Review of the "new" Mitchell's Woolfat

[brothers]

I've been hoping Wendell (jww) would give us a rundown of his take of the recently reformulated Mitchell's, which has earned him the SMF moniker "Woolfat Evangelist"! Considering he's not checked in for about a year now, maybe he'll give us an update on his favorite soap.
More importantly, if there are any others who've tried it, we'd all love to see what you think of it.
Cheers!

[drmoss_ca]

I don't have a good feeling about this! Tallow and lanolin was what made it special.

Chris

[Gene]

Phil (BullGoose Shaving) posted a write-up that I saw on my FaceBook feed - a positive mini-review. Non-tallow, but no loss of performance.

[brothers]

Before I posted about it yesterday, I also read the positive comments. I was slightly alarmed when the author enthusiastically wrote the last sentence that declared the new stuff is 10 (Ten???) times better than the old stuff. Really!!! Of course that was what prompted me to ask for other reviews.

[Gene]

Perhaps that reviewer was one of the many users who had trouble lathering MWF? I never did (and I have a small bit left over I should dig out and use again) - but if it's really better that would be something.

[Brutus]

Phil (BullGoose Shaving) posted a write-up that I saw on my FaceBook feed - a positive mini-review. Non-tallow, but no loss of performance.

When the tallow-free version came out, I ordered some from the UK, where it had become available first, since I wanted to see for myself how the two compare. I have used the two versions side by side for a few months now and noticed a few changes.

First the good news; to me it seems that the new version tolerates hard water better than the old one, which is not a big deal for me as both in Vancouver and here in Portugal I have soft water, but it was something I noticed on trips elsewhere.

I cannot, however, confirm that there is "no loss of performance" as BullGoose apparently said.
The new version is quite good, very good good to be honest, but it is not quite up to the same level as the old version was.
It has lost some of the creaminess and lubrication that the old one was famous for.
Not much, but I believe I can feel a certain drop and Mitchell's Wool Fat now has to slug it out with products like Haslinger Sheep Milk when it had before the pole position all to itself.

It is still in the top group, but this drop put it on a more equal footing with some other excellent products.


Of course, a small difference like I mentioned is hard to measure and my observation is thus rather subjective.


I am not someone who believes that a good shaving soap must contain tallow and my beef (no pun intended) with the new one is that Mitchell's replaced it with oil fats that are made from palm oil, which for ecological reasons (slash and burn deforestation to make place for mono-cultures) I would rather avoid.


B.

[drmoss_ca]

Curious thought:
rendered pork fat = lard
rendered beef fat = tallow
rendered mutton fat = ?

Lanolin is obtained from sheep's wool, and cannot substitute for tallow or lard: it does not saponify to form a soap, but rather remains in the soap unaltered as a lubricant. Fat lambs certainly exist (see Homer's Iliad, where they are the gods' favourite sacrifice), and those who eat lamb will be aware that it is a fatty meat, which is why it is so good in a korma or rogan josh. I wonder why we don't render mutton fat and have a name for the product? Maybe it is because lamb/mutton is regarded as poor people's meat and the whole business is a bit less industrialised? Even in Australia and New Zealand I don't think there is such a thing. Now if I still had a flock of sheep, I'd be able to experiment!

C.
People here look at you when you say you eat lamb as if you'd declared a liking for horsemeat or dog. It isn't a thing. So after a dearth of lamb for nearly forty years I have discovered that one of the two big supermarket chains here has started stocking lamb. Likely a response to demand from immigrants, though they never listened to expat Brits in the past! So when Pippa travels, Thomas and I gorge on lamb curry, roast lamb, lamb chops and shepherd's pie (it is not widely appreciated that shepherd's pie must be made with lamb. With beef it is properly called a cottage pie.)

[Brutus]

Oh, I do like my piece of lamb, most of the time with mint sauce.

I must have picked the habit from someone else outside of my immediate family, as my mother, of German descent, never touched lamb.
Her idea was that the meat “smelled’, but I suspect she may have confused lamb with mutton.
She was quite set in her ways, another thing she never touched was garlic. I think both Canadians and Australians have come a long way since those days.
I ask you, what would mediterranean food be without garlic?

I agree, it is not easy to find lamb in Canada. In the Vancouver area, some supermarkets and specialty shops that cater to the immigrant community carry it.
There are even a few farms in the B.C. lower mainland that produce lamb, plus some in Alberta. Don’t know about farms further east.

Going back to my mother and her idea that lamb and mutton “smelled”. Maybe because of the smell rendered mutton has not many uses, even though I am sure it works for Synthetic Aviation Fuels (SAF) as well as lard and tallow.
Although I wish they would leave tallow alone in this race to find raw materials for synthetic fuels (and appear “green”). It just outbids and takes resources away from other, more historic uses (like shaving soaps).

Going back to lamb; it is strange that the taste for lamb did not seem to travel across the Atlantic with immigrants from Merrie Old England or refugees from the Irish Potato Famine…

In the Middle East (Dubai), where I was based for 34 years, lamb was very common. In local markets fresh lamb and goat were often sold interchangeably. Either one could be quite nice in curries or when barbecued…


B.

[BullGoose]

It should be noted that MWF has been reformulated twice recently. The version on the top is the first reformulation and it does not perform as well as the tallow version of MWF (in my opinion). The version on the bottom is the most recent reformulation of MWF and it seems to perform as well as the tallow version and is better in hard water than the original. Of course, YMMV.

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[blantyre]

At least they kept some lanolin in there so the wool fat name still holds true. I never liked this soap much so it’s one reformulation that won’t affect my rotation at all.

[CMur12]

From the ingredients list, aren't sodium laurate and potassium laurate detergents?

I guess the purist in me hates to see a proper soap corrupted in this way.

- Murray

[drmoss_ca]

Correct, Murray.

[brothers]

I'm still clinging to the hope that jww might provide us with a few words regarding all of this MWF intel. I suspect Wendall isn't buying the new product every time they change it again, but I also suspect he's just a bit curious!