I love a good shampoo! 

Your choice in shampoo is usually a case of searching through every brand in hope of finding one that really suits your needs. I used to be a huge fan (still an admirer) of Meguiars Gold Class, it had everything that I looked for: High sudzing, thick feel, nicely scented, beautiful gliding sensation over the paintwork. These are all aspects that made me 'feel' that a shampoo was doing the trick!

Being in a position to play around and formulate my own shampoo, with my requirements in mind - Amber Nectar is what I came up with. It wasn't a copy, but my own creation based on preference. 

A good dilution ratio is a must, at £10.00 RRP for 500ml you'll realistically see 10 washes, £1 per wash at it's thickest 50ml to 20lt warm water bucket. You can back the dose off to about 35ml increasing the usage even more - but for me it was slightly too thin. (maybe more phsycological than fact).

 2BM two bucket method is a must! (i'll be following up on this later in the week)

Wash bucket containing the shampoo mixture.

Rinse bucket containing cold water to rinse your wash mitt.

Working from the top of the vehicle down, it's straight lines only from me to avoid any unnecesary scratches or extra marring. Use your sudz! The mixture of 15 litres is more than enough for most cars, don't skrimp, sudz on, rinse, sudz on, rinse.  Leave your wheels until last, quite often i'll use a seperate wash mitt and shampoo bucket for this as the grime and contaminants on a wheel will be much more concentrated. Unlike the bodywork, with the wheels you're dealing with brake dust, carbon and iron deposits. Purely maintenance wash. If we're talking a huge build up on the wheels we're looking into acids - again, another separate topic we'll look into later.

 Once i've shampoo'd the whole car, i'll rinse with clean water from an open ended hose, then repeat the whole stage to ensure the most thorough cleanse. I understand this sounds OTT, but I actually enjoy this part so it's not a huge effort and the peace of mind is there.

The more dirt released from the paintwork and embedded into the pile of the washmitt - the less mistakes possible when it comes to drying. You won't be dragging any unwanted debris across the paintwork. Saving you time on correction in future, keeping a maintenance wash to just that - maintainance!

Amber Nectar I enjoyed creating, my first effort smelt a lot different - "like an old man's aftershave" Jon Dryer 2013

With that in mind, I decided to scent it with the way it appeared. In 2015 we changed this to a Whisky fragrance, never looked back.

One part of making Amber Nectar that I love, the workshop genuinely smells like a distillery for a week. The hate part, the shampoo creation in blending can take 5 days to settle - give or take if it's a warm month or a cold one. We generally don't run shampoo or snowfoam batches in the winter for this reason.

All in all, Amber Nectar is a solid performer. It is down to individual preference as mentioned, but as it ticks almost every box there is something about it to keep everyone happy!