives under a fingertip and spreads easily once on skin.
• Hot room, summer, or a warm car: soft, sometimes very soft. May look slightly glossy or pool at the edges. Still fine.
• On skin: oil, within a few seconds, at any time of year.

We deliberately do not quote temperatures here, because the exact point at which it softens shifts a little with the olive-oil ratio and that is something we still fine-tune. The pattern is the useful part.

How to use it when it is hard

Do not dig a chunk out with a fingertip. A chunk is far more than you need and it is where the greasy-feel complaint comes from. Instead:

• Drag a fingernail, or the back of a teaspoon, across the surface to take a thin scrape.
• Hold it between your fingertips for three or four seconds. Skin heat melts it to a clear oil.
• Press it into skin, ideally skin that is still slightly damp from washing.

If the whole jar is very firm and you want it softer, hold it in your hands for a minute, stand it in a warm room for ten minutes, or sit the closed jar in a bowl of warm tap water. Do not microwave it and do not put it in the oven. It does not need to be liquid to use, only to be scrapable.

If it arrives melted, or looks grainy

Australia Post vans get hot in summer, and a jar can arrive soft or fully melted. Leave it upright at room temperature, or in the fridge for an hour if you are in a hurry, and it will set again. Nothing has happened to it. There is no water to separate out and no emulsion to break.

Sometimes a jar that has melted and re-set comes back with a slightly grainy or speckled texture, or a faint bloom on the surface. That is the different fats re-crystallising at different speeds as they cool, the same thing you see on chocolate that has been left in a warm car. It is cosmetic. It disappears the moment the balm warms on your fingers and the product works exactly the same. If it bothers you, standing the closed jar in a bowl of hot tap water until it is fully liquid, then putting it straight into the fridge to set quickly, will usually bring back the smooth surface.

Storing it

A cupboard, a drawer or a shelf out of direct sun is all it needs. Keep it out of the car and off a sunny windowsill. The fridge is fine but unnecessary, and it will make the balm very firm, so you will be scraping.

Keep the lid on and use dry fingers or a small spatula. The jar has no preservative because it has no water; keeping water out of it is the one thing you do to keep it that way.

Why we do not fix it with additives

We could make a balm that stayed the same consistency year-round. It would need an emulsifier, some water, a thickener and a preservative, and at that point it would be a cream with tallow in it rather than a tallow balm. The whole reason people come to a three-ingredient product is that it has three ingredients. A jar that goes firm in winter is the honest side of that trade, and once you know to scrape rather than scoop, it stops being a problem.

AusTallow is a cosmetic moisturiser. It is not a therapeutic good and it is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or skin condition. Information on this page is general in nature. If you have a diagnosed skin condition, speak to your GP or dermatologist.