This tub of Lemon Bay from Grooming Dept. lacks the top label because this is a sample tub holding half a puck — plenty enough to get a sense of the (excellent) soap. The fragrance is wonderful — I do like it when Bay Rum is taken in a new direction, as with Tallow + Steel’s Grog. The addition of lemon to the traditional bay rum fragrance now — in hindsight, having smelled the soap — seems totally natural: inspiration that when achieved seems so right that one thinks it’s obvious.
An aside: People so quickly assimilate new information that makes sense that they get the illusion that they already knew it and the person telling them brings nothing new to the party but is just stating the obvious. So a good practice before presenting (say) sales results or the outcome of an analysis is to ask those present to make their own estimates, and if it is possible, to record those on a whiteboard. Then if the presented numbers differ significantly, the people present will recognize that they are getting new information that was not in fact obvious. /aside
This Grooming Dept. soap, like yesterday’s, seems to like a little more water than other soaps — not much, but enough to notice. The lather again was quite wonderful. It’s a first-rate soap even apart from the intriguing fragrances on offer. (As the Stockist list at his site shows, the Canadian source is Italian Barber.)
Lemon Bay is unusual not only for the fragrance but also for the ingredients: it’s a donkey-milk, duck-fat, lamb-tallow shaving soap:
Aloe Vera Juice, Stearic Acid, Donkey Milk, Potassium Hydroxide, Duck Fat, Lamb Tallow, Castor Oil, Glycerin, Kokum Butter, Shea Butter, Cupuacu Butter, Sucrose Cocoate, Fragrance, Safflower Oil, Jojoba Oil, Coconut Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Acacia Senegal Gum, Kaolin Clay, Avocado Oil, Mango Butter, Grapeseed Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Sodium Lactate, Sodium Citrate, Xanthan Gum, Carnauba Wax, Allantoin, Chamomile Extract, Sea Buckthorn Extract. Flaxseed Oil, Sacha Inchi Extract. Silk Amino Acids and Tocopheryl Acetate.
I say again: the lather experience with this soap is first rate, both in making the lather and in using it. And with the Rockwell 6S (using the R4 baseplate), the shave was superb.
I experimented with a two-aftershave finish: first a splash of Dominica Bay Rum, then a splash of Myrsol’s Agua de Limon. That seemed to work well, but of course I (unlike, say, an elephant) find it difficult to sniff my own cheek.