Rendering beeswax

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jtmattison

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After reading about boiling tallow in water to render it and clean it I said to myself "self, why can't you do that with beeswax to clean it?"
So I tried it. I took some beeswax and boiled it in water, let it cool and seperated the wax from the water when it was hard. The water came out pretty dirty. The wax had a bit of sludge on the bottom of it that wiped off. I re-melted the wax and put it in a jar.
It looks clean, so I guess it worked.

Huntin Dawg
 
Been thinking about ways to do the same thing since I came across an old bee keepers hive storage area. I've got around 40lbs in 3 garbage bags to render,thanks for the tip! :thumbsup:

PS. My wife is always amazed at what I come home with after a weekend of primitive hunting!

Pathfinder
 
Hey, I think I have a good explaination for the observations.

There is a lot of of impurites in fats, many of them water soluble. These impurities can be salts, etc.....When you reliquilfy the fats they can exchange the water soluble impurites with the water, they are "washed" away in the water layer.

This is actually what they call an extraction in chemical terms; The water soluble componds prefer disolving in the water (aqueous) layer and the fat in the "orgainc" (fat) layer.

If you repeat the process a number of times each layer will become more pure. E.g. You'll get really pure lard/fat!!!
 
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