Squirt Bike Cleaner Concentrate

Squirt Biodegradable Bike Cleaner Concentrate works really well both neat as a degreaser and diluted as a general wash. At the recommended maximum dilution of 1:25 it makes a massive 25L of bike wash, so it's great value too.

I tested this on both my road bike and my often slightly minging mountain bike, and it performed really well for everything. It even leaves a slight shine to your paintwork once the bike is dry again.

At one part concentrate to 25 parts water, and misted onto the bike with a spray bottle – this is a refill type affair so you'll need your own – this has an immediate effect.

The bottom of the down tube on my fluorescent yellow mountain bike is always dotted with what can only be road tar, so as a test I sprayed half with Squirt and the other half with water. Then I rubbed at it with just my fingers (I even used different fingers to avoid cross-contamination because SCIENCE). I could rub away the stubborn little speckles quite easily with the wash, whereas they mostly ignored my efforts on the watered section. I was impressed, especially given the dilution.

More generally, a good spray over the bike (already wet or not, it doesn't seem to make a difference) and a shuffle around with a sponge was all it took to unstick dirt and grime ready for the hose. A quick blast with that and the grunge all just falls off, and as this is water-based and biodegradable there's no need to worry about killing our world any quicker than we already are.

I found its performance as good as any out there, even though I ignored the instructions (in a nutshell, 'be patient') and got straight in there to see what was happening. If you do want more power, there's plenty of scope for diluting it less while still getting good mileage from the bottle.

Used neat it's effective even on quite blackened drivetrains and thickly gunked jockey wheels. Dribbling it straight on (it's pleasingly gloopy so doesn't all just run straight off) won't simply melt it away like solvent degreasers, but after 10 or 20 seconds even thick rinds of stuck-on lube fall away easily with a soft brush.

I found it worked well to pour a little into the brush and then scrub everything – chain, cassette and chainrings – by spinning the cranks for 30 seconds or so. After that, a blast of hose water again saw all that grime just rinse away to reveal a sparkly chain and clean sprockets. Very satisfying.

Okay, I'm not the ultra-fastidious type who needs everything surgically sterile and will employ toothpicks and microscopes to get there, and if you are you may still prefer solvent-based aerosols. But this works as well as any water-based cleaner I've tried, including my longterm favourite, Fenwick's FS-10.

Value

At the recommended dilution this makes 25L of bike wash, and at £16.99 for this bottle that would be 68p per litre – which is pretty cheap. By contrast, a 1L bottle of Peaty's Loam Foam concentrate costs £19.99 and only makes 5L of wash (£4 per litre).

One litre of Decathlon's Concentrated Bike Cleaner also makes 5L of wash, and costs £6.99 - or £1.40 per litre.

Overall

This stuff is great, and noticeably effective even at its highest dilution. Used neat it's a really useful degreaser, too. Oh, and it's biodegradable, won't leave your lungs looking like wind-shredded flags and it's cheap. Winner.

Verdict

Very effective both diluted or neat, and makes absolutely loads of wash