BBS Coolzilla and Gillette Fatboy: Shaving Off Nine Days of Growth

Hi there. Welcome back. It has been a while, and as you can see, I have quite a bit of growth going on. I don’t think I’ve had this much since I grew my beard for Movember. And you can see it has gotten even more salt and pepper since then. I am really excited for this shave.

The lineup

We have been away, down south on a Spanish island in the Mediterranean. Hot, humid in the evenings in a way we are not used to up here in Norway. Temperatures from the mid-70s overnight up to the high 90s on the hottest afternoon. Crystal clear water, sapphire blue, really warm. Three hours’ flight from us, and I came back with about nine days of growth and a serious craving for something cold on the face.

That is where Coolzilla comes in. This is a cold, mentholated soap from BBS. The scent is super duper fresh. Notes are eucalyptus, mint, lavender, and bergamot, and it is heavy on the menthol. The soap base is BBS’s Artemis Base, no stearic acid, just oils and butters for the skin.

The brush is the Yaqi Caramel, 26mm two-band badger with a bulb-shape knot, pre-loaded before filming. Big, chunky knot. I really love this brush. Nice backbone, and it pairs beautifully with the Coolzilla.

In the razor is a Gillette 7 O’Clock Black on its first use. The razor itself is the Gillette Fatboy, and with nine days of growth I’m going in on setting nine for the first pass.

Building the lather

I added some water to the face first. This beard is itchy now, so it will be very nice to get rid of it. Just a tiny bit of soap loaded on the brush. The Yaqi Caramel builds right away, and you can see it getting denser and shinier with every stroke. With this much beard the hair soaks up the lather, so I don’t expect a super nice result on the first load. But it gets there. Shiny and dense.

The menthol kicks in immediately. It’s a strong scent, I would say a six out of ten on strength. You feel it on the brush and on the face, and that ice-mountain feeling comes through with every pass of the brush. Really lovely. With the heat and with nine days of growth, the cooling sensation is exactly what I want.

The shave

Setting nine on the Fatboy is not the most aggressive configuration, but nine days of growth gives it plenty to do. The first pass left a lot of stubble behind. Expected. My jaw area is my most coarse zone, and the razor clogged up quite a bit into the sink. That’s a lot of growth in there. But the soap held its slickness all the way through. No problems there.

Second pass I came down to setting seven, with the grain again rather than across. Big improvement. The razor moves much more freely now with less bulk to cut through. Really nice, a mid-razor feeling.

Third pass, setting five, across the grain. The menthol is really coming on strong here. Not quite hitting my eyes, but you feel it working. The lather is still very nice and cold. Very, very nice leather.

For the against-the-grain pass I went down to setting three. I had loaded a lot of water into that brush, and the lather held together cold and dense all the way to the end. Not BBS with all that growth, but super smooth and a damn fine shave.

Down south and the World Cup

Somewhere between the second and third pass I mentioned we’d been away. Temperatures in the mid-70s overnight, high 90s on the hottest afternoon, very humid as the evenings came in. Waters crystal clear, sapphire blue. We got really lucky. A super nice trip, a short flight, and we came back happy.

Europe has been cooking, though. France, Germany, England, many countries hitting all-time records. Reports of 43 degrees Celsius in France, 111 Fahrenheit. That is a crazy kind of temperature. Not good at all. There is also a heat wave running over where many of the World Cup games are being played right now.

Which reminds me: Norway beat Ivory Coast and made it through to the round of sixteen. We have not been at the World Cup in almost 30 years, not since 1998. So we are quite stoked about that. Next game is against Brazil. We have actually never lost to Brazil in a soccer match. A hard one coming up. We will see how it ends.

The splash

After the cold water rinse the lather was already quite cold by then. The BBS Coolzilla splash finishes the shave. Shake it up good. There is some alcohol in it, not super strong, it sits fairly low on the ingredients list, but it gives a nice punch of menthol right on top of everything. And BBS always does excellent labels.

That is the shave. Super duper nice and refreshing. Love that cold, cold sensation in the summer. The Fatboy handled the growth well through all four settings, and the Coolzilla just made the whole thing feel like an ice cube on the face.

Thanks for coming along. Please subscribe to my channel, and until next time, goodbye.