Tag Archives: Almond

Elvado – Madera Almond Shaving Soap

29 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Canadian, Elvado, Soap

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Elvado - Madera Almond

My next review from Elvado is their Madera Almond Shaving Soap. Seems like named it’s after the county / city of Madera California, where I believe they get the almond essential oils used to scent the soap.

The formulation appears to be exactly the same as the previous soap of theirs that I’ve tried (well, other than the scent part), with no real discernible difference in the performance, as expected. It’s a fairly good melt and pour. It does require a fair bit of water to get up to optimal performance, along with some elbow grease. Gives a good glide with just a tad less thickness than I usually like. And it left my face feeling nice and moisturized after the fact.

The scent is a classic Italian-style sweet almond, like Cella et al. It’s quite pleasant. The strength is good, coming on fairly strong, albeit with some noticeable fading going on before I was done each pass.

  • 9/10 Scent Pleasantness
  • 8/10 Scent Strength
  • 8/10 Lather Quality

The verdict? 8/10. It’s pretty good, and probably fairly competitive when stacked against most other almond scented products I’ve tried.

  • Cost: I was provided this tub free for the purposes of the review by the folks at Elvado. At the time I write this, everywhere appears to be out of stock of the version in the tub, it looks like you can still get the 71 g shaving stick for $14.96.

Gear used:

Ingredients: Cocos Nucifera (Coconut Oil), Elaesis Guineensis (Palm Oil) , Cathamus Tintorius (Safflower Oil), Glycerine (Kosher of vegetable origin), Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter), Purified Water, Fragrance (Parfum 100% Natural), Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Sorbitan Oleate, Glycine Soja (Soy Bean Protein), Titanium Dioxide (Mineral Whitener)

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Boellis Panama 1924 Shaving Soap

28 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by in Italian, Soap

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Boellis Panama 1924

Boellis Panama 1924 is one of those top shelf products which, while I could understand why others seem to really like it, I’m not really all that enthused about.

It provides a very good shave. It’s a relatively soft soap, but not one of those that’s all sticky. It lathered up fairly easily, giving a great combination of thickness and slickness, with a reasonably wide sweet spot for acceptable water content. And it left my face feeling rather nice and moisturized. All in all, a rather nice lather.

The scent is almond, as we ever so often see out of Italian shaving soaps, although it doesn’t really have that maraschino cherry sweetness that so many of them do. And it’s quite light. There’s the kicker for why there’s others out there that I’d prefer; the scent isn’t strong enough to really provide all that much towards the enjoyment of the shaving experience.

  • 8/10 Scent Pleasantness
  • 6/10 Scent Strength
  • 9/10 Lather Quality

Overall, I’ll give it a 7/10. Shaves well, but overall I think it’s outgunned by say, Cella or RazoRock Cacao.

Gear used:

Ingredients: Aqua, stearic acid, palmitic acid, tallow, cocos nucifera, potassium hydroxide, potassium carbonate, tetrasodium EDTA, parfum

Geo F. Trumper’s – Almond shaving cream

08 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in British, Cream, Geo F Trumper

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Trumpers - Almond

So, I still seem to be experiencing a fair bit of variability in the shave quality of Trumpers creams. This one I found turned out to be a fair chunk better than all the others I’ve tried. I don’t know, maybe they’re all the same and it’s just really fiddly, and I got lucky with the almond. Anyways, I had previously mainly had issues with the lubrication of GFT creams, this wasn’t an issue this time. It needed a fair bit of water, but this didn’t result in unacceptable levels of thinning out, unlike, for example, the violet.

The almond scent is a nice one. It’s your classic sweet almond / marzipan scent. It’s a tad on the weak side: nice and strong when you’re sniffing the cream itself, or the brush after lathering, but it doesn’t carry over very strongly when applied to the face.

  • 9/10 Scent Pleasantness
  • 7/10 Scent Strength
  • 8/10 Quality of Lather

So, overall, I’d say it’s a 7/10. A bit stronger on the scent could have bumped it up.

Gear used:

Ingredients: Aqua (water), Stearic Acid, Myristic Acid, Potassium Hydroxide, Coconut Acid, Glycerin, Parum (fragrance), Triethanolamine, Sodium Hydroxide, Methylparaben, Propylparaben

RazoRock Cacao Shaving Cream Soap

23 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Italian, RazoRock, Soap

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RazoRock - Cacao

Edit: as below, this has been discontinued

This is an emergency last-minute review, as Joe over at Italian Barber has informed us that Cacao is going the way of XXX very very soon.

Like the original classic RazoRock soap, this is a marzipan / sweet almond scented shaving soap, along the lines of Cella and Vitos. It’s quite the pleasant scent, if you like that sort of thing. Strength wise, it started off very nicely, however seemed to fade rather quickly. Not just over the course of a pass, but subsequent layers of lather put on between passes was also noticeably weaker than the previous applications, to the point that it was rather weakly scented at best by the end of the shave.

On the other hand, the lather performed admirably. It’s a very soft soap, and loaded up easily, and lathered nice and thick with just a bit of water. It could have used a tad more lubrication, but it wasn’t far off at all in that regard either. All in all, it gave a great shave, and had superior moisturizing properties as well.

Overall, I’m going to say it’s a rather strong 8/10. In comparison to the most obvious competitor, I think it shaves better than Cella does, but Cella’s scent holds up better. Also, in comparison to the classic RazoRock, I haven’t tried it myself, but I’ve been told that they perform quite similarly. From what I can tell the main difference is just the inclusion of the Cacao Seed Butter in this version, and frankly, there’s not really much of that included anyways (2nd last ingredient on the list).

Gear used:

Ingredients: Water(l’eau), cocos nucifera (coconut)oil, stearic acid, palmitic acid, potassium hydroxide, propylene glycol, myristic acid, peg-150 distearate, parfum(fragrance), simmondsia chinensis (jojoba) oil, tetrasodium edta , theobroma cacao(cocoa) seed butter, menthol

Vitos Extra Super – Coconut scent soap

28 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in Italian, Soap

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Vitos gave me a pretty darned good shave. It was fairly easy to get a good lather out of it, nice and thick with good glide. Not too much in the way of volume, but that’s not all that big of a deal. Nothing out of the ordinary in the way of extra moisturizing properties, but still a nice solid shave.

The scent is a classic marzipan / sweet almond, with just a little hint of coconut. It’s quite pleasant; when the girlfriend gave the jar a sniff her eyes just lit up, and I had to warn her not to take a bite out of it.

Strength-wise is where it fails however. In the jar, it’s nice and strong. On the brush after loading up, it’s barely there. Once lathered up on the face, it fades to non-existence pretty swiftly.

Overall, I give it a 6/10. I wouldn’t recommend it really. Cella is better. Buy that instead.

Gear used:

Ingredients: Stearic acid, hydrogenated tallow, water, potassium hydroxide, glycerin, sodium hydroxide, sodium hexametaphosphate, talc, benzaldehide.

Cella Crema da Barba all’Olio di Mandorla

28 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Italian, Soap

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Cella Crema da Barba all’Olio di Mandorla is widely regarded as one of the finest shave soaps Italy has produced; there is no surprise that they have been manufacturing (supposedly without changing their formula) since 1899. I should note here, that there is apparently a fair amount of debate as to whether or not Cella’s “Crema da Barba all’Olio di Mandorla” (sold in the small red plastic tub) is the exact same formulation as the “Crema Sapone Extra Extra Purissima” (sold in the 1kg bricks.) The consensus is that they are extremely similar, but no one is sure if any differences noted between the two are by design, or just as a result of the environmental effects over time due to the different packaging methods. This review is on the soap sold in the small red plastic tub.

The scent is a classic sweet almond / marzipan. It’s quite wonderful, and there is no surprise that it has inspired countless others soap-makers. Very pleasant. It is strong enough to be noticeable while shaving, but lightly so. Personally, I’d prefer it to be a tad stronger.

It quite easily whips up into voluminous clouds of thick puffy cream, with just a little bit o’ water on the brush. And it gives a very nice shave, giving just enough lubrication to allow your razor to glide over the face. It gives enough cushion, without getting in the way.

Overall, I give it a 8/10. I would highly recommend this to anyone at all who doesn’t hate the scent of almonds.

Gear used: