Lately I have been trying a lot of different shave soaps, and aftershaves, Ogallala being one of them. A few weeks ago I decided to try their bay rum shave soap kind of on a whim, and I was blown away at how great it was. Great scent, super creamy lather, slick, great post shave feel, etc. Instantly became part of my regular rotation. So on my next order I decided to try this bay rum & vanilla scent, along with the after shave. First of all, I had the same experience with the soap this time around. Awesome scent and performance. The after shave is where things took a really strange turn. I used my favorite razor, same three pass shave as usual, and then to the splash. I shook the same amount as I would normally use into my hands, and immediately noticed that this aftershave has a very different consistency of any other one I have used. It is almost like a light oil, with tiny droplets of water on the surface. I figured that the alcohol, and oils may not mix very well, and proceeded to smooth the after shave on my face. The feel was very slick. Slick enough to make me wonder if it would soak in, or just sit on top of my skin like an oil. It felt almost like something you could actually shave with, and the scent was really great. I had some residual on my hands so I wiped them on my chest to get the excess off, and then rinsed my hands. Within about one second this stuff starts to burn. A lot. I actually like a pretty bracing after shave, so I was kind of excited to take what I thought was going to be a fifteen second ride. Then it started to burn more, and more, and my chest turned red and started to burn almost like a sunburn feeling, a bad sunburn feeling. I thought it would just wear off after a couple of minutes, but no way man. This stuff is definitely going to let you know it is on for the long haul. After about fifteen to twenty minutes the burning settled down to what I would consider a typical after shave burning tingle. After that, my skin felt soft, and the pores were definitely closed. I think they were too damn scared to dare stay open. The scent lingers, which is not bad, and in fact about an hour after my shave my wife walked upstairs to a different part of the house and asked me what smelled like "apples and cinnamon". It does have a bit of an apple pie type of scent that reminds me of thanksgiving. I will be trying this one more time with only a few drops to see if my experience is any different, but if it is not, this will not be staying with me. The soap is a ten, but I can't imagine someone actually looking forward to the after shave. The only thing I could think of was if you had a bad sun burn, and rubbed cinnamon oil all over it. I also have the Captains Choice Cat O' Nine after shave, and it is like straight water compared to the feel of this one. If you are ready to feel the burn, this is for you.
