Hoffman's Red Hollow

[AndyPanda]

I did a few searches and didn't find much about this soap so I thought I'd start a thread here about this soap.

From reading the ingredients and the scent notes at Hoffman's website I was really excited to try this soap. And then when I received it I was disappointed when I first opened the lid. My first impression was "cookies" and it just smelled almost sickly sweet. I had my daughter smell it and she said "smells like cookies" and said it was her least favorite of any of the soaps I have. So this was off to a bad start ... HOWEVER ... the ingredients are very good. It has tallow which I like and it has slippery elm which had really piqued my interest in the first place. So this afternoon, thinking I'd never actually like the scent, I decided I'd use it to improve my lathering skills just so it doesn't go to waste. It lathered up really nice and slick and I had fun whipping up the lather and ended up painting it on my face even though I didn't need a shave.

So a few hours pass and I'm watching a movie and I keep noticing this terrific scent and start looking around to see what it is before I remember I lathered up my face with it earlier. I don't know if it is just the combination of the soap and my own body chemistry or what but it is really pleasant and not at all the overwhelming "cookies" scent I had picked up at first. The slippery elm scent is very noticeable to me - if you've ever used Thayer's Slippery Elm cough lozenges they have a great scent/taste from the Slippery Elm. Slippery Elm is what interested me in this soap enough to buy it in the first place. Now my early morning shave was with A&E Apricity and perhaps enough of that scent remains on my face that what I'm loving so much is the combination of those two scents.

And now it's about midnight and I've got enough velcro on my face and I'm intrigued enough to have a shave in the middle of the night. Really a very enjoyable shave with lots of cushion and slickness - I used a feather blade and got one of the closest shaves I've had (just one pass ATG and a little touch up).

Well that's my story (so far). Anyone else try this soap?

 

[AlphaFrank75]

Thanks for your review. I was hoping this would have had a more prominent apple scent to it.

 

[AndyPanda]

I grew up next to apple orchards and the smell of apple warehouse (apples that have been stored for a while) is what I pickup pretty clearly. Rather than the tart, crisp smell of biting into an apple, the scent I get is more of apples about to be pressed into cider.

It's not a fresh apple and it's not a baked apple pie --- it's a little reminiscent of a caramel apple but the caramel takes a back seat to the apple. The apple is really up front but it's an aged apple or maybe lightly baked/roasted almost like when, in my youth, I would put an apple on a stick and toast it over a bonfire.

It mostly reminds me of the apple warehouse where thousands of apples are stored

 

[AndyPanda]

Just thought I'd update this after a couple of days have passed. Whenever I smell this soap straight from the tub, my first reaction is that it is too strong with a sticky sweet smell. But when I actually lather it up, the experience is completely different. On me the scent is much softer and not at all sticky/sweet - it's just very pleasant and actually has me looking around to see where that aroma is coming from until I realize that it's coming from my own face

I think our body chemistry has a lot to do with it so maybe this is just a happy accident the way this soap works for me. Hoping to hear from a few others that may have tried this soap.