We haven't tested Summer Solace's balms against ours in a lab, and every fact about them here came off their live pages on October 8, 2026. Both brands sell an unscented suet balm with no water and no essential oil. The labels part ways on what sits beside the fat and on how each jar is measured, so this is a label-to-label read of the two.
If you're holding their Pure Unscented Tallow Balm, the closest Craft jar is Bare Silk ($34). It's five ingredients with no essential oils, and I checked our price the same day, so every number below carries one date.
What does each brand sell?
Summer Solace's about page calls the company "small, woman-run," and they've made tallow skincare by hand in Oakland, California, since 2014. As of October 8, 2026, Pure Unscented came as a Small 60 mL jar for $36. Two bigger jars sit above it, a Large 4 oz Jar at $72 and an 11.5 oz family jar in clear glass at $195.
We pour five balms dense into 2 oz (56 g) jars and sell them by weight. Bare Silk's the plain one. The other four each take one job, from Honey Glow ($42) for dry skin to Velvet Face Renewal ($89) for the look of fine lines. The Craft Tallow Kit ($110, on pre-order with about a three-week ship window) lets you blend our recipes.
What do the two unscented labels say?
Here's each jar as its own page described it on October 8, 2026.
| Read Oct 8, 2026 | Summer Solace Pure Unscented Tallow Balm | Craft Bare Silk Unscented |
|---|---|---|
| Size as printed | Small 60 mL | 2 oz (56 g) |
| Measured by | Volume | Weight |
| Price | $36 | $34 |
| Per unit | $0.60 per mL | $0.61 per gram |
| Ingredients | 3 | 5 |
| Essential oils | None | None |
| Fat named | Kidney suet, hand-rendered and dry-rendered | Suet, grass-fed and grass-finished |
| Texture | Unwhipped | Poured dense |
| Returns | All sales final, damaged orders replaced or credited | 60-Day Skin Test |
| Free US shipping | Over $175 | From $35 |
Pure Unscented lists three ingredients. The first is "Regenerative Suet Tallow," and the list itself says it was hand-rendered and dry-rendered. Then come extra-virgin olive oil and organic calendula CO2 extract. Bare Silk Unscented lists five: grass-fed suet tallow, meadowfoam seed oil, organic jojoba oil, vitamin E, organic arrowroot. Their page calls the jar "Fragrance-free and essential oil-free," and one of their three shows up in our line too, since calendula CO2 sits in Honey Glow. Suet's nearly scentless, and Bare Silk Unscented smells like nothing.
Milliliters or ounces: what does each jar hold?
Their small jar is sold by the milliliter, a unit of volume, and ours by the ounce of weight. A milliliter counts the space a balm fills, and a gram counts the balm. The federal labeling rule for cosmetics, 21 CFR 701.13, sets the avoirdupois ounce for weight and the fluid ounce for volume, and it allows a metric figure beside either. On paper the two small jars land a cent apart, $0.60 a milliliter against $0.61 a gram. I won't call either jar cheaper until both are counted in grams.
Their home page says the tallow is "never whipped or rendered with water," and Bare Silk is poured dense. So the grams in their 60 mL jar come down to density. That jar is one of the eight on order for our bench, and its weight lands on tallow balms bought and weighed in part two. Until then I'm claiming no number for it.
What does Summer Solace do well?
Two things stand out on their pages, and the first is how much they tell you about the fat. The product page says they use "only kidney suet from pasture-raised Northern California cattle," and their home page says they "dry-render it by hand in small batches." That's a lot of the making set out in plain words, down to the method in the ingredient line.
The second is the choice of size. One plain recipe comes in three jars, and every size showed a subscribe and save price 10% under its one-time price. Their family jar works out to about $16.96 an ounce as printed. The scented balms run long too, and their about page says the founder's a self-taught natural perfumer.
Where do we differ?
We both start from suet, so the first difference is who's doing the rendering. They do their own rendering by hand. We source 100% suet, the dense fat from around the kidneys, from grass-fed and grass-finished cattle on Montana family ranches, bought direct. We buy the fat. We do not run the ranch. Our Montana render partner renders it, and the balms are blended in small batches in the Mountain West.
The second difference is the recipe. Their plain jar is the fat with olive oil and calendula, and Bare Silk adds four things to the fat: meadowfoam, jojoba, vitamin E, arrowroot. Bare Silk's our only plain jar. The research set the doses in the other four, and Velvet carries a true 1% bakuchiol, twice the 0.5% in the published head-to-head trial against retinol.
The third is what happens after you buy. Their refund policy says "all sales are final," and an order that arrives damaged or incorrect can get a replacement or store credit if you write within five days. Ours is the 60-Day Skin Test: sixty days with any jar, and if your skin disagrees, we refund it. Shipping's free with them over $175 and with us from $35. Subscribers always ship free with us.
Who should buy which?
Choose theirs if you want a three-ingredient jar that says how its fat was rendered, or a big family jar on a subscription. If you like scent, their scented balms give you plenty to choose from. Bare Silk belongs on the shortlist as a third jar, for a reader who wants a dense balm sold by weight and sixty days to change their mind. It's cosmetic care, not a treatment, and your provider's plan comes first. For the look of fine lines, we built Velvet Face Renewal ($89) to do that one job.
Start with Bare Silk ($34), five ingredients and sixty days to disagree.
Questions we hear
Is Summer Solace good?
I can't grade it on your skin, since we haven't tested their balm against ours in a lab. Here's what their pages showed on October 8, 2026. Pure Unscented lists three ingredients, starting with kidney suet they render by hand, and it carries no water or essential oil. They've made balms in Oakland since 2014. If a short label and a balm that's never whipped suit you, it's a fair jar to try.
Is Summer Solace tallow worth it?
That depends on the size you buy and the unit you count in. On October 8, 2026, Pure Unscented was $36 for 60 mL, about $0.60 a milliliter, and $72 for the 4 oz jar. Subscribe and save took 10% off each size. Bare Silk is $34 for 2 oz (56 g), about $0.61 a gram, so the two sit a cent apart in units that don't match. Our bench will weigh their small jar before we call either one cheaper.
Summer Solace vs Craft Tallow, which is better for the face?
Neither page settles that. We've run no side-by-side test on faces, and their page pitches Pure Unscented as a moisturizer for sensitive skin, on the face and well beyond it. For everyday face care we'd point you to Bare Silk ($34), with no essential oils in the Unscented. Velvet Face Renewal ($89) is for the look of fine lines. Your skin decides.
How much balm is in a 60 mL jar of Summer Solace by weight?
Their page doesn't say. The small jar is sold as 60 mL, which is a volume, and the page gives no weight in grams. Their tallow is never whipped, so density sets the grams. That jar is on order for our bench, and its weight lands on our tallow balms bought and weighed page in part two, with no number from us until then.
Does Summer Solace use essential oils?
Not in Pure Unscented, which their page calls fragrance-free and essential oil-free. On October 8, 2026, it listed suet tallow plus two more ingredients: extra-virgin olive oil and organic calendula CO2 extract. The scented balms do carry them. Their Lavendula balm adds organic Bulgarian lavender essential oil and a golden champa attar to the same base. There's no essential oil and no fragrance in Bare Silk Unscented.
Go deeper
Best tallow balm lines up eight brands against the same label checks, and the tallow balm comparison page puts more of them in one table. How to read a tallow label is the long version of the label read you've just done. Suet vs trim explains why the cut matters. If tallow on skin is new to you, the beef tallow for skin guide is the place to begin.
Sources
- Summer Solace Tallow, the brand's own website (2026). Pure Unscented Tallow Balm, with its sizes and its three ingredients, read October 8, 2026. summersolacetallow.com.
- Summer Solace Tallow, the brand's own website (2026). Lavendula Balm, a scented edition with its essential oil listed, read October 8, 2026. summersolacetallow.com.
- Summer Solace Tallow, the brand's own website (2026). Home page, on tallow dry-rendered by hand and never whipped, read October 8, 2026. summersolacetallow.com.
- Summer Solace Tallow, the brand's own website (2026). About page, on the small company and the founder behind it, read October 8, 2026. summersolacetallow.com.
- Summer Solace Tallow, the brand's own website (2026). Refund policy, with all sales final and a five-day window for damaged orders, read October 8, 2026. summersolacetallow.com.
- Summer Solace Tallow, the brand's own website (2026). Shipping policy, with free US shipping on orders over $175 by UPS, read October 8, 2026. summersolacetallow.com.
- US Food and Drug Administration (2026). Code of Federal Regulations, title 21, section 701.13: declaration of net quantity of contents. eCFR.
- Craft Tallow, our own Journal (2026). Tallow balms bought and weighed: eight jars on the bench, part one. crafttallow.com.
Brian is the founder of Craft Tallow, a small-batch tallow skincare line shipped from Cottonwood Heights, Utah, built on 100% grass-fed suet. Questions? Reply to any email from us; it lands with him.