Tallow candles are one of the oldest DIY projects there is — for centuries, households rendered their own fat and made their own light. Making them today is genuinely simple: if you can melt something and pour it into a jar, you can make a tallow candle. Here's the complete method, including the wick and blending details that decide whether your candle burns beautifully or tunnels.
What you'll need
- Rendered beef tallow — clean, well-filtered tallow is the whole game; poorly rendered fat makes smoky, smelly candles. Use our fresh rendered beef tallow, or render your own (see how to render and store tallow).
- Beeswax (optional but recommended) — 10–30% by weight. Pure tallow is soft; beeswax hardens the candle, raises the melt point, and slows the burn.
- Cotton braided wicks — pre-tabbed container wicks are easiest. Tallow is a softer wax, so size the wick for your jar diameter and be prepared to test.
- Heat-safe jars — make container candles. Free-standing tallow pillars sag in warm rooms; jars solve it.
- A thermometer and a pouring vessel — a candy thermometer and an old saucepan or double boiler are plenty.
- Fragrance oil (optional) — tallow is nearly neutral and carries scent well.
Step by step
- Melt low and slow. Melt the tallow (and beeswax, if using) in a double boiler over gentle heat. You're aiming for fully liquid, not hot — high heat degrades the fat and can add odor.
- Set the wick. Stick the wick tab to the jar bottom (a dab of melted wax or a glue dot works), and hold the wick centered and taut — a clothespin or two skewers laid across the jar's mouth does it.
- Add fragrance off the heat (if using) — stir in fragrance oil once the melt comes off the heat, following the oil maker's load recommendation (6–8% is typical for container candles).
- Pour warm, not hot. Let the melt cool until it just starts to thicken at the edges, then pour. Pouring too hot causes sinkholes and cracks as it shrinks.
- Cure. Let the candle set undisturbed for 24–48 hours before the first burn. Trim the wick to 1/4" first.
Getting the burn right
The first burn sets the candle's memory: burn it long enough for the melt pool to reach the jar walls, or it will tunnel down the middle forever after. If the flame smokes or flickers hard, the wick is too large — trim it shorter or size down next batch. If the melt pool never reaches the edges, the wick is too small. Every jar diameter and tallow-beeswax ratio behaves a little differently, so make one test candle before pouring a batch. General candle care is the same as any container candle — we cover it in how to care for tallow candles.
A note on the fat itself
The most common DIY failure isn't technique — it's the tallow. Fat that was rendered quickly, at high heat, or from poor-quality trimmings carries proteins and impurities that smoke and smell when burned. Well-rendered tallow is nearly odorless in the jar and clean-burning at the wick (more on that in does beef tallow smell?). If you'd rather start from a known-good base, our fresh beef tallow ($24.99) is slow-rendered in small batches at our USDA-inspected facility in Springtown, Texas — the same fat we use ourselves.
Or let us do the pouring
If you want the tallow candle without the project, our hand-poured beef tallow candles are 16oz tallow-soy blends built for even, clean burns with strong scent throw. And the full background on tallow candles — history, burn time, what they're made of — is in Beef Tallow Candles: The Complete Guide.