Koch-Chemie Active Foam Berry Boost "Afb" Snow Foam with Cranberry Scent 20000ml

Touchless pre-wash with the Berry Boost snow foam

What is the Koch-Chemie Active Foam Berry Boost? A highly concentrated snow foam with a cranberry note for the touchless pre-wash. Mildly alkaline (pH 9), so a touch more active than a neutral foam, but more effective against road film and bugs. Not the right foam if you're keeping a natural wax as your sealant.

Koch-Chemie Active Foam Berry Boost is a snow foam concentrate from Unna, built for commercial gantry washes, self-serve bays and ambitious detailers running a foam lance. Free of phosphates and nitrilotriacetate, so without the problematic chelating agents of older foams. The cranberry note — that's how Koch-Chemie markets the berry-scent version — comes from geraniol and sweet-orange extract, a sensory reconstruction of the cranberry identity without any real cranberry extract. The in-use pH sits at 9. In practice: active enough to cut grease, without going at modern clear coats.

• Mildly alkaline with bite. pH 9 dissolves greasy road grime and bug splatter, but leaves modern clear coats untouched. That's the gap between a pH-neutral snow foam (gentle, but barely cleans) and a strongly alkaline pre-cleaner (cuts through everything, but eats into bare aluminium wheels). What that means for you: a foam that genuinely replaces the pre-wash, with no need to polish afterwards.
• VDA Class A, tested on OEM materials. The German carmakers have cleared the formula on paint, plastics, chrome and rubber seals — provided you stay at a maximum of one percent concentration on the paint and a five-minute dwell time. That's the legal basis a detailer needs to wash premium cars with wraps or paint protection film with no liability risk.
• 21 kg drum, cranberry note, 5 ml per car. Pro consumption in self-serve setups runs 3 to 8 ml per car. With the 21 kg drum you get anywhere from 2,500 to 6,500 washes, depending on the setup. That's the scale of a detailing business doing five to ten cars a day that won't reorder for two years.

Detailing1's tip from the shop: We see the same mistake in every other enquiry. A customer fills their 1-litre pump sprayer with Active Foam for the first time, 20 millilitres of concentrate to 1 litre of water, tightest filter nozzle, lever down. Out comes a thick carpet of shaving foam. Looks spectacular on Instagram, but it doesn't clean. Dense foam clings to the paint instead of running off with the dirt. The Detailing1 rule: 5 ml to 1 litre, medium filter nozzle, and you're after a wet foam that flows off slowly and drags the dirt all the way down to the sill.

Dialling in Berry Boost in the foam-cannon workflow

The Berry Boost needs a setup that matches its concentration: a pressure washer from 110 bar up plus a foam cannon with a stainless filter screen, not a garden pump sprayer maxing out at 0.5 bar.

In the foam-cannon bottle you mix 1:5 to 1:30, depending on how dirty the car is and the water hardness in your region. Hard water (above 14 degrees German hardness) binds surfactants and neutralises part of their cleaning power. You'll want the upper concentration then. With soft water, 1:30 is plenty for a weekly maintenance wash. Go heavy at the start, sparing at the end, and never work from the paint toward the door — foam from the bottom up so run-off marks don't dry on prematurely.

Behind the cleaning logic sits simple surfactant chemistry. The concentrate holds 15 to under 30 percent anionic surfactants, water-loving and fat-loving molecules that act like little magnets: one end latches onto dirt particles, the other stays in the water. Since clear coat is also slightly negatively charged, the negative head group pushes the encapsulated dirt away from the surface. What that means for you: the dirt gets wrapped up and carried off with the run-off foam, not rubbed into the paint the way mechanical friction does it.

Maximum dwell time on the paint is 5 minutes — binding under the VDA material approval. Let the surfactant mix dry on and the alkaline residue burns into the clear coat, so-called alkaline stains, which only come off with a machine polish. In summer, park the car in the shade first, cool it down quickly with clear water at the open self-serve bay, and only then foam it.

In cold weather the concentrate turns viscous. Before the first fill of a foam cannon in winter, take the bottle indoors for a bit, otherwise the feed pressure stalls and you get inconsistent mix ratios. A foam cannon running a steady 110 bar solves the problem mechanically.

Consumption in the foam-cannon workflow runs 50 to 100 ml of diluted mix per car, so roughly 5 to 10 ml of concentrate per car. On that basis the 21 kg drum washes between 2,000 and 4,000 cars. For a self-serve bay with a dosing pump it's 3 to 8 ml neat per car, which doubles the yield. Both figures apply to moderate dirt. With pollen in spring or after salty weather in winter, lean toward the upper limit, otherwise the dirt sticks in the foam instead of running off with it.

Mildly alkaline strips carnauba. If you love wax, read on here

The honest limitation of the Berry Boost is also its biggest strength: the mildly alkaline character. It reliably dissolves grease from bug splatter, road film and old quick-detailer residue, but it also loosens that last coat of natural wax.

Carnauba waxes and light polymer sealants react over time to alkaline surfactants. Carnauba is chemically a plant wax that gets broken down bit by bit through repeated saponification. Picture wiping a candle down with washing-up liquid again and again — eventually it's gone. After several weekly washes the beading goes flatter, the water creeps instead of rolling. If you lovingly look after your car at the weekend with a hand wax or a spray-wax top-up, you shouldn't reach for Active Foam for the weekly maintenance. For that niche the pH-neutral Gentle Snow Foam "Gsf" is the better call, same maker, different job.

With modern ceramic coatings the story is different. A ceramic layer is a cross-linked glass lattice, permanently bonded to the paint, far more stable than a wax film. Mildly alkaline foams can't touch it.

More than that: the alkaline foam pulls oily traffic-film residue out of the micro-pores of the ceramic. If your 18-month-old coating suddenly no longer rolls but crawls, that's often not material damage but a clogged surface. A concentrated Active Foam wash burns that contamination clear and the beading comes back. That's the off-label use the pros know about, but you won't find it on any manufacturer's brochure.

The second concrete limit: the foam must not dry on. At outside temperatures above 25 degrees or in direct sunlight, the water in the foam evaporates within seconds. The surfactant concentration shoots up locally and burns into the clear coat as an etch mark. If you wash in summer: car into the shade, cool it down with clear water, only then lay the foam on. If you're working without shade: keep strictly to the 5-minute maximum dwell time and rinse off immediately before the next section.

What the Berry Boost can't do: shift baked-on brake dust on wheels. For that you need the acid-based workflow with the Magic Wheel Cleaner "Mwc". The foam keeps wheels clean when they're already clean — it's care, not a reset.

For commercial detailers, not for the Sunday wash

The 21 kg drum with SKU D1-KCX-695-20L-01 is aimed at the pros: gantry-wash operators, detailing businesses, commercial detailers foaming several cars a day. In the DACH market the search for touchless pre-wash is climbing right now — over the last eight weeks snow foam has averaged about nine percent more search volume than its twelve-month average. The market is pulling noticeably toward the foam cannon.

At 5 ml per car in a hand wash, the drum lasts for around 4,000 cars. That's the scale of a detailing business doing five to ten cars a day that won't reorder for two years. For a hobbyist with one wash a week, this container size is simply overkill. If you want the berry scent at home, wait for the 1- or 5-litre fills, or stick with the Active Foam "Af" with sandalwood scent, which comes in smaller sizes in the range.

In a B2B context the VDA Class A approval is the real reason to buy. The German carmakers have tested and cleared the formula on original materials. That's more than just a marketing seal, it's the material guarantee in black and white.

If you stick to the maximum concentration of one percent on the paint and a 5-minute dwell time, the foam demonstrably doesn't attack paint, plastics, chrome parts or rubber seals. For a detailer washing premium cars with wraps or paint protection film, that's the legal footing against damage claims. A US import without this approval may be chemically similar, but in court, in the event of damage, it's worthless.

The off-label use we see most often in enquiries is the wheel-bucket hack: a shot of Berry Boost in the separate wheel bucket of the two-bucket method. On regularly maintained wheels with no baked-on brake dust, the mildly alkaline foam fully replaces reaching for the aggressive acidic wheel cleaner. The wheel comes up clean and the wheel's clear coat stays untouched.

That workflow is exactly what the OEM approval had in mind: not just for the main wash, but for every spot on the car where a cleaner touches the paint. The trick no manufacturer prints in its brochure, because it undercuts the sale of a separate wheel cleaner: a concentrate that keeps clean wheels clean saves you the aggressive acidic product for the genuine hard cases.

Application of Koch-Chemie Active Foam Berry Boost

Preparation and Correct Dosage

Before each use, cool down the paintwork with clear water, especially at outside temperatures above 25 degrees. Dry or warm body parts allow the surfactants to dry, which can leave alkaline stains.

Mix 1:5 to 1:30 in the foam cannon container, depending on the degree of soiling. With hard water (over 14 degrees German hardness), use the higher concentration, as the minerals dissolved in the water absorb some of the surfactant effect. For commercial dosing pumps, 3 to 8 ml pure per vehicle; for hand washing, 1:300 (about 3 ml per 1 liter of water).

Foam the vehicle from bottom to top so that runoff marks do not dry prematurely. Work from the sill area upwards, then over the doors and bonnet. The maximum dwell time is 5 minutes — binding for the material guarantee according to the manufacturer's approval.

Notes: Active Foam Berry Boost will, in the long term, attack carnauba waxes and light polymer sealants because mildly alkaline surfactants saponify organic wax esters. If you maintain natural waxes, you should switch to the pH-neutral Gentle Snow Foam for weekly maintenance. Ceramic sealants are compatible and even benefit from off-label use as a traffic film reset. In cold weather, the concentrate becomes viscous — briefly pre-warm the bottle indoors. Store frost-free between 5 and 30 degrees; shelf life is two years after opening.