Last Pass, Shave Dad × Van Yulay
The name works on two levels. There is the last pass of the razor, when you go across one more time and catch what you missed. And there is the coffee waiting on the other side of it, the whole reason you got up early enough to shave properly in the first place.
Van Yulay and Shave Dad built Last Pass around exactly that moment. Coffee-forward, tallow base, sold direct on vanyulay.com. Van Yulay’s own tagline sums it up in a line:
The last pass is done. The coffee is poured.
The Scent
Van Yulay built the fragrance in three stages:
Top: Freshly Ground Espresso Beans, Roasted Coffee. Middle: Dark French Roast. Base: Smoked Roasted Wood Accord.
Espresso and roasted coffee up top is a committed opening. That is a strong first impression. The Dark French Roast in the heart deepens it, keeps it from going light or floral.
What is different here is the base: Smoked Roasted Wood Accord.
Coffee soaps usually land in one of two places. Either they go sweet, the mocha-and-cream direction, or they go neutral, where the coffee note is pleasant but does not really say anything. The smoked wood element suggests Van Yulay is aiming somewhere drier. Something with char and roast rather than syrup. On paper it reads more like the grounds at the bottom of a moka pot than a coffeehouse latte.
The Smoked Roasted Wood Accord in the base is the most interesting call on the note card. Van Yulay could have gone amber or musk to anchor the coffee, which would have been the easier route. Wood smoke is a harder note to land. It can make a scent feel cold if it does not integrate, or give it an outdoor-fire kind of warmth if it does.
If you have tried other coffee soaps and found them too dessert-y, this one is aimed differently. Last Pass sits inside the coffee lane but pushes toward the dark and dry end of it.
The Soap
Van Yulay makes what they call a croap, the consistency between a firm hard puck and a soft soap. Last Pass ships as 4 oz of soap piped into an 8 oz container, so the bowl is already built in. You load directly from it without transferring anything.
The base leads with tallow and emu oil. Tallow is the backbone of classic wet-shave soap performance. Emu oil is lighter than lanolin and absorbs quickly without leaving a heavy residue. The full ingredient list adds silk amino acids, babassu oil, bentonite and kaolin clays, and coconut fatty acids. Bentonite clay in a shaving soap is worth noticing. Artisans add it for slip, the tactile quality that keeps the razor gliding rather than dragging.
Full ingredients, per Van Yulay:
Stearic Acid, Coconut Fatty Acid, Palm Stearic, Castor, Glycerin, Potassium & Sodium Hydroxide, Aloe Vera, Coconut-Tallow-Lanolin-Babassu-Manteca-Argan-Emu Oils, Shea & Kokum Butters, Sodium Lactate, Calendula Extracts, Poly Quats, Allantoin, Silica, Bentonite & Kaolin Clay, Fragrance.
Van Yulay describes the lather as yogurt-like, building quickly with a wet brush. That tracks with croap behavior. Softer than a hard puck means the brush loads product faster, less scrubbing, more lather.
This is a tallow formulation, not vegan. Worth knowing before you order.
If you have not worked with a croap before, building a lather from a semi-soft soap means using a wetter brush and a lighter hand than you would use on a firm puck. Let the soap do more of the work.
The Full Lineup
Van Yulay built the full line around the soap:
- Shaving Soap (4 oz in an 8 oz container)
- After Shave Splash (4 oz plastic, 3.3 oz round glass, or 4 oz flask)
- After Shave Balm (3.5 oz)
- EDP Cologne (15 ml, 30 ml, 60 ml)
- Beard Oil (1 oz)
- Deodorant (2.65 oz)
- Body Wash (8 oz)
- Whipped Body Butter (2 oz)
- Lotion (8 oz)
- Shredded Bath Bar (5 oz)
- Samples (0.5 oz soap sample; splash sample sizes vary)
- Combo sets (Soap + Splash + Balm bundles)
The splash aftershave is the natural follow-up. You finish the shave, apply the splash, and the coffee note carries through. That is the moment the name is pointing at, the space between the last pass of the razor and the first cup.
The EDP is an unusual inclusion for a shaving collab. Not many artisan releases offer a spray cologne alongside the soap and splash. If the scent lands right on your skin, you can wear it outside the bathroom.
Sample sizes are available, which makes sense for an unfamiliar scent. Try the soap or the splash before committing to the full set. Pricing across the lineup runs from a $1 sample up to about $50 for the largest formats.
Who This Is For
If you are a coffee drinker and a wet shaver, this soap was designed for your morning. The name says it directly. Last Pass is the soap you reach for on the same morning you are reaching for the espresso.
The scent profile has substance beyond the concept. The smoked wood accord in the base puts this in different territory from the softer, sweeter coffee soaps in the artisan market. If your current rotation runs to woods, tobacco, and leather, Last Pass belongs in that conversation without being a duplicate.
If you have a gap in the dark-and-dry category, this fills it. If your shelf is already full of dark soaps, the coffee angle gives it a distinct enough identity to justify the space.
The collab between Shave Dad and Van Yulay makes sense on both ends. A community site and an artisan soap maker with overlapping audiences. Last Pass is the product that comes out of that overlap.
Sold direct at vanyulay.com.
Happy shaving.