Grooming Dept | Earl Grey Gelato (Mallard Base)
APShaveCo. Elegant Emerald | SynBad 24mm
The New Improved Schick Injector Razor | Personna 74
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Grooming Dept hadn't been high on my list of soaps to try because---agree or not---soaps that have matching splashes are more attractive to me. Certainly, this self-imposed restriction has resulted in my missing out on a few good soaps. When you pair that with the relatively scant availability of Grooming Dept products, it was unlikely I would be picking up a tub anytime soon. West Coast Shaving changed that. The readily available stock, free shipping, and ease of ordering made the $23 for 4 oz. price tag a bit more palatable. I ordered
After The Fire from WCS, and then I commented on a Grooming Dept Instagram post indicating I'd made my first purchase of one of their soaps. Soon after my post, Grooming Dept contacted me via direct message and asked which soap I ordered. Then they offered to send me a tub of
Earl Grey Gelato in their
Mallard soap base. I was initially hesitant to accept the generous offer as I try to avoid making a habit of using free products and then touting their wonderful qualities. That said, Grooming Dept never once asked me to speak publicly about my experience but rather seemed genuinely interested in hearing my feedback directly, thus an exception was made.
In addition to the usual suspects, the highlights of ingredients in the
Mallard base include duck fat, goat milk, babassu oil, cupuacu butter, kokum butter, meadowfoam oil, jojoba oil, and kaolin clay (I'll include the unabridged list following this writing). That's an impressive list, and as such has the potential to be a good soap. Absent any data to support my theory, I suspect the source of tallow used has less to do with the product's performance than do the ratios and technique employed by the artisan, so I've wondered if the recent surge in duck fat bases hasn't been overplayed. Regardless, upon first use, Grooming Dept has me.
The dry product in the tub looks like formed rubber and is a light sandstone color. I honestly expected it to return to its form after pressing in with my thumb, but the appearance is deceptive, and it acts as many soft soaps leaving a dent with minimal crumbling. With the exception of a couple tiny caverns made by escaping bubbles, the surface is smooth and solid in appearance and has retracted from the wall of the tub as it cures.
The documented scent notes of
Earl Grey Gelato are "Earl Grey Tea, Lemon Gelato, and Waffle Cone". The fragrance off the tub is one of the lightest I've ever smelled. I simply could not detect much fragrance at all. I test lathered the night before and once again proved dry product scent assessments can't be trusted. A wonderful creamy and slightly sweet lemon fragrance quite boldly filled the bathroom. As I continued to play with lather, a warm muted vanilla crept in. The black tea note was also understated but made a late appearance nonetheless.
While it's a good practice to test lather a soap that's new to you, this is one of those bases in which I would say it's
essential to understanding the limits of the soap. It has a fair amount of thirst, and much like PAA's CK-6 base, it functions at an
adequate level even when it's not optimized. If you stop there, you may very well miss out on the most important aspect of the base, namely the slickness. However, the addition of more water transforms it into what it's intended to be. I found it difficult to drown this lather as it kept accepting more and more water. If you employ this method, the sweet spot is readily evident and a creamy, lustrous lather is forthcoming. It actually looks as if it will drip off your brush, but it doesn't. If you'll note in my SOTD picture, there are peaks in the lather. The only way I could get it to do that was to
underwater it. The second image is an optimized lather. To borrow a comparison often used by the great Jason Rudman, it looks like room temperature sour cream.
In real-world use, this lather is nothing short of spectacular. It's not just a pretty lather but a work horse, providing everything one expects from a top artisanal soap, demonstrating remarkable density, off-the-charts primary slickness as well as equally extraordinary residual slickness. The post shave is among the highest performers as well. Even for a head-shave, a post product was completely unnecessary, but if you're looking for a scent complement, Catie's Bubbles'
Confiant would pair nicely and pulls this out of gourmand territory. Alternatively, for the Earl Grey push, Barrister and Mann's
Cheshire would do in a pinch. For evaluation purposes, I skipped a post product and have no regrets.
In my opinion, Grooming Dept earns a spot among the elite artisans at least in terms of this duck fat base. While I belabored the need to explore its water limits, it's not a difficult product to lather. The warm, mellow, lemon-vanilla and black tea fragrance of Earl Grey Gelato is fresh and unique, so I'll be keeping this generous gift from Grooming Dept. Hopefully, I'll eventually get around to trying my purchased tub of
After The Fire that utilizes Grooming Dept's
Special Edition base which includes beef tallow in addition to duck fat.
Ingredients: Stearic Acid, Aloe Vera, Water, Potassium Hydroxide, Duck Fat, Babassu Oil, Castor Oil, Cupuacu Butter, Kokum Butter, Meadowfoam Oil, Jojoba Oil, Abyssinian Oil, Fragrance, Silk Peptides, Glycerin, Sunflower Lecithin, Goat Milk, Sucrose Cocoate, Carnauba wax, Kaolin Clay, Calendula Extract, Sodium Citrate, Sodium Lactate and Vitamin E.
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