I’m so excited to share this tallow lip balm recipe. It goes on absolutely beautifully, includes raw honey, and can be customized with different essential oils.
Tallow lip balm recipe with honey
This time of year, the dry winter weather in Colorado can be really hard on skin, and lips often suffer the worst. Nothing moisturizes skin better than tallow, and that’s the main ingredient in this lip balm. It’s my favorite lip balm ever.
If you’ve spent time on my blog, you know how much I love grass fed tallow. There’s nothing else like it when it comes to moisturizing, healing, and soothing skin. I talk more about the benefits of tallow for skin here, and how to render tallow using the easy, crockpot method here.
Honey is another one of my favorite ingredients for skincare. It’s moisturizing, balancing and healing. I love it in this lip balm as well, because it gives a nice texture and a little yummy flavor! I talk about the benefits of honey on skin here.
I’ve made different plant based oil and beeswax lip balm recipes in the past. They work fairly well for moisturizing, but they do leave an oily feel. And it always seemed like my hair was getting stuck in my lip balm!
With this tallow lip balm recipe, I was so happy to find out that the application was totally different. It goes on with a lovely, matte finish, and isn’t sticky! No more hair getting stuck in my lip balm. Yay!
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Choosing an essential oil for this tallow lip balm recipe
One of the most fun things about making lip balm is trying different essential oils. Some essential oils work better than others in lip balm. If you’re using a citrus essential oil, it’s important to use a steam distilled essential oil, to avoid photosensitivity.
This just means that the regular citrus essential oils can react with the sun’s rays and burn skin, but the steam distilled ones are safe to use. Read more about essential oils and photosensitivity here.
I have experimented with quite a few different essential oils in lip balms, and some of my favorites are lime, grapefruit, vanilla, peppermint, and cinnamon. It’s worth mentioning that this lip balm is also quite lovely left unscented as well.
Why make your own lip balm?
It’s true… you can pick up lip balms at almost any store you step foot in. They’re everywhere! A lot of them even claim to be natural and organic. So why bother making it yourself? I think there are many reasons. For one, those “natural” lip balm companies found in bigger stores are often owned by huge corporations that might not really have your health and the good of the earth in mind.
These brands often began as small, handcrafted goods shops, but were bought out by the larger organizations. After the switch, the ingredient lists are often changed to be less than ideal. So that’s something to think about when you’re tempted to pick up a lip balm with a bee logo at your local drugstore.
If you make your own lip balm, you’re in total control over all of the materials. You can decide to use only the highest quality ingredients. And, it’s always much more fun to use something you made yourself! It can be completely personalized, just the way you like it.
For me, another big reason to make lip balm yourself is that it’s hard to find a grass fed tallow and honey lip balm commercially available. To get lip balm mad with these wonderful but somewhat non-typical ingredients, you pretty much have to either make it yourself, or source a rare shop that makes this type of lip balm.
Give the gift of happy lips
Another great thing about making your own tallow and honey lip balms is that you can give them away as very unique gifts. Keep this in mind for the upcoming holiday gifting seasons, birthdays, Mother’s Day, and anytime you want to give someone a special and useful gift.
It’s also really fun to design and print labels to go on the tins. Using your own labels gives them a fun, special look, especially when you’re giving them away.
A note about tallow
I’ve found that rendered, grass fed tallow can vary in hardness. Some is quite stiff at room temperature, while some is soft like butter. If you’re using tallow that is very stiff, I would recommend leaving out the beeswax. If your tallow is softer at room temperature, adding the beeswax will improve the consistency of the lip balm.
How to make tallow lip balm instructions
Ingredients:
- 5 tbsp grass fed tallow
- 1 tbsp beeswax (if tallow is softer at room temperature)
- 2 tbsp raw, unfiltered honey
- 15 – 30 drops essential oils
Directions:
- Melt tallow until it is liquid.
- Measure tallow and beeswax and put into a heat safe container.
- Create a double boiler by putting the container of tallow and beeswax into a pot of water.
- Gently heat the water to a low simmer.
- Allow beeswax to melt and become completely combined with the tallow.
- Remove tallow and beeswax from heat.
- Add honey.
- Whip the mixture by hand with a fork or small whisk until it starts to cool a little. Don’t rush this step, or the honey may try to separate.
- Once the honey seems to be staying suspended in the tallow, add the essential oils. Use 3o drops of milder essential oils, such as citrus ones, and 15 drops of more potent essential oils.
- Combine well, and pour mixture into lip balm tins.
- Immediately put tins into the freezer to harden.
- Allow lip balms to come to room temperature, and enjoy.
More things you can make with tallow
How to Make Herb Infused Tallow Salve
Have you ever made your own lip balm?
Which essential oils did you try? Which were your favorite?
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Tallow Lip Balm with Honey
I’m so excited to share this tallow lip balm recipe. It goes on absolutely beautifully, includes raw honey, and can be customized with different essential oils.
Ingredients
- 5 tbsp Grass fed tallow
- 1 tbsp Beeswax (if tallow is softer at room temperature)
- 2 tbsp Raw honey
- 15 - 30 drops Essential oils
Instructions
- Melt tallow until it is liquid.
- Measure tallow and beeswax and put into a heat safe container.
- Create a double boiler by putting the container of tallow and beeswax into a pot of water.
- Gently heat the water to a low simmer.
- Allow beeswax to melt and become completely combined with the tallow.
- Remove tallow and beeswax from heat.
- Add honey.
- Whip the mixture by hand with a fork or small whisk until it starts to cool a little. Don't rush this step, or the honey may try to separate.
- Once the honey seems to be staying suspended in the tallow, add the essential oils. Use 3o drops of milder essential oils, such as citrus ones, and 15 drops of more potent essential oils.
- Combine well, and pour mixture into lip balm tins.
- Immediately put tins into the freezer to harden.
- Allow lip balms to come to room temperature, and enjoy.
Thoughts on adding some zinc oxide powder to give it some SPF?
Hi, I couldn’t find a link to the tins that you use…The ones I saw on Amazon are aluminum.. Are they safe to use??? Do you use aluminum ones??? Thanks you for your great recipes!!!
Amy
Hi Marisa,
I love reading your tallow recipe blogs! I have been making tallow cream and now I’m ready to make lip balms as well. I was wondering with your recipe amount, how many of those 0.5 oz cans did you end up filling?
Thank you for the recipe! I made this for my husband to use as face lotion as he was paying $30/jar and he loves it (little does he know how versatile it is). I also made myself some without essential oils to use as lip balm, nipple butter, and diaper ointment. I did add some calendula extract, between 3-6% and the texture is still perfect.
This lip balm is amazing! Do you have any insight on how this will do in the summer weather? Also, any suggestions on how to make it a bit more stable in these types of temps?
Thank you!
Hello! Rendering my fat as we speak– but I was wondering if you had experimented and found a way to prevent crystallization of the honey? You mentioned you would update if you found an answer there, so just curious.
Thank you for such a great recipe and instructions!
Oh! And where did you find your adorable labels? I need to make my own and would love some direction as to where to start.
Thanks!
crystallization can be broken by gently heating the mix until honey runs smooth again 🙂
hobby lobby has great labels and hand painted are always best imo 🙂
Hey! So grateful for all your tips and guidance as I learn to make tallow skincare products. I find that as the heat escapes, my lip balms crack…whether in fridge or freezer. If I leave at room temp, will be beeswax separate or create beads/flakes since it has a much higher melting point. Have you figured out how to avoid this?
I’ve made my own lip balm and did not use essential oils, because they can be toxic to ingest. The lips are very absorbent. What brand of essential oils are you using and how do you know they are safe on the lips? Great articles! Thank you for the information and recipes. I am going to be making my tallow balm soon.
Blessings,
Tom
Hi Marissa,
Do you think adding some olive oil and perhaps changing up the measurements slightly, you could whip this up like the other tallow balm recipe to use on the face? Looking to try make something similar to Vanmans tallow & honey balm.
Thanks.
Hi Marisa,
Love the recipe it makes the perfect lip balm!! I tried it the second time today and my honey always separates when pouring the mixture into little tins, any tips on how to know that honey stays suspended?
Thank you!
I, too, found that my honey wouldn’t stay suspended, and almost felt like it was too much in ratio to the tallow and beeswax portions. I wonder what increasing the tallow by a tablespoon or two and decreasing the honey by one tablespoon would do? Hopefully Marisa might have some insight?
Hi! I’m not sure if y’all ever got an answer to this issue but I made this recipe a while ago and found that the honey constantly separated when I did it according to the instructions. I found that the only way I could keep it suspended was to heat the honey in the double boiler with the tallow and oils and to put the double boiler back on to warm up again once it cooled during the process of pouring and repeat as needed. Once I did that I had no more issues with the honey separating.
I love the smell of this! My only concern is the consistency. Mine turned out to be too firm. I only used 1T of beeswax but maybe I didn’t need that much…? Is there any way to fix it? Remelt it maybe?
Thanks
Tallow will vary in consistency, so sometimes adjustments are needed. You can melt it down and add a little liquid oil if it turned out too hard.
Hi Marisa,
Can grass fed tallow replace shea butter in skin care recipes?
Are there any special rules for using tallow in place of shea butter?
If so, please explain.
Yes, it makes a great substitute! I usually just swap one for one.
I want to make for family to put In Christmas stockings. How many tubes might this receipt fill?
Great idea! It makes 6 of the 0.5 oz. tins, or about 12 tubes 🙂
Super! Please add this info to the recipe. And thank you for this wonderful recipe!
I made this, and am loving it! But wondering if it needs a preservative at all? Someone on a FB tallow page told me I needed a preservative because the honey could feed bacteria and germs.
I haven’t found the need for one, and I’ve been making it for years. If you do want to use one, Optiphen Plus is my favorite for my recipes that contain water 🙂
Can I ask what the Facebook group is? I would love to learn more about rendering etc!
Here you go! https://www.facebook.com/groups/traditionalwisdom/
Hi Marisa, made this over the weekend. It smells lovely, but it seems the tallow wasnt as soft as I thought and I should have left the beeswax out. I am thinking of melting them all and adding more tallow. Would this work? And if so would I do another 4 tablespoons or more?
Thankyou. Kerry 😊
Yes you can melt it down to adjust! That’s the thing about natural ingredients – somethings adjustments are necessary 🙂 I would actually add a tiny bit of liquid oil (like olive oil) to soften it.
I am being told the same thing by a member of a FB group. I wonder, now that some time has passed, how did yours hold up?
Hi in the video it looks like you used only 1 teaspoon of honey, but the recipe states 2 tablespoons? Which is correct?
Thank you!
The written recipe is correct 🙂
Would I be able to add an extra tablespoon of honey for sweetness or will it mess up the consistency?
Can this be made with lard instead of tallow? I have an abundance of lard I rendered from our hogs this year and want to find some different ways to use it.
Yes you can! I prefer tallow because it has a wider variety of nutrients than lard, but if you grow your own hogs, that’s awesome!
Do you think it would be ok to make it without the honey? Would I need to make adjustments to any of the other ingredients? Thank you!
Great question! You can definitely make it without honey. Leaving it out is all you need to do, no need to adjust anything else 🙂
I just made this lip balm tonight and wow! So simple and it feels wonderful! Tallow soap is next! Thank you!
Wonderful, I’m so glad! Thanks for sharing 🙂
I’m really looking forward to making this lip balm. I’m guess that I could totally use this on my skin as well. Would that be a safe assumption?
Can anyone speak to how long this process takes? I’m wanting to host a gathering to make these together and am trying to figure out timing from start to “safe to take home”. Thanks so much!
That sounds so fun! It usually takes me around 30-45 minutes to make a batch, and most of that time is waiting for the tallow and beeswax to melt. I put them in the freezer to solidify, so they firm up quickly. Hope that helps!
Hi there. How do you stop the honey separating after a couple of weeks?
I that might happen when it starts to crystalize. I haven’t figured out a way to prevent this yet. When I do I’ll post an update! In any case, I find the lip balm still works nicely even with some separation 🙂
Can this recipe be put into tubes instead of tins?
I believe so! I haven’t done that yet, but I was actually planning to give it a try soon! The consistency should work just fine in tubes 🙂
The tinted lip balm uses 1 T, but the lip balm using 1 tsp – which is correct? TIA.
Sorry – I got the backwards, the tinted uses 1 tsp of beeswax and the non-tinted uses 1 T of beeswax.
I think I got my answer from watching your video – should be 1T of beeswax.
Yes! 1 TBSP. Sorry about that – I’ll make sure the recipes are correct 😊
Hello. I cannot find the information on tinted lip balm in you video or recipe. I have mica powder and thought it would be fun to add a little shimmer to this recipe. I have been making a lot of different personal care items with tallow & would like to make this one. Have you used mica powder? If so, how much do you use? And does adding mica powder decrease the beeswax to 1 tsp per recipe? Thank you in advance.
Here you go 🙂 https://bumblebeeapothecary.com/tinted-lip-balm-recipe-with-honey-and-tallow/
Hi Marisa, I just made your Beef Tallow & Honey lip balm with lemon, it’s in the freezer. What is the shelf life & how should I store it??
Thanks for the recipe!!@
Nice! It is very stable at room temperature for around a year or so. 🙂