Review (4/5): Do not buy during the summer months!
These Live Bearded scents always take some getting used to; the combination of aromas are not as simple and straightforward as they seem. They never seem to smell quite like I expect, but I do tend to get used to them.
My beard is crazy. It literally grows in ten different directions and refuses to lay straight without a lot of coaxing.
This butter does a really nice job of conditioning my beard and taming fly-aways. I also find that it imparts some sculptability so that I can give my beard a little shape. I have to follow a bit of a routine in order to get it to cooperate, however.
I start the week out with a clean, freshly shampooed beard. I then warm it up with a hair dryer, to the point that it is damp, but not wet. I take a liberal amount of butter and rub it on my hands, warming it up, then I work it into my beard evenly. I use the hair dryer again with the flat concentrator attachment and a round brush to coax it into place. I have to brush it straight up and out first, which I find helps to straighten out the wavy parts, and then brush it into the final shape that I want. I also use a boar's-hair brush on my cheeks to get the fly-aways to lie flat. Once it is laying how I like, I use the cold button on the hair dryer to set it. I then do not wash it again for several days, (depending on how much I sweat or spill food/beverages), and only apply about half the amount of butter in the morning, though the brushing and drying routine remains the same.
I have found that this butter really does help my beard to keep its shape. It has a little bit of holding power, like you might expect from a pommade, but it is extremely light and clean, unlike pommade which tends to be sticky.
This is a great product, and one of the main reasons that I have kept using it is how well it works for me and the value/quantity when compared to other brands.
I will keep trying the other scents till I find one that I like.
Just a word of caution, don't buy this in the heat of the summer. The product I received had clearly melted and the resolidified, making one big solid mass of butter. It is described as being gritty and malleable, which I have experienced with previous purchases of this product. It still seemed to work alright, but was more difficult to use.