The lather explosion surprised me as well when I first started using SV soaps. The stuff must be extremely dense.When I use hard pucks like SV, I wet my face and use the puck like a shave stick. With SV, I'm always amazed how little soap is used versus the explosion of lather once the brush gets to work. When I start with a new soap, I always over load and then back off a bit each day until I get it right which may take a couple of days. TINRS