In praise of the unstable lather: Zartgefuehl Ziegen Bart
I've got to say I'm impressed with this soap, although it's certainly not going to be in everyone's taste. It breaks a lot of rules on what I thought I wanted in a shave soap, namely in it's lack of cushion and lather stability, but gets me a repeatedly solid shave day on day. I wanted to share my experience because it's so far out of the norm but is a solid performer for me.
I think this formulation (or at least this packaging) is exclusive to TSS, which is from where I bought it (this being the internet someone will correct me on the exclusivity). The soap lacks in any of the stearic acid/palm oil stabilizers found in most shave soaps, and comes in a good sized tin with the puck being formed into the tin. It's dense, and hard but not as hard as a milled soap. The soap lathers up fairly quickly with a stiff brush, I've been using broken-in boar, and I wouldn't recommend trying anything floppy. Starting with a shaken out brush, going for about 40 seconds on the puck I get a nice tarry base and then face lather from there, adding a little water as needed. It lathers up reasonably well, not the quickest but certainly nothing too difficult. The mild scent is primarily citrus notes, although there's some complexity there with some botanical scents as well.
Note on water quality I'm using: my water is desalinized crap that's not considered potable... you can't drink out of the tap... I'm fairly sure there's a decent amount of chlorine to it... doesn't seem to impede my lathering too much though...
While the the lather builds just fine it will not last and you're going to have to futz with it mid-shave. I can get through one side of my face and then I need to re-lather on the other side as it just looks like soap residue at that point. The lather has little cushion to it. It's slick, and if not the slickest I've used there's not too much in front of it. But whatever it's doing to my whiskers it is doing better than anything else I've experienced. Residual slickness is high... some soaps are nice and slick with a good cushion, but if I have to do any kind of touch-up without re-lathering it's a firm no-go (Truefitt & Hill cream seems to be especially bad in this area). Not here... I don't build a full lather on my second pass but use what's on the brush, and it works quite well. Touch-ups I can just swipe in from the side and take care of without a third hit of the brush.
I'm a seven day a week shaver, with a very dense beard that's probably average on courseness of the individual hair. Because I get up early (and covet every last second of my morning sleep), I get what I get in two passes (WTG then ATG) and a quarter (the quarter is for a swirl on my right jowl which needs an XTG-ish stroke or it will bug the heck out of me all day). Usually I get a pretty good shave, but using this soap I'm hitting BBS regularly. As in smooth skin up to dinner time. My skin feels great as well, while I still use a post-shave balm it's mostly now because I like the scent.
Not a soap for everyone. I would not recommend this for someone I was introducing to wet shaving. The mid-pass re-lather will mess with your pattern... and if that's not your thing stay away. But, if you want to add something different to your lineup, I think this is worth a try.
