Oh, ok. Don’t mind if I do.
Hallelujah! A soap from Queen Charlotte that is neither too weakly scented, or discontinued!
I mean, I knew that they could make a reasonably strongly scented soap. I’d tried their Monaco, and it was strong enough, and their Hanami was probably one of the few soaps that I found too strong. But thus far, the other soaps I’ve tried from them have been anything but strongly scented.
Not so with the Cayman. It’s a quite nice rendition of a classic Bay Rum scent, something which I’m almost always a fan of. It carries over to the lather fairly well, reasonably strong with only a bit of fading during the shave.
I’m starting to think I need to give previous reviews a quick once-over before I shave with a brand of soap I’ve used before. Because I totally ended up using too much water for the first go-around on this one. It’s kind of easy to over-shoot the sweet spot and use too much, which resulted in it being too runny for my taste. But a bit of fiddling, and I was able to get a nice shave out of it.
- 9/10 Scent Pleasantness
- 8/10 Scent Strength
- 7/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)
Overall, I give it a 7/10. Good shave, good scent, nothing to complain about here.
- Cost: Samples go for 5 for $10, with a surcharge for some scents including this one, so $2.50 was paid for the sample shown. A full sized puck is $15, plus $7 if you want a wooden bowl or $2.50 for a plastic tub.
Gear used:
- Brush: Ecotools Kabuki Finishing Brush (trying out Leisureguy’s recommendation for a cheap beginner brush)
- Razor: Edwin Jagger DE81BL (Red)
- Blade: Feather Hi-Stainless
- Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4
Ingredients: Saponified tallow, water, saponified castor oil and shea butter, glycerin, saponified stearic acid, cocoa butter, coconut oil, essential oil(s), saponified avocado oil, palm oil, and olive oil, aloe vera extract, kaolin clay, lanolin, vitamin E.
Palpz's Shaving Soap Reviews 
How clove-heavy is this one?
Not noticeably more so than most other Bay Rums… so, fairly?
Rats. I like bay rum, but so far I have found two that weren’t so clove heavy that the wife threatens to kick me out of the house.
One is Masters, which is basically nothing but bay. A bit boring.
The other was St. John’s Bay, but it contains eucalyptus oils, which cause the Mrs. to swell up and suffocate. 😛
Guess I’ll stick to other spice mixes.
Hi Greg,
Can you please review a NIVEA For Men Extra Moisture Shaving Cream (easily found in Shoppers Drug Mart, SuperStore). I want to see how it stands against competition.
Thanks a lot for the wonderful review site.
I’ll keep it in mind, but I make no guarantees about timeliness. I’ve got quite a back-log of soaps to try and I’m not really looking to stock up again anytime soon.
So how was the eco-tools brush?
Pretty good for the price. Far better than the only other Synthetic I’ve used, which was the cheap POS they sell at the Body Shop.
Not nearly as good as any of my Simpsons brushes, but of course those are 4 – 8 times the cost.
I’d say it’s about par with the “Art of Shaving” pure badger. It doesn’t seem to hold water / lather quite as well, but at least it isn’t prickly.
I think I’ll make it my new travel brush, since it’s cheap enough to not give a hoot if it gets damaged or lost.