Honeybee Soaps – Coffee Mocha

Tags

7/10, chocolate, coffee, honeybee soaps, shaving soap

Mmmmm… coffee and chocolate, two of my favourite things.

Honeybee Soaps’ rendition thereof is a fairly pleasant mix. It’s heavier on the chocolate, and a bit light on the coffee IMHO, and overall not quite as sweet as I would have expected. Still, it works fairly well, coming off what I’d say is a medium strong mix, without too much in the way of fading.

The lather’s the usual from Honeybee soaps; use a fair bit of water and some elbow grease and you’ll wrest a decent balance of thickness and glide out of the soap. It’s certainly good enough to get the job done.

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

All said, I think I’ll give this a 7/10; it’s good, but doesn’t really stand out in any particular area.

• Cost: Samples are $1.99 per ounce, full 3.5 ounce pucks are $4.99, or $6.99 for 4 ounces in a plastic tub.

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Feather AS-D2
• Blade: Big Ben Super Stainless
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Castor Oil, Hempseed Oil, Safflower Oil, Shea Butter, Glycerine (vegetable origin), Vitamin E, Water, Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Sorbitan Oleate, Soybean Protein, Wheat Protein, White Kaolin China Clay, Cosmetic Color and Fragrance Oil.

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Honeybee Soaps – Piña Colada

Tags

8/10, coconut, Fruit, honeybee soaps, pina colada, pineapple, shaving soap

Honeybee Soap’s Piña Colada shaving soap is a tasty smelling little concoction.

Needless to say, I’d suggest not nibbling on the soap, but it smells nice; fruity and tropical, pineapple and coconut (a bit of a focus on the coconut). It does a pretty good job of replicating the drink. The strength was fairly decent; not strong per se, but a nice and steady level.

The lather’s the usual from Honeybee soaps; use a fair bit of water and some elbow grease and you’ll wrest a decent balance of thickness and glide out of the soap. Nothing to write home about moisturization-wise.

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

Overall I’m happy with this soap; I’ll round it up to a 8/10.

• Cost: Samples are $1.59 per ounce, full 3.5 ounce pucks are $4.49, or $5.99 for 4 ounces in a plastic tub.

Gear used:

• Brush: Wee Scott
• Razor: Feather AS-D2
• Blade: Lord Super Stainless

Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Castor Oil, Hempseed Oil, Safflower Oil, Shea Butter, Glycerine (vegetable origin), Vitamin E, Water, Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Sorbitan Oleate, Soybean Protein, Wheat Protein, White Kaolin China Clay, Cosmetic Color and Fragrance Oil.

Honeybee Soaps – Bay Rum shaving soap

Tags

7/10, bay rum, honeybee soaps, shaving soap

I can’t really say I was all that much of a fan of this rendition of bay rum. It just wasn’t “Bay Rummy” enough, although I’m not really sure I can articulate quite why. I guess it was lacking a bit of the sweetness you usually get from most bay rums, and the balance of spices didn’t really appeal to me either.

The strength was pretty good, came on fairly strong, with just a bit of fading as the shave progressed.

The lather itself is exactly what you expect from Honeybee Soaps: Make sure to use plenty of water, and it’ll whip up into a nice cream with a good amount of glide. Ok moisturization to boot, but nothing outstanding on that front.

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

Anyways, I’ll round up to a 7/10. It wouldn’t be my first recommendation, either for a Bay Rum or a pick from Honeybee Soaps, but I’m sure there’ll be some out there who like it a bit more.

Cost: Samples are $1.99 per ounce (or $17.95 for a 10 pack), full 3.5 ounce pucks are $4.49, or $5.99 for 4 ounces in a plastic tub.

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Gillette Old Style with WWI US Service Set
• Blade: Crown Super Stainless
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Castor Oil, Hempseed Oil, Safflower Oil, Shea Butter, Glycerine (vegetable origin), Vitamin E, Water, Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Sorbitan Oleate, Soybean Protein, Wheat Protein, White Kaolin China Clay, Cosmetic Color and Fragrance Oil.

Honeybee Soaps – Hydrogen

Tags

7/10, amber, Apple, citrus, floral, Fruit, Glycerin, grapefruit, honeybee soaps, hydrogen, peach, raspberry, sandalwood, shaving soap

Hydrogen from Honeybee Soaps is a rather complex scent; mostly fruity with a few woodsy undertones. Honeybee describes it as “Apple, grapefruit, peach and greenery mix with soft floral middle notes, rounded off with base notes of sandalwood, amber and raspberry musk.” It’s a light and fresh, and I really rather quite like it. I’d be a good summer fragrance methinks. I’m pretty sure that’s not what H2 smells like however.

Unfortunately, when I said light, I mean too light. It’s not strong enough for my liking, just barely above the threshold where it’s noticeable when first lathered on; by the end of the shave it faded to the point where your get a sporadic whiff.

As for the lather, it’s what I’ve come to expect from Honeybee soaps; use a lot of water and a bit of elbow grease, and you’ll get a nice balance of thickness and a good amount of glide.

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

Overall a nice decent all-around soap. A tad stronger (ok, probably about 3-4 times the fragrance level) would have been nice though. 7/10.

• Cost: Samples are $1.59 per ounce, full 3.5 ounce pucks are $4.49, or $5.99 for 4 ounces in a plastic tub.

Gear used:

• Brush: Ecotools Kabuki Finishing Brush
• Razor: 1966 Gillette Tech
• Blade: Gillette 7 O’clock Black
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Castor Oil, Hempseed Oil, Safflower Oil, Shea Butter, Glycerine (vegetable origin), Vitamin E, Water, Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Sorbitan Oleate, Soybean Protein, Wheat Protein, White Kaolin China Clay, Cosmetic Color and Fragrance Oil.

Honeybee Soaps – Sandalwood shaving soap

Tags

7/10, honeybee soaps, sandalwood, shaving soap

Honeybee Soaps is nothing if not consistent with the lather of their
soaps. It’s rather good, with a reasonably large “sweet spot” for water
content, tending towards the “thirsty” side of things, providing a good
balance of a nice thick cream with plenty of glide. It left the face
feeling nice enough, not super moisturizing mind you, but better than
nothing.

A reminder for those who haven’t seen yet, I’ve amended the scoring for lather quality, since there was too much variation within the 9/10s. Some former 9/10s and everything that was 8/10 or lower were bumped down a point.

The sandalwood is pretty good. Not the best sandalwood scent I’ve come
across, but it does the trick. It’s almost strong enough; when first
lathered up and slapped onto your face, I’d say it’s just slightly
underpowered. Unfortunately, it does fade a bit from there, although not
too much.

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

I’ll give this a 7/10. It’s rather nice, but there are better sandalwoods out there, and better Honeybee soap scents.

• Cost: Samples are $1.59 per ounce (or $17.95 for a 10 pack), full 3.5 ounce pucks are $4.49, or $5.99 for 4 ounces in a plastic tub.

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Vintage Bakelite Slant
• Blade: Gillette Silver Blue
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients:Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Castor Oil, Hempseed Oil, Safflower Oil, Shea Butter, Glycerine (vegetable origin), Vitamin E, Water, Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Sorbitan Oleate, Soybean Protein, Wheat Protein, White Kaolin China Clay, Cosmetic Color and Fragrance Oil.

Honeybee Soaps – Orange Burst shaving soap

Tags

7/10, citrus, Fruit, honeybee soaps, Orange, shaving soap

Welcome to the Shaving Soap Review Roadshow! I’m out of town for a bit, and travelling without checked luggage, so I couldn’t bring any DE blades, and frankly I refuse to pay $7.50 for 10 shitty Wal-greens brand generic blades, so the next few shaves will be done with a Bic Comfort Twin disposable.

First up, Honeybee Soaps and their Orange Burst shaving soap. The scent is basically exactly what you’d expect, a nice sweet orange cirtusy scent.

However, it’s not quite strong enough. I was a bit surprised, as I haven’t had that problem yet from any of Honeybee’s offerings, but I suppose you can’t expect a home run every time.

The lather however is still spot on from what I expect from Sue’s soaps. It’s a thirsty soap, but as long as you go ahead and use plenty of water, it’ll be put to good use. It makes a boat-load of thick slick luxurious lather, which makes for a great shave. Or, at least, as great of a shave as can be expected from using a twin-bladed disposable.

• 9/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 7/10 Scent Strength
• 8/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

Overall, the weakness of the scent is enough to drop it down to a 7/10. Not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but not something I’ll find myself reaching for on a regular basis, especially when alongside some of the other Honeybee soaps.

• Cost: Samples are $1.59 per ounce, full 3.5 ounce pucks are $4.49, or $5.99 for 4 ounces in a plastic tub.

Gear used (Roadshow edition!):

• Brush: Wee Scott
• Razor: Bic Comfort Twin
• Scuttle: A empty tub that formerly contained the Body Shop’s Maca Root shaving cream.

Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Castor Oil, Hempseed Oil, Safflower Oil, Shea Butter, Glycerine (vegetable origin), Vitamin E, Water, Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Sorbitan Oleate, Soybean Protein, Wheat Protein, White Kaolin China Clay, Cosmetic Color and Fragrance Oil.

Honeybee Soaps – Cherry Pipe Tobacco

Tags

9/10, cherry, Fruit, honeybee soaps, shaving soap, smokey, tobacco

The Cherry Pipe Tobacco soap from Honeybee Soaps is just absolutely delicious smelling. It’s a wonderful Cherry scent, almost maraschino-cherry-like, with a nice undertone of smokey tobacco. When I was pondering the rating, I was musing either a 9 or a 10, but She Who Must Be Obeyed has decreed that a 10 it shall be.

Strength-wise, it’s just shy of perfect. Comes on strong even just opening the package, and stays strong as you’re lathering, and applying it to the face. It fades slightly during the shave, but even by the end of a pass it’s still stronger than most shave soaps are on the brush.

Like the last review, this one needed a fair bit of water. But it absorbed that water handily, and with a bit of work transformed into a large amount of quite luxuriously thick lather, with plenty of glide. It left my face feeling nice and moist as well. All around, a great shave.

• 10/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 9/10 Scent Strength
• 8/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

This one I’m going to round up on. 9/10. Quite nice. While I’ve only done two soaps from them, Honeybee is quickly shooting up to near the top of my “most consistently good brand” list.

• Cost: Samples are $1.59 per ounce, full 3.5 ounce pucks are $4.49, or $5.99 for 4 ounces in a plastic tub.

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Vintage Bakelite Slant
• Blade: Gillette Silver Blue
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Castor Oil, Hempseed Oil, Safflower Oil, Shea Butter, Glycerine (vegetable origin), Vitamin E, Water, Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Sorbitan Oleate, Soybean Protein, Wheat Protein, White Kaolin China Clay, Cosmetic Color and Fragrance Oil.

Honeybee Soaps – Lilac

Tags

8/10, floral, honeybee soaps, lilac, shaving soap

Honeybee Soaps has wonderful little 1 ounce samples, pressed into a 3 inch wide disc that’ll fit well into most folks’ shaving mugs. When I went to go load my brush with this one, however, I just held it in my off hand. Mainly because I didn’t want to use the same container for both loading and lathering, and because my spare tub was full of my pre-shave soap.

This was for the most part an example of “wetter is better” when lathering. A reasonable amount of extra water didn’t thin things down all that much, but helped a lot with the slickness. The soap also produced quite a lot of lather, I certainly didn’t at any point feel the need to go and make some more. It was relatively stable, showing a bit of degradation / breakdown if you left it sitting, but less than I see from most other brands. Overall, it gave a really good shave, and left my face feeling nice and moisturized, and irritation free.

Sue at Honeybee Soaps promised “the heady scent of full springtime blooms” with this soap, and I can say she certainly delivered. Lilac is one of my favorite floral scents, and it was captured fairly in this soap.

As for the strength of the Lilac aroma, it was just right. From the moment I opened the package the lilac scent was quite evident, and once I started lathering up, the aroma filled the room. Unlike a lot of soaps out there, the lather itself managed to capture the scent as well. Once I was done my shave and rinsed off, the lilac scent did not seem to linger, or at the very least, if it did, it was weak enough that it wasn’t noticeable over my aftershave balm.

• 9/10 Scent Pleasantness
• 10/10 Scent Strength
• 8/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)

So, I was quite quite pleased with this sample, and am greatly looking forward to the other 19 Honeybee soaps I’ve currently got to get through. 8/10. Great success!

• Cost: Samples are $1.59 per ounce (which is a pretty darned good deal), full 3.5 ounce pucks are $4.49, or $5.99 for 4 ounces in a plastic tub. This is definitely not one of the cases where half the price of the soap seems to be in the container it’s in.

Gear used:

• Brush: The Colonel
• Razor: Edwin Jagger DE81BL (Red)
• Blade: Gillette Silver Blue
• Scuttle: Robert’s Feats of Clay #4

Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Castor Oil, Hempseed Oil, Safflower Oil, Shea Butter, Glycerine (vegetable origin), Vitamin E, Water, Sodium Hydroxide, Sorbitol, Sorbitan Oleate, Soybean Protein, Wheat Protein, White Kaolin China Clay, Cosmetic Color and Fragrance Oil.