Queen Charlotte Soaps – Key Lime soap

Tags

5/10, citrus, key lime, Lime, Queen Charlotte Soaps, shaving soap

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Or, if you’re an American, Columbus Day. Or if you’re neither American or Canadian, Monday. Today I’m going with Queen Charlotte Soaps’ Key Lime formulation, based on a recommendation from a fellow redditor. To start, this is what QCS says about their soap:

With a nice citrusy pop to it, this lime scent smells like freshly cut limes and lime zest. Unlike other lime scents, ours is dry, rather than sweet.

Once again, I found this scent to be lacking in strength. It wasn’t nearly as bad as their Green Irish Tweed formulation was, since I found that one to be essentially scent-less, but the soap didn’t have a strong smell of limes, lime zest, sweet dry or otherwise. What I could smell smelled pretty decent, mind you, but it definitely didn’t have enough to carry over anything but the faintest of hints to the lather.

I’m finding this to be somewhat frustrating, as of the 4 soaps from Queen Charlotte that I’ve tried thus far, the only two that were strong enough are two that have since been discontinued. Their not-available-anymore Monaco (my review here) was just a bit shy of strong enough, and their likewise discontinued Hanami (which I might get around to reviewing if I start running out of soaps that are still in production… a few years down the road at the rate I’m ordering stuff) was, if anything, a tad too strong. I know they can do it, hopefully a few of the other samples I’ve got turn out better.

I did find that it lathered better than the other QCS soaps I’ve tried out thus far. It turned up nice and thick, and really slick. This wasn’t a soap that required a whole lot of water for the lather, just whatever was left on my brush after flicking the excess off was enough to lather and and give plenty of glide. It didn’t produce as much in the way of volume, but made up for it in cushion. Quite a nice shave.

• 7/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 4/10 Scent Strength
• 7/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

Overall, I give it a 5/10. Hopefully one of these days I’ll be able to find a Lime shaving soap I really like, but this isn’t it.

• Cost: I paid $2 for a quarter ounce sample. A full sized puck starts at $13, a plus $7 if you want a wooden bowl or $2.50 for a plastic tub.

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor:Edwin Jagger DE81BL (Red)
• Blade: Astra Superior Platinum
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Saponified tallow, water, saponified castor oil and shea butter, glycerin, saponified stearic acid, cocoa butter, and coconut oil, essential oil(s), saponified avocado oil, palm oil, and olive oil, aloe vera extract, kaolin clay, lanolin, vitamin E.