Your favorite Bay Rum Soap!

Whats your favorite Bay Rum soap? The only one ive tried is Sterling

Think you might have hit the jackpot from the get-go. Stirling is my favourite scent and the slickest. Others that are equally good for me but have different characteristics are:
- Barrister & Mann
- Krampert's Acadian
- OSP (Obsessive Soap Perfectionist from the UK)
all are top performers.

I have LA Shaving co. but I found the scent almost non-existent and the lather not on par with the others. I also tried Wickham's but again the scent just wasn't there. Also had two varieties of Ogallala but just couldn't get the lather to perform - it kept going lumpy so in the end used it as bath soap.

I would have to say Kramperts Acadian. Smells great, easy to lather, and leaves my face feeling wonderful.

Maybe the better question is "What isn't my favourite Bay Rum soap?!  I love them all.  Of all the ones I've tried the only one I don't care for is Taconic.  Here is a list of those I have and love:
B&M Bay Rum
Ogallala original /sage and cedar / limes and peppercorn
HTGAM / PAA
OSP
LASS - Santa Monica Bay Rum
Mike's Natural
Stirling
The Copper Hat
The Holy Black Bay Whisky and Lime
Krampert's !! Of course the Acadian Spice Bay Rum is awesome

The OSP is a great performer but very lightly scented.  The Ogallala for some reason doesn't seem to get the love I think, IMHO it deserves - YMMV I guess.
I'm including The Holy Black although its Bay Whisky because its in the same family and its awesome.

I'm sure I've got others and I'm interested to hear of bay rum soaps that I don't have so I can go out and get them, for crying out loud, they're Bay Rum!!
Mark

Mike, I find your comments on Ogallala interesting - I find it to be an excellent performer both face lathering or bowl lathering - I used it this morning with the big RazoRock Boar Bristle brush and the Wolfman razor - addition of water at the the right times is important. I've used the Ogallala sample pack of soaps and aftershaves to turn 5 people on to traditional wet shaving so clearly YMMV. Do you have hard or soft water? I have a water softener installed which may account for my never having a lathering issue.

I also quite like the LA shave soap Santa Monica Bay Rum to be quite nice, maybe milder than some others but an excellent performer - all of their soaps are great performers. If you want an unusual fragrance try their Bespoke #1.

I find the OSP which is made by one of your countrymen, to be very mildly scented - I had an exchange of emails with James the OSP about it and its possible it was a lightly scented batch. Either that or I have selective loss of my sense of smell - just OSP soap. I think OSP's performance more than makes up for the absence of scent and you get the real fragrance punch from the aftershave don't you.
Mark

Mike, I find your comments on Ogallala interesting - I find it to be an excellent performer both face lathering or bowl lathering - I used it this morning with the big RazoRock Boar Bristle brush and the Wolfman razor - addition of water at the the right times is important.  I've used the Ogallala sample pack of soaps and aftershaves to turn 5 people on to traditional wet shaving so clearly YMMV.  Do you have hard or soft water?  I have a water softener installed which may account for my never having a lathering issue.

I also quite like the LA shave soap Santa Monica Bay Rum to be quite nice, maybe milder than some others but an excellent performer - all of their soaps are great performers.  If you want an unusual fragrance try their Bespoke #2.

I find the OSP which is made by one of your countrymen, to be very mildly scented - I had an exchange of emails with James the OSP about it and its possible it was a lightly scented batch. Either that or I have selective loss of my sense of smell - just OSP soap.  I think OSP's performance more than makes up for the absence of scent and you get the real fragrance punch from the aftershave don't you.
Mark

Hi Mark, I have slightly hard water but really about mid-way. Ogallala was just a uniquely weird lather for me. It would start quite thin but when whipping up in my lather bowl would get thicker but at the same time go clumpy. Never had this experience with any other soap. The clumps kind of smoothed out when applied to my face but it didn't have any body to it and later collapsed in the lather bowl. I had Bay Rum Limes and Bay Rum Sandalwood - both behaved the same.
I gave it another go quite recently as a final test but it failed so had to go.

It may well be that I didn't add the right amount of water at the right time but I've been wet shaving for 3 years now and have tried many soaps and if it's just that finicky then sorry it's not for me. The only other soap that was as bad was MWF which sometimes was fantastic but sometimes abysmal - that too had to go.

Interesting that you mentioned OSP, my puck (batch 10) had a decent scent. On conversations on the TSR forum James said that the consistency in all batches is tightly controlled, so I can't explain the difference.

One point in OSP's favour is that I didn't react to the soap at all. With both B&M and Krampert's my skin goes slightly red but this fades about 15 mins after the shave. It's not uncomfortable and certainly not enough to stop me using the soaps which are divine. It may be that some US soaps have higher concentrations of scents than European ones.

The LA Shaving co. was a big disappointment as it had had great reviews and I had great expectations. Just the opposite to the other US soaps it had a very subtle scent.

Personally I believe there are variations between batches of (any) artisan soap or it's affected in transit or storage. As always YMMV.

Hi Mike, I hear you about performance - if its not working and you've tried reasonable attempts at solving it then out it goes - there are too many fine products out there to waste one's time. Life's too short for bad shaves.

My OSP batch was lucky #13 so maybe that explains it. I considered whether travelling to Canada and possibly freezing along the way may have had an impact as well. I agree with your views on variation between lots. I've also read reviews of products that I've tried and discarded and the reviewer is raving about the stuff. Talk about YMMV, either that or they're trying to promote the product and don't really care about accuracy. That never happens right? I think there are a lot of products coming on the market that are just trying to cash in on the growth in traditional wet shaving so all reviews have to be taken with a grain of salt and you need to rely on trusted sources.

I enjoy hearing people's opinions of products I know as I've found that my tastes sometimes vary from that of others.
Cheers,
Mark

I have tried about 8 or so different ones and Mikes is my favorite followed by Stirling.

I, too, have tried many: Mystic Waters, Captain's Choice (both the Italian Barber and their own version), Krampert's, Mike's, and CRSW.
For performance and scent, Mike's is my favorite, followed by Krampert's.

I haven't tried a lot of Bay Rum soaps, but my favorite one by far has been Barrister & Mann.

I have a bottle of Krampert's Finest aftershave. If the scent of the soap is faithful (as I understand it is) then that would be a great choice, too.