Sawsheezle's Shave Blog: Walgreens' lie and the journey it led me on

This one has been taking a while to put together. I dedicate it to Marcus and to RyDub for his patience.

One of my favorite shaving/grooming accessories is a man-fragrance. A good man-fragrance (MF) should have the following qualities: it should make you smell like a man. Many men have several go to MFs, but I had only one in my proverbial "shaving corner" and that was the old-timey Clubman Bay Rum Pinaud aftershave/splash. capital_prototype has been known to use this when he crosses paths with Sawsheezle and he rocks it every time. Here it is in all its glory.

But when I traveled home for X-mas this year there was a problem. The morning of my flight back home, I knocked my beloved onto the floor and the neck of the frail space-age plastic bottle snapped in half and the elixir was lost forever. I didn't fret as I knew I would be able to get some more (albeit of a different vintage) when I came back from my winter vacay. Boy was I wrong. I originally purchased this tonic from a local Walgreens and thought I could just go online and check their stock and go to one of the nearly 100 Walgreens in town and just pick it up. So I looked online and sure enough it was in stock at two different locations, but was not carried by many of the other stores. I began my wild goose-chase over town tracking this stuff down. The first store didn't have it and moreover didn't even have a spot for it on the shelf. I began to panic a little bit, but knew I could go across town and get it at another location. Wrong again. I don't think they carry it anymore. Now I could always order it online from some other retailers, but it is much more expensive and since I felt I had been lied to, I decided to go in another direction. It was at this time that I started looking into people "home-brewing" their own bay rum batches and I found a lot of information. Apparently others who came before me had decided to do the same and they had plenty of knowledge to share. A simple look at the ingredients of any aftershave/cologne shows they they consist of two main components: alcohol and "fragrance". The % (proof) of the alcohol sort of determines its use as either an aftershave or a colonge (the higher the % the longer the scent may linger -> cologne). The fragrance comes from oil droplets suspended in the alcohol. So with that knowledge, one may ask one's self why in the hell do we spend so much money on these things? I don't know, but obtaining extremely pure grade alcohols that are also unscented is difficult for consumers. It appears that "big-cologne" is buying up all the reserves leaving little for the average Joe to buy. However common alcohols can be used to good effect. So the next was to come up with a recipe. The two main ingredients on people's recipes that were posted online were bay leaves and rum. The alcohol in the rum extracts the essential oils in the bay and hence the "bay rum". Now these aren't your ordinary run of the mill Bay Leaves that you would buy at the store (laurus nobilis/ bay laurel/ turkish bay leaves). No they have to be West Indies bay leaves (Pimenta Racemosa). Finding these leaves led me on another wild goose chase. I found I could order the essential oil directly online for around $5 for 0.5 oz. which is a good price, but after shipping costs the total cost would be around $15 and I wasn't going to spend that much on a whim so I tried at some local B&M stores around town here. I tried World Market and they only Turkish bay leaves. I looked at some of the grocery stores and they too only had turkish bay leaves. I got a crazy idea that perhaps Whole Foods would have them and so I went. If you have never been to a Whole Foods before, don't go. It will hurt your brain. I saw so many college student "hipsters" there buying $10 a lb. ground beef I didn't know what to do with myself. You can get that stuff at the mexican grocery store for $2 a lb bro! Wow. Anyway, I eventually found an impressive albeit extremely overpriced essential oils section of the Whole Foods and overheard some guy asking if he could special order some "ultra" organic product because the regular organic version good enough for him. I think I heard something about saving Mother Gaia and got the hell out of there. They didn't have the right bay leaves anyway. I read online that I could use the regular bay leaves to good effect and then discovered that allspice berries come from the same plant as the bay leaves and smell very similar. I decided then to just round up my ingredients. Here is everything.

Vodka
Spiced Rum
"Black Strap" Rum (has molasses in it)
Witch Hazel
Isopropyl
Bay Leaves
Allspice Berries
Orange
Cinnamon
Ginger
Cloves

I know. Why so many alcohols? I don't know except that halfway through I thought the brew wasn't going to be strong enough. Anyway, here is a pic of the setup.

The orange was not pictured. The proportions were mostly eyeballed, but there was about 12 fl oz of the liquids. I put all of this into a bottle and let it sit for two weeks and shook it around everyday. While it brewed, the oils from the spices and the orange were being extracted yielding fragrant as well and antioxidant properties. I did tweak it a few times. Mostly adding more ginger. I love ginger. After two weeks, It was time to take it out and filter the brew.

After three filtration stages, the stuff came out and smelled great. A very unique scent not exactly what I had previously experienced with the Clubman version, but it was my own concoction and I was proud of it. I added some glycerin and vitamin E oil to the brew to aid in the moisturizing qualities. When you put this stuff on it dries somewhat quickly due to the alcohol, but the glycerin and vitamin E oil leave the skin feeling really moisturized. These ingredients aren't in store bought aftershaves. The scent is good, but it doesn't linger as long as I would like. I will tweak the recipe next time. Most people suggest using purer alcohols and there is something called perfumers alcohol which is close to 100% alcohol and is not scented like Isopropyl is. Anyway, it was a fun experience and may be something you could try at home too. Check out these links for more info.

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/202504-Mattface-s-Bay-Rum-Recipe

http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/206159-My-Homemade-Bay-Rum-AS