Soap Review: Anderson Soap Co. Black Activated Charcoal
I want to share something quite new to me: Activated Charcoal! This is my first bar of activated charcoal and I must say, it will not be my last! I purchased mine (along with SEVERAL other bars, it was a sale!) from Anderson Soap Company (though I got mine from their Etsy shop). Dennis was great, this bar actually wasn’t listed when I made my big purchase but he kindly combined my shipping when I sent him a message through Etsy. I love great customer service!
First let’s talk about what Activated Charcoal is. It’s a specially processed form of carbon, and has many uses! It’s what’s in your water filter, which draws out the impurities - which is just what it does in soap! It draws out the impurities in your skin, and is said to be very helpful in the treatment of acne! Lots of soapers add extra oils or butters to help balance out any drying factors of charcoal. The end result is a nicely balanced bar that does an excellent job cleaning your skin without drying it out. Best with normal/oily skin, I use this bar exclusively on my face as the rest of my skin leans dry and sensitive (but not my face. Weird?). For more info, check out the the Wikipedia page.
So back to the Anderson Soap Company! I think the logo/wrapper design is great. Simple but pretty, and does a great job letting you know which soap you’re trying (and, of course, who made it). And while I’m not a huge fan of hiding your lovely soap creation behind tissue, it does function to protect the soap a bit.
Activated Charcoal soaps just LOOK cool. I mean, it’s black soap! And it looks so smooth, like a well-tumbled river stone. Love it. Anderson soaps have a super-cool wood grain texture on top, which I find quite interesting.
I was surprised by how perfect the shape of this soap is. The wave on top actually lends itself perfectly to being hand held. I find myself picking up this soap, and before I realize it I’ve been turning it over and over in one hand. And this bar is big! But the shape is just so perfect, it works even one-handed. I hope my other bars all have this same wave to them.
Speaking of other bars, this Activated Charcoal soap has no scent to speak of. However when I pulled it out of the envelope, it smelled distinctly like spearmint - because, of course, it draws out and absorbs what it comes in contact with, and it spent the entire trip next to a bar of spearmint soap!
Let me tell you about how this bar lathers. It is so cool to see an all-black bar bubble up with white suds! And boy, does this bar bubble. The lather that this bar produces is big, foamy bubbles that just keep coming! There’s also some nice olive oil creamy lather going on, but I am just entranced with the big foam coming from this soap.
A side note, this bar DID stain my light-colored washcloth, but it rinsed out easily after a few showers. This is just something to deal with when using charcoal soaps. I really only use this bar with my hands anyway.
My face feels so clean after I use this soap. It isn’t terribly moisturizing, but I didn’t expect it to be. But it isn’t terribly drying, either, which I worried about before using it.
Since this bar doesn’t really have a scent, it won’t be factored in to the total. Also, I think I’ll add a “Cleansing” category, to try to quantify how clean I feel after using soaps. We’ll see how it works out.
Scoring
Scent: N/A
Scent strength N/A
Moisturizing: 3
Cleansing: 4
Lather: 5
Appearance: 5
Packaging: 4
Total: 4.2
Anderson Soap Company’s Activated Charcoal is definitely a well-balanced bar of soap, fantastic for facial use, and absolutely gorgeous to look at!
