My favorite soaps 100 samples and 6 months in

[Oik520]

i have been wet shaving for 6 months now and have tried lots of soaps (Over 100, mostly samples). I have learned a lot and got many ideas from these forums about what to try, so I thought I would post my top soaps so far to give others ideas. Any differences or suggestions to try?

• Best Performance Overall - Sudsy Soapery Cola w/rhassoul clay (don’t care for the Flintstone vitamin scent, but wow)
• Best Slickness - Oleo Soapworks
• Most Cushioning - Wholly Kaw Donkey Milk Formula
• Best Vegan Soap Formula Overall - Wickham 1912 Club Cola
• Best Tallow Formula Overall - Declaration Grooming
• Best Menthol Soap Scent - Proraso Green
• Best Citrus Soap Scent - Stirling Margaritas in the Arctic
• Best Barbershop Scent - Barrister and Mann Seville
• Best Aquatic Scent - Caties Bubbles Le Marche du Rasage
• Best Flowery Scent - Barrister and Mann Reserve Lavender
• Best cologne-type scent - Fine Platinum
• Best Woody Scent - TOBS - Cedarwood
• Best Leathery Scent - Don’t like any so far
• Best Fruity Soap - Dr. Jon Savannah Sunrise
• Best food scent - Mickey Lee Soapworks - Drunken Goat
• Best Oddball Scent - Phoenix Artisan Accoutrements - Avo Nice Shave
• Best Beachy Scent - Oleo Soapworks Montrose Beach
• Worst Scent - Stirling Gatlinburg

Haven’t tried but on my list: Sapofonico Varesino, I Coloniali, A & E, Cold River Soapworks

 

[bberg100]

Leather - Wild West Shaving Co - The Outlaw. Smells like an old saddle, match it up with some Avon Leather.

100 in about 180 days? Slow down and enjoy one for a bit.

 

[TropicalHotDogNight]

To be honest, I think you need to spend at least a week with a soap to judge it properly. You are not spending more than two days with each of your soaps. Perhaps some of your lesser soaps will work better when you dial in the right lathering technique, or perhaps some of your best soaps will not be so great after you have had time to get to know them.

 

[rockviper]

You're even more of a soap wackadoodle than I am!

However, we do seem to be missing the winner of the Best Tasting category.

 

[SonofdavidS]

Great info, thanks

 

[Oik520]

I usually get samples across the whole line and try a different scent across about a week with the same soap base. I think ive tried about 15 different soap base samples in total over the last six months. I find the lather very similar across scents in the same base. Of the 100 samples I got, some I smelled and decided I didn’t like it and never used it. I plan to PIF a bunch of them in that category. If it makes you feel any better, I own only one razor which works really well for me. I have a sensory thing with smells...and I guess I am a wackadoodle about soaps, it’s true.

 

[dfoulk]

Grooming Dept and Tallow & Steel are soaps that you need to try. I've tried about everything out there (well over 600) and these two soap makers are the very best I've found.

 

[musicman1951]

To be honest, I think you need to spend at least a week with a soap to judge it properly. You are not spending more than two days with each of your soaps. Perhaps some of your lesser soaps will work better when you dial in the right lathering technique, or perhaps some of your best soaps will not be so great after you have had time to get to know them.

I

+1 I'm afraid this is 100% accurate. It takes some experimenting to find the perfect lather from each soap. Sure, you can get a good lather from most any soap on day one. But if you really want to know all a soap has to offer you need to spend some time.

Samples are fine for discovering which scents you like/hate, but everyone's nose is different. So a scent I love might be less than acceptable for you.

I really do appreciate the enthusiasm of beginning shavers who take on these monumental tasks, but I'd appreciate them even more three years from now.

 

[BigJ]

To be honest, I think you need to spend at least a week with a soap to judge it properly. You are not spending more than two days with each of your soaps. Perhaps some of your lesser soaps will work better when you dial in the right lathering technique, or perhaps some of your best soaps will not be so great after you have had time to get to know them.

Good advice! It can take me even longer to figure out how to get the best out of some soaps such as MWF.

 

[boilerphan]

I am a relatively new shaver too and I have done similar to the OP. My plan is after I sample more brands/types/scents that I will go back and spend more time to fully evaluate.

My plan is after I finish my sampling to go back and spend at least a week, maybe more for brands that I own multiple bases or vastly different scents, to give a better time to learn and evaluate. I am not patient enough to do that at the outset with so much intriguing products to try.

 

[Oik520]

Grooming Dept and Tallow & Steel are soaps that you need to try. I've tried about everything out there (well over 600) and these two soap makers are the very best I've found.

Definitely will add these to my list.

 

[ShavingByTheNumbers]

Thanks, @Oik520, for your extensive list and experimentation. You have Sudsy Soapery at the top of your list, and currently, I have Sudsy Soapery at the bottom of mine (URL to my lather optimization guide), so it just goes to show you that we all have different reactions to soaps and draw different conclusions.

You wrote that you spent about a week with each soap base, which is a good amount of time to draw a reasonable conclusion. Did you vary the amounts of water during the shaves? How about the lather-building times? They both affect lather performance. Our personal preferences and biases also affect what kind of lather we make. It's taken a long time for me to become much more objective with evaluating lather performance and moving past my personal bias for thicker lather. I guess that I'm wondering if you have a similar bias because Sudsy Soapery generally makes a thick lather compared to other soaps with the same water-to-soap ratio.

 

[Oik520]

Something of note is that my list is a moment in time as well as totally subjective to my own preference so far. I suspect it to change over time. I like your list a lot and will use it for inspiration. With Sudsy Soapery, I have tried only the one with the clay - have you tried that one? I also think most artisan soaps are fairly good in general. I am very happy with most soaps’ performance and tend to focus more on scent when choosing a soap for the day. I am not quite a soap performance perfectionist quite yet. I suppose your more systematic approach would work well when I get to that point.

My lathering process is this:

• I have softened well water. I use hot water to moisten my synthetic brush.
• I squeeze most of the water out of the brush.
• I typically press a small amount of sample into a Fine lather bowl
• I load the brush in the bowl and then face lather. It starts out really dry, then I add small amounts of water until it gets somewhere between yogurt and whip cream consistency, stiff peaks but still a little watery/slick/shiny.
• I tend to be pretty consistent with lather times (about 1-2 minutes) and experiment with the water amount over the week. Push it to the wetter side usually on day 1 and dial it back over the week.

 

[ShavingByTheNumbers]

Something of note is that my list is a moment in time as well as totally subjective to my own preference so far. I suspect it to change over time. I like your list a lot and will use it for inspiration. With Sudsy Soapery, I have tried only the one with the clay - have you tried that one?

Thanks. I like your list, too. I think that most or all Sudsy Soapery soaps have clay in them. The one that I reviewed has three clays: rhassoul, kaolin, and bentonite.

I also think most artisan soaps are fairly good in general. I am very happy with most soaps’ performance and tend to focus more on scent when choosing a soap for the day.

I'm still focused on performance, but I've been opening up more to scents. I think that you're right that most artisan soaps are fairly good. There are a lot of good choices out there. It makes me want to shave more than once a day, but my face would have something to say about that.

I am not quite a soap performance perfectionist quite yet. I suppose your more systematic approach would work well when I get to that point.

You are way ahead of where I was after six months. It was after a lot of trial and error, frustration, and experimentation that I started from scratch and began measuring mass. However, a more systematic approach can be applied with any lathering method that one uses, with or without measuring mass. Consistency is key.

My lathering process is this:

• I have softened well water. I use hot water to moisten my synthetic brush.
• I squeeze most of the water out of the brush.
• I typically press a small amount of sample into a Fine lather bowl
• I load the brush in the bowl and then face lather. It starts out really dry, then I add small amounts of water until it gets somewhere between yogurt and whip cream consistency, stiff peaks but still a little watery/slick/shiny.
• I tend to be pretty consistent with lather times (about 1-2 minutes) and experiment with the water amount over the week. Push it to the wetter side usually on day 1 and dial it back over the week.

It's really good that you have been experimenting with the water amount. That's the biggest factor. Lathering time also matters, with less time producing slicker lather with less cushion that can generally be considered "better" because of the increased slickness. It's interesting that you start on the wetter side. That's pretty good. Because I'm measuring mass, I can accurately jump around with the water-to-soap/cream ratio. Differences present themselves more readily so that I can zero in better on the optimum and get an overall sense of how the soap or cream behaves, too. Your approach is good, though. If I had to make one suggestion on improving it, I would say to start with a dry synthetic brush. That would remove the variable of remaining water in the brush prior to loading. All water would then be added when loading the brush and face lathering. You should then end up with more control on the amount of water and a better feel for how much water is in the lather. I'm guessing that you're fairly consistent with your loading method, which should result in fairly consistent amounts of soap when evaluating a particular soap over a week or so.

 

[Oik520]

Thanks. I like your list, too. I think that most or all Sudsy Soapery soaps have clay in them. The one that I reviewed has three clays: rhassoul, kaolin, and bentonite.



I'm still focused on performance, but I've been opening up more to scents. I think that you're right that most artisan soaps are fairly good. There are a lot of good choices out there. It makes me want to shave more than once a day, but my face would have something to say about that.



You are way ahead of where I was after six months. It was after a lot of trial and error, frustration, and experimentation that I started from scratch and began measuring mass. However, a more systematic approach can be applied with any lathering method that one uses, with or without measuring mass. Consistency is key.



It's really good that you have been experimenting with the water amount. That's the biggest factor. Lathering time also matters, with less time producing slicker lather with less cushion that can generally be considered "better" because of the increased slickness. It's interesting that you start on the wetter side. That's pretty good. Because I'm measuring mass, I can accurately jump around with the water-to-soap/cream ratio. Differences present themselves more readily so that I can zero in better on the optimum and get an overall sense of how the soap or cream behaves, too. Your approach is good, though. If I had to make one suggestion on improving it, I would say to start with a dry synthetic brush. That would remove the variable of remaining water in the brush prior to loading. All water would then be added when loading the brush and face lathering. You should then end up with more control on the amount of water and a better feel for how much water is in the lather. I'm guessing that you're fairly consistent with your loading method, which should result in fairly consistent amounts of soap when evaluating a particular soap over a week or so.

I will try starting with a dry brush. Nice tip. I start on the wetter side because early on I struggled in the beginning month of shaving making Stirling work. I sent a message to the owner and he gave me the tip to add much more water and it worked like a charm. Gotta love the community. I think dry lather must be a very common beginner mistake.

 

[ShavingByTheNumbers]

I will try starting with a dry brush. Nice tip. I start on the wetter side because early on I struggled in the beginning month of shaving making Stirling work. I sent a message to the owner and he gave me the tip to add much more water and it worked like a charm. Gotta love the community. I think dry lather must be a very common beginner mistake.

Stirling definitely has good people and they make good soap. Stirling soap does appear to work better with more water compared to other soaps. The advice that you were given and your experience with it lines up with my optimization results. I found that Stirling's optimum water-to-soap ratio is around 17, which is on the high end of my results so far. I think that you are right about dry lather being a common mistake when starting out. Only through experience can we really figure out what soaps and creams work best for us and how to use them the best.

 

[RandySp]

And when you finally use Varesino:

- Best overall, performance, scent, cushion, glide, slickness, post shave feel, Cologne type scent, ease of lather, vegan soap formula.

 

[gsurko]

100 soaps in 6 months. No way can you judge that many soaps in so short a time. Slow down relaxe and enjoy.

 

[Tokyospike]

You're even more of a soap wackadoodle than I am!

+1

Try BOSC!