From the beginning of our company, we knew we wanted to create whiskey soap. There were very few whiskey soaps in the world, and the whiskey soaps that existed smelled more like vanilla or butterscotch. We knew that straight-up whiskey was going to frighten people away, but if we could get a blend of whiskey and something kind of sweet and soothing, we'd be making something really special.
But it wasn't so easy.
In fact, the first batch of whiskey soap turned out so badly I wrote a blog post about it. And that blog post was so popular that I wrote yet another blog post about our failed whiskey soap.
And after the "Oppenheimer of Soap" incident, you might think we would give up trying to make whiskey soap, but no.
We knew whiskey soap was a cornerstone of the Outlaw Soaps brand, so, like a much drunker Henry Ford, we insisted that it could be done, and doggone it, we knew we were going to be the ones to do it. We knew in our hearts that whiskey soap (and other whiskey products) would have to be a part of the Outlaw Soaps collection.
Maybe real whiskey wasn't the right choice for this particular challenge. Maybe we should just go with a scent of whiskey instead.
Eventually, we settled on a fragrance oil that we found on Etsy, of all places. And it was ok. It wasn't fantastic, but it was good enough... and then, it was discontinued. We bought the last of it (25 lbs), and figured Hair of the Dog's days were numbered.
That's a risk with our line of business. Since fragrance oils are very particular, if your manufacturer stops making a fragrance, it's hard to find a replacement. But once again, with drunken Henry Ford-style determination, we set out in search of a replacement. The only replacement we could find was a tobacco/bourbon, which, well, let's be honest... we didn't have a lot of choices.
And luckily, the tobacco/bourbon scent was good... in fact, I felt like the tobacco added a richness to the Hair of the Dog that our other whiskey scent just didn't have.
But the scent is still really hard to work with, as Russ has posted about in this post called Hairy Hair of the Dog, and also in Russell Vincent's Wild Ride.
Recently, we found a new whiskey scent that actually smells more like whiskey and less like tobacco... but how does it react in soap? And will people miss the tobacco undertone? We'll find out!
