Review: Beard Lab Darwin Beard Butter

I've been a regular customer of Beard Lab for a few years now, I've got a fairly decent collection of their products and without exception they're all fresh, interesting and great quality. So when I found out they were re-branding and bringing out a whole new range of products I felt like I needed to get myself at least one of the new range to round out my collection. I already own a good selection of different oils so their Darwin Beard Butter seemed like the obvious choice, something new and completely different from any other product I've used before.

Now this is no cheap and cheerful balm, this is a premium beard care product and that is obvious from the outset. The very first thing that you notice is the quality of the container, there is no cheap plastic tub or a dented little metal tin, this product comes in a sturdy, dark tinted glass jar with a nice screw on lid and it certainly wouldn't look out of place in any man's wash kit.

Opening the jar for the first time and you're immediately hit by the smell of fresh citrus that fades out to a gentle sweetness reminiscent of Opal Fruits (or for those of you under 30, Starburst). The butter itself looks fairly similar to a balm and even has a similar feel and consistency to a balm when you first touch it, but that really is where the similarity starts to end. With a balm you usually have to pre-warm the container and even then you often have to work the balm with your fingers to get it to melt, this stuff starts to melt the moment in comes into contact with your skin and by the time you've spread it over your fingers it's completely melted and ready to apply. As you start to massage the butter into your beard you get occasional wafts of the very pleasing citrus smell, this smell lingers in your beard for the better part of a day. The butter itself is very easy to apply and is quite easily absorbed by the hair, leaving your beard feeling soft but not at all greasy as can sometimes happen with oils. Whilst I've found this definitely gives your beard more hold than an oil, it doesn't give you anywhere near the stiffness of a beard balm and in my eyes that is actually a good thing because balms can often leave your beard feeling fairly coarse and a little unpleasant. For me this product really shines when you wash your beard the following day as it almost feels like you've conditioned it, it really leaves your beard feeling amazing and not all dry.

I have to say overall I am very pleased with this product and I'm more than happy to have a couple of jars of this in my beard product collection.

Big Bushy Beard

Hello guys This week is a little bit special for, as of 2 days ago my beard was 1 year old so I now officially have a yeard. I’ve had a beard of one form or another for the last 10 years, usually I keep it fairly short and quite neat and tidy, occasionally changing styles and trying different looks. That is until last year when I took part in Decembeard to help raise funds for beating bowel cancer. I decided that instead of shave my beard off and grow it back for a month, I would keep my existing beard and not shave or trim or do anything other than wash and brush my beard for the whole month. At the time I had a beard that was a couple of inches long at the chin and tapered down to about 5mm long where my beard meets my hair, with my cheeks and lower neck completely clean shaven. It got to the last weekend of October and I did my usual weekend routine, I shaved my cheeks and neck then trimmed my beard to keep its length and shape nice and even. After I’d finished I dropped my razor in the bin intending on not shaving again until after Decembeard was over. Come January I knew that I had to keep my beard so I gave up shaving completely, it’s now exactly one year later and not once in the last 12 months has a razor touched my face. Apart from the occasional trim, to keep the moustache out of my mouth and stop the side burns from getting too bushy, I have have been growing this beard for an entire year and I feel that is something to be proud of.