Bourbon Vanilla Tallow Balm: The Weird Jar That Fixed My Winter Skin

Okay so it’s like 9 PM on a Tuesday and my hands look like a topographic map of the moon. Dry. Cracked. Weird little lines everywhere. It’s that gross winter air, you know? The kind that makes your face feel tight and your knuckles just split open if you make a fist. I was sitting there, half-watching some baking show rerun, and I just stared at my hands. This is bad. I’d tried that fancy lotion in the blue bottle. The thick cream from the drugstore. Nothing stuck. It was all just… slick for five minutes and then gone.

Then I remembered the jar. The weird one. The beef tallow balm. Bourbon Vanilla scent. I’d ordered it on a whim from this Etsy shop a month ago because my algorithm decided I needed to see videos about “ancestral skincare” or whatever. Beef fat. For your face. It sounded absolutely bonkers. But my skin was so mad at me, I was willing to try anything. The jar arrived and I just… put it in the cupboard. Forgot about it. Until that Tuesday.

I got up, opened the cupboard. There it was. A little glass jar with a black lid. “Whipped Tallow Balm.” I unscrewed it.

First thought: Oh. That’s… nice.

It didn’t smell like beef. Thank god. It smelled like… remember those vanilla candles your aunt always had? Not the cheap, sugary ones. The kind that actually smell like vanilla bean, but warmer. Like if vanilla hung out in a library with old books for a while. Cozy. It was a bourbon vanilla tallow balm, the label said. It just smelled solid. Good. Not perfume-y. Not food-y. Just a warm, comforting smell. The kind of smell that makes you take a deeper breath without thinking about it. I poked it. The texture was weird. Not bad weird. It was super thick in the jar, but when I scooped a tiny bit with my finger, it just… melted. Like it went from solid to almost nothing between my fingertips.

I rubbed it into my hands. The whole cracked-moon-landscape situation. It absorbed. Like, actually vanished. My hands weren’t greasy. They weren’t shiny. They just felt… like hands. But softer. The skin didn’t feel tight anymore. I sat back down. My hands smelled like that vanilla-book smell. My skin felt normal. I just kept smelling my hands. For, like, ten minutes. While someone on TV tried to make a soufflé. It was a whole thing.

How Beef Tallow for Skin Even Became a Thing I Tried

Look, I need to be real. The concept is strange. You’re telling me to put rendered cow fat on my face? My brain immediately went to cooking grease. It felt like a prank. But I kept seeing people talk about it. And the science-ish reason, when I finally read it, made a dumb kind of sense. This stuff is made from grass-fed beef suet, whipped up in France apparently. The big deal is that it’s supposed to be really similar to the oils our own skin makes. Our sebum. So instead of just sitting on top of your skin like a plastic wrap (looking at you, petroleum jelly), it actually sinks in. It tells your skin, “Hey, it’s cool, I got this,” so your skin can chill out and repair itself. They say it’s good for eczema, psoriasis, all that angry skin stuff. My skin was just angry at winter. Close enough.

I was skeptical. So skeptical. But that first night with my hands… I was intrigued. The next morning, my cuticles looked better. Not perfect, but less red. The cracks on my knuckles were less… cavernous. I decided to go all in. Face and everything.

What This Bourbon Vanilla Tallow Balm Actually Does in My Routine

My routine is not a routine. It’s chaos. Sometimes I wash my face with water. Sometimes I use that gel cleanser from the green tube. It’s a mess. But now, this balm is the one constant. At night, after I splash some water on my face or whatever, I take the jar. I scoop the tiniest amount. Like, half a pea. Rub it between my fingers to warm it up—it turns into this silky oil instantly—and then just press it into my skin. Cheeks, forehead, neck. Sometimes I put a thicker layer on my lips if they’re chapped.

The scent is the best part. No, really. Using a bourbon vanilla tallow balm turns skincare from a chore into a… moment. It’s not medicinal. It’s not fruity. It’s that warm, classic, cozy smell. It’s the opposite of stress. It’s like a two-second vacation. I find myself actually wanting to do it. I’ll be thinking, “Ugh, I should go wash my face,” and then I remember the smell and it’s less of a drag. It makes the whole process enjoyable. It’s natural scented tallow skincare, but it doesn’t smell “natural” in that hippie-store-patchouli way. It just smells good. Simple.

I use it on my elbows too. And my knees. Anywhere that gets that weird winter sandpaper texture. It just… fixes it. I don’t know how else to say it. I woke up one day and my elbows weren’t rough. I was confused. I showed my partner. “Feel this!” He was not as excited as I was. Whatever.

My Skin After a Few Weeks of This Stuff

So it’s been maybe a month now? I’m almost through the jar. I already ordered another one. That’s the real review, right? Repurchasing.

My skin is just… calm. It’s not a miracle. I didn’t turn into a dewy Instagram filter. But the tight, itchy, angry feeling is gone. Completely. My foundation doesn’t cling to dry patches anymore because there aren’t any. The little area around my nose that always gets flaky in winter? Smooth. My hands are actually presentable. I don’t hide them in my pockets. I even got one for my mom because her hands get terrible in the cold. She texted me last week: “What is in this magic paste?” She’s hooked too.

It’s not shiny. It’s not greasy. It just feels like my skin, but hydrated. The best way I can describe it is that my skin finally feels like it’s wearing a comfortable sweater instead of being wrapped in plastic wrap or, worse, sandpaper. The bourbon vanilla scent is just the bonus. The thing that makes me look forward to using it. It’s like a tiny, daily luxury that costs less than a fancy coffee.

Quick Questions I Get Asked

Is beef tallow good for your face? Weirdly, yeah. At least for me. The idea is it’s super compatible with our skin’s own oils, so it absorbs really well and helps your skin barrier do its job. It’s not for everyone, but if you have dry, irritated, or sensitive skin, it might be worth a shot. My face has never felt clogged from it.

Does tallow balm clog pores? I was terrified of this. But no, not for me. It’s non-comedogenic, which means it shouldn’t clog pores. Because it mimics sebum, it seems to absorb and balance things out instead of just sitting there. I’m prone to congestion and I haven’t had any issues. It’s the opposite—my skin feels clearer.

What does bourbon vanilla tallow balm smell like? It’s hard to describe scents. It’s not cake vanilla. It’s deeper. Warmer. Like vanilla extract mixed with… I don’t know, a really well-made old-fashioned? But not boozy. Just warm, comforting, and classic. It’s not overpowering. It fades pretty quickly after you put it on, but for those first few minutes, it’s just really nice.

Anyway. If your skin is throwing a tantrum about the weather, this might help. I got mine from a small shop on Etsy, just searching for “whipped tallow balm.” The bourbon vanilla one is the one I like. It just works. I don’t have a better explanation. I’m on my second jar now, and my skin’s happy. That’s all I wanted.