Product Review: Almon Loos World Famous Knock-Out Shaving Soap

I recently received this product to review from the man himself, Almon Loos after a chat on Facebook about a mini-documentary I saw on him. (You can read more about what else I got in my blog entry here: Almon Loos Rockabilly Barber.) And while I did receive it for free, I was under no obligation to give it a good review, or to even post anything positive about it at all. These are my conditions for all of my reviews. I'm honest in my blogging because really what would be the point otherwise?

(I used this soap with my GBar SE Razor and Badger Brush)

Firstly, this product has to get some sort of brownie points for having the longest title of any product I've reviewed to date! Almon Loos World Famous Knock Out Shaving Soap! Phew! Secondly, props have to be given to Almon for his home-made feel to the product. He makes this stuff by hand and, while the packaging is unlikely to win any awards for innovative design, I like it. He uses simple aluminium trays for the soap which give you the handy option of either using the soap straight in the tray given, or to take the puck out and pop it in your regular shaving mug. If, like me, you use it in the tray, then the lack of replaceable lid can be a little annoying but I was lucky enough to remove it's initial plastic cover carefully enough that I can just pop it back on after each use. In fact, while writing this, it just occurred to me to simply pop the paper lid back on and just bend the edges of the tray around it - much like you would with take-away food! Wow sometimes my own genius amazes me!
Okay so onto the product itself. The first thing I noticed was it's lack of scent. It was a little disappointing but I should have expected this as Almon markets it as being suitable for use on all skin types, and I have to agree that I doubt anyone with hypo-allergenic skin would have a problem with this. The ingredients of the soap are all recognisable and described well, so the lack of fragrance makes sense. Still, as a personal preference I like a scent, but ya can't have everything.
Now I have to be honest, upon opening the soap and looking at it I figured it'd perform just like a regular melt-and-pour glycerin soap, as I think I've been biased towards soft soaps as of late. But boy was I wrong!
I whirled my brush on this puck for a few seconds, not even sure if the lather was loading properly, but once I put the brush to my skin this stuff lathered epically. Thick, slick and plentiful. In fact it's one of the only lathers I've found that, while leg lathering, built up a huge amount of lather in the brush also! Normally the lather will just form on my skin and the brush remains a bit soapy - but with this I had a full brush of lather too. And lots of it. A few swirls on the puck gave a tons of lather and it was lovely, white and smooth. I liked it so much I made up a batch in a bowl so I could post a few pictures on here for you!:

I call this one "El Diablo" because of it's horns and it's rockabilly maker.

As you can see it has nice self-supporting peaks and the lather was thick and cushioned like a meringue. I had a lovely smooth shave and tried the soap with a couple of different brushes and it performed well with both. I reckon the puck is big enough to last a good long time and this will be in my regular rotation for sure. You can find it for sale here: Knock Out Soap ... Rock'n'Roll!
- BE