It depends entirely on what you are replacing. If you have been reapplying lotion three times a day and your knuckles still split in January, yes. If your skin is already fine and you just want it to smell like something, no, and I would rather say so than take the $18.
What $18 actually buys
A 2 oz tin, which runs six to ten weeks at daily use. Call it 25 to 35 cents a day. The breakdown by what you are using it for is more useful than the average, because a long beard goes through a tin twice as fast as a pair of hands does.
Compare that to lotion honestly. A 12 oz pump bottle is cheaper on the shelf and most of what you carried home is water. The comparison that means anything is how many days each one covers, not what the sticker said.
Where it beats what you are using now
The case comes down to water. Lotion is mostly water with oil emulsified into it. Water evaporates off your skin and takes a little of your own moisture with it, which is why a cream can feel right for twenty minutes and leave you reaching for the bottle again. There is no water in a balm. What goes on stays there until it absorbs or wears off. The longer version of that.
The second half is the fat itself. Beef tallow is close in composition to the lipids your own skin produces, so it goes in rather than sitting on top. That is also why it does not feel like the grease it looks like in the tin.
Where it is not worth it
- Your skin is already fine. This fixes a problem. Without one it is an expensive way to smell like cedar.
- You want it gone in five seconds. A balm wants warming between your fingers and about a minute to absorb. If that minute annoys you, the tin ends up in a drawer and I have taken your money for nothing.
- Tree nut or beef allergy. Shea butter comes from a nut and the base is beef fat. The full allergen notes.
The two week test
Once a night, clean dry hands, and nothing else on top of it. Two weeks is enough to know. If the splits at your knuckles have closed and you are not reaching for anything at lunchtime, it worked. If nothing changed, it is not right for your skin, and you are out two weeks rather than a winter of guessing.
That is the test I would want run on me before I spent the money, so it is the one I am handing you.
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