Category Archives: Health

King Manes Beard Balm, 2oz.

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The King Manes Balm comes in a different package than any of the other balms in this series. They deliver their product in a black tube with gold lettering. It’s made in the United States, and not tested on animals. The product is quite sensitive to room temperatures, so in the winter it’s really quite tricky to use, but in the summer it is very easy to use. The key in the winter is to massage the container until you warm it up so it will flow properly when you squeeze.

The product itself at first was a bit of a challenge to dispense as I bought it in the wintertime. After reading a lot of reviews on Amazon, I discovered many of the oddities about this product could be seen as features or remarkable qualities. Getting the right amount is the most significant learning curve, as you don’t scrape it out of a tin with your thumbnail. Instead, I’ve started to squeeze it onto my thumbnail for measurement sakes and then work it from there. The product is not waxy, it is more of a thick gel with small gritty beads. As it turns out, the beads are actually wax spheres that come solidified in the product and melt when you warm it up in your hands. The warming part is done when you don’t feel any more grit in the product as the wax has all melted. The scent is a mild mint and is quite pleasant, very light, and after about an hour, you don’t even notice it any longer. There isn’t anything more remarkable to mention about this balm, beyond any of the others other than the little wax spheres lend a kind of “readiness” factor to when it is right to work it into one’s beard.

The plastic tube is a novel packaging approach; however, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to extract all the product by squeezing. I also am concerned that this creates more plastic waste than the aluminum tins do. I assume the tins are more recyclable than the plastic tubes. The most significant factor for King Manes is room temperature and patience. You can’t just use this on the go, you need a few minutes with it, especially in the winter when the room temperature is lower than the products melt point. While I am impressed by the quality of the product, the packaging feels more wasteful, and so I probably won’t be refilling this particular balm once it runs out.

Beardoholic Beard Balm, 2oz.

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The Beardoholic products all have one central tragic failure, their packaging. The balm itself is a good product, it is yellow in color, and has middle of the road consistency and viscosity. The ingredients are what you would expect, however, the beeswax is the last ingredient which likely explains the natural variation in the texture between all the balms. For Reuzel, it’s the second ingredient, and so it’s a stiffer balm. This product also features an expiration date of about four years from production, something you don’t see in other products.

The scent is described on the packaging as “Sweet Orange,” and the smell is precisely so. The citrus notes are very light and refreshing. The orange isn’t bracing, cutting, or belting but more subtle. Everything about Beardoholic is a pleasure to use, except for the packaging. The first product I bought of theirs was their unscented Beard Oil, and that product came with a crumpled cap on the bottle. This product likewise came from distribution with the tin lid crushed. The packaging is thin enough where you can apply some pressure with your thumb and reform the metal cap at least on the balm. The price of this product is one of the most expensive too, at roughly $20 for 2 ounces. That puts this product at the top of the range, and while the product itself is good, for double the price of the Viking Revolution balms, I would expect more than this. I will continue to enjoy using the Beardoholic balm that I have, but considering the price, I will likely not be a regular consumer.

Viking Revolution Beard Balm, 2oz.

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The last review for the Viking Revolution Sandalwood has almost the same nature as this balm. The packaging is a stout aluminum canister, much like all the others. It resists warping and crushing so the packaging is one of the more reliable in all the balms I have. There are labels on the front and back, and this balm is made in China, like the previously reviewed Sandalwood one. The consistency is identical to the main body of balms as well, waxy at room temperature, not as loose as the Amish, not as hard as the Reuzel. The price point for all the Viking Revolution balms are the same, about $10 for two ounces.

The scent for this balm carries very light citrus and orange note. It’s as faint as the Sandalwood scent is strong. All the Viking Revolution products are cruelty-free, not tested on animals. That is one of the most respectable and consistent features across the entire spectrum of beard care products and something I appreciate. I would consider this balm to be a standby, much like the Sandalwood one, and shares the third place in my rankings of favorite balms.

Viking Revolution Sandalwood Beard Balm 2 oz.

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Nearly all of the balms and oils I have reviewed so far have all been made either in Canada or the USA. The Viking Revolution products were all made in China. I wasn’t expecting one of my absolute favorites to be an outlier. The tin is made of aluminum, with labeling on the front and the back. The consistency is similar to the main body of the products I use, not as stiff as the Reuzel and not as loose as the Honest Amish, but right in the middle. It is the consistency of wax more than paste.

The first thing I noticed about this particular item was the scent. It’s intoxicating! The Sandalwood is warm, spicy, and very strong. The smell doesn’t last quite as long as I was expecting, maybe at most an hour. Each of these balms took a little bit to get used to, but this particular one is my #2 favorite right behind the original Reuzel Balm. The Viking Revolution Sandalwood Balm has also been one of only a few that elicited direct compliments as people wanted to know what fragrance I was using. I don’t know if other balms are equally as, but the Sandalwood has definitely left a positive impression on others when I use it.

The price-point for the Sandalwood Balm is about $10 for 2 ounces, so they definitely are the masters of the best bang for your buck right along with Honest Amish.

Rocky Mountain Barber Company’s Unscented Beard Oil, 1 oz.

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The Rocky Mountain Barber Company also has variously scented and unscented beard oils. I selected the unscented beard oil because of my positive experiences with their balms and that they had the packaging, the rubber dropper, that made sense. This is genuinely unscented, there is almost no scent to this product whatsoever. The bottle is a Brown Glass Boston Bottle and should be what the Beardoholic folks switch to for product packaging.

This is an excellent beard oil, and I use it when I want the benefits of the oil without a strong scent that would otherwise clash with either my fragrance choice or my balm choice. The Honest Amish Beard Oil goes well with some of the warmer more woodsy scented balms whereas this one, the Rocky Mountain Unscented works well with the citrus or soapy scented balms. While I love exploring the scents in these products, having a good option that is totally unscented will always be in my beard-care kit.

Rocky Mountain Barber Company’s Cedarwood Beard Balm, 2 oz.

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The Rocky Mountain products hail from Niagara Falls, Ontario. They are the only ones that aren’t made in the USA. The tin is a standard aluminum one, with two ounces of the product inside. Labels on the front and rear with the full product description. The balm is wax-based and about the same viscosity as the Reuzel Balm.

The scent is piney, intense notes of cedar and citrus and is quite sharp. This balm is my third favorite of all of the balms, and it did not suffer the same glitch that the Reuzel appeared to have from the factory, the wax was glossy to start with. It was this balm that after I applied it the first time gave me a little bit of a tingle as it was brushed through my beard. The tingle was brief and was not unpleasant, but it was remarkable in that it is the only product that tingles after application. Perhaps there is an ingredient that is acidic or astringent, I don’t know.

This was also the first departure from USA products, and the Canadians make a product to be proud of. Everything I have purchased so far all clearly states that none of it is tested on animals. I couldn’t endure the thought of a rabbit covered in the product and examined. I would instead test it myself and deal with whatever consequences come from the trial. The label, “Not tested on animals” is one of those marks that are deal-breakers for me, if the mark isn’t there, I won’t buy it.

Honest Amish Premium Beard Oil, 2 oz.

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The Honest Amish Premium Beard Oil is next. This is one of the beard oils I use routinely. The scent screams woodshop. The notes in the scent are sawdust, the warm smell of metal saw blades and a very weak burned resin. I humorously regard this one as “An exploding lumber yard.” The oil is quite darker than anything else I’ve used and might slightly alter the white in my beard and bring out a very slight yellow tint, but I’ve never thought that a negative.

Honest Amish again delivers more product for similar cost than any of their competitors. They ship double the product for almost the same price. I seem to vacillate between applying the beard oil by hand, versus dropping the oil on my brush and using the brush to apply it. I don’t know if there is a difference in application styles, but I do think that applying it by hand seems to be a more thorough method. There doesn’t appear to be any consensus online either, as I have searched in vain numerous times.

Once the bottle at work is exhausted, I intend to rotate the Honest Amish in and carry it around with me as my go-to beard oil choice.

Beardoholic Unscented Beard Oil 1 oz.

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The Beardoholic Unscented Beard Oil, in the 1-ounce bottle, came damaged from Amazon. Beardoholic appears to use aluminum caps on both their bottles and tins and for some reason, the materials always seem to come from the factory bent, warped or buckled. There is little if any scent to discuss about this product, beyond the smell of some of the component oils, which are ever so slightly vegetal or woodsy, if at all.

I started using this beard oil a few times during the day but quickly grew tired of the bottle assembly. It came with an aluminum cap that was buckled from distribution if not from the factory, and so it would never retain a seal. It did not leak, but it also did not fully seat properly. There was an inner plastic dropper-hole cap, with a small plastic plug and after five or six times putting it on and taking it off, it started to warp and ultimately I had to throw the little plug away because it could no longer seal to the dropper-hole it was mated to. After about half of the oil was used, I noticed small spots of leakage, so I resolved to transfer the contents to some other bottle. This created a new comedy of errors and a life lesson on cheap scale problems for consumers. What I wanted was a Boston Bottle, brown glass, with a certain thread count and density. I learned more about bottle choices trying to fix this problem than I ever meant to. As it turns out, you cannot merely order anything like this in one piece increments. You can find lots of people to sell you exactly what you want, a brown-glass Boston Bottle with 20/400 thread with a rubber top and glass pipette. What you can’t find is anyone willing to sell it to you in counts less than 500. So, if you want to fix this one problem, you have to buy 500 glass bottles to fix just one. It’s thoroughly absurd. I have moved away from Beardoholic as a brand, not because of their product, but because of their packaging. It was the first beard oil I tried, and it was a challenge to use. In the end, I did more shopping online and discovered that many other manufacturers use rubber-top/glass-pipette bottles, which I find to be incredibly more pleasant to use. In the end, I ended up at of all places, Hobby Lobby. They were the only ones I could find that had bottles like what I was looking for, and even still, I had to buy a set of three. The cost was almost nothing, but even today, I have two unused bottles in my cupboard that I will likely never ever use since I only needed the one.

I have resolved to use up the Beardoholic Unscented Beard Oil and keep it at work. In a few more days there will be nothing of it left, and I will wash the bottle and store it away as supplies. I don’t think I will be buying any more Beardoholic products, not when their packaging is so weak, or shipping is so strangely rough on them. The quality of the product that I don’t doubt and I do think it a good choice, but only when they address their bent, warped, buckled, and odd options for their products to be shipped in. When your customer has to rebottle your product, that’s not really all that great.

Honest Amish Beard Balm 2 oz.

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The Honest Amish Beard Balm is next up in my beard product review series. This product is shipped in a two-ounce tin, aluminum again, with just a product identification sticker on the front and nothing on the rear. It’s not nearly as wide as the standard tin shape, but it is deeper. The remarkable thing about Honest Amish is its low viscosity. The balm is loose, more of a kind of paste than a wax. This at first, was something I had to learn to adapt to, as the usual method of extracting product led to way too much product being used. The technique is the same, except the force used is much less. For Honest Amish, you have to be gentle because it’s so loose.

Honest Amish took a while for me to get used to, and a little bit longer to like. The scent is powerful, almost overpowering scents of clove and pumpkin and other likewise warmer scents. It is not bracing, cutting, or belting but rather smooth and crafty. As it isn’t a wax but a paste it doesn’t take much manual working to get it warmed up or slick to apply, but it does do its job very well. Over time I started to like the strong difference in the scent and began to humorously regard it as an “exploding pumpkin pie factory.”

While it is one of the stronger scented balms, it is not one of my favorites. It is satisfactory, and they certainly give you quite a lot for your money, and Honest Amish is apparently very well perceived by many online. Their ingredient lists match a lot of the other balms, so if you like pumpkin pie or clove scents, this will rock your world.

Reuzel Beard Balm 1.3oz

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The first reviewed product in my beard series is what I started with, this was used by my barber, and at first, we didn’t know what it was, but that it left an intoxicating scent behind. Over time, we did discover that it was Reuzel. The balm comes in a stout aluminum tin, in the standard shape and presentation of most of the balms, about two inches across, with the lid that screws on and off to present the product inside. The product itself is hard and waxy at room temperature, the first ingredient is shea butter, and the second ingredient is beeswax.

Reuzel was the first product that either of us experienced, and was what our barber used when we first got started growing our beards. First and foremost, this balm is my top choice, it is my favorite because the scent is inexplicably awesome. There is a mild but consistent manufacturing glitch that many customers have noticed, and our barber told us about before we even got started using it. Reuzel comes from the factory in somewhat of a grainy set. The wax comes in a manner of speaking, crystallized. It improves immensely when you gently warm the container, melt the wax to liquid and then let it set naturally by itself over time. I’ve discovered that the best way to do this for us is to open the new tin and put it on a candle warmer for a short while. When it’s fully melted, then carefully move it to a cool spot, and lid it. After that, it’s perfect. The scent is the first draw, then the quality. I got started using balms and oils early, so I’ve never known beard-itching-phase or beardruff at all.

Reuzel is my #1 favorite, and so I think I’ll always have some on hand. There was a previous blog post, Speed vs. Accuracy, where Amazon royally screwed up starting from distribution all the way through to shipping on this particular product. So for a brief while, getting this product from Amazon was somewhat of a challenge. To be very clear, I could also have bought it from my barber as well, and skipped out on all the frustration, too. It’s just a lesson about Amazon. They have a lot of products, but they don’t really know a lot about their products, at least not enough to mis-sticker 1.3-ounce container on a four-ounce container and notice something isn’t quite right.

The scent is quite something, there are notes of slate, talc, old books, with hints of leather. It isn’t strong at all in terms of perfumey, or cologney presentation, and is laidback. The scent lasts for about an hour or so once it’s applied, and never ceases to make me happy when I work it through my beard. The way I was taught to take from the container was to run my thumbnail along the surface and scrape up enough to cover the thumb. Then work it in my hands until it is warmed and slick. Almost all of the products that I will review share this method except for two, a squeeze tube one, and a different balm.