Gonna try a homebrew sugar water but we don’t really use sugar much in my household so only thing is golden granulated which I think is close to table sugar?
Google puts it at 1:1 glucose to fructose. So I think for for 500ml I can use 70g sugar, ¼ teaspoon of bicarb and low sodium salt. Not sure if missed anything, or even if it’s the “right” sugar!
Edit: ChatGPT confirmed it. Gonna try it out in my next threshold workout. Much cheaper than Styrkr if it works.
I use these recipes for my drink mix. I calculated that it costs me about $1.41 for 120g of carbs (1 large bottle for me). DIY Endurance Drink and Gel Recipes
I really like the Skratch Labs pineapple mix but too spendy to use all the time so I decided to try and make my own. I could tell that they use real fruit from the taste, something I appreciate about their products. That’s when I discovered you can by pure, powdered fruit of almost any kind.
I use 1:0.8, plus a bunch of pineapple powder and some pre-blended electrolyte powder. A little citric acid to taste then, just to fix the pineapple - pineapple is pretty acidic but the dried fruit seems to lose it.
I’ve also experimented with dried black currant, as I love the flavor in gummies, but it didn’t translate so well into a drink. I might try tropical flavors, like dried passion fruit - the tart fruits might be goods
Don’t us low sodium salt in your drink mix. Use normal table salt, so that you are replacing what you are actually losing in your sweat, because you lose almost 10 times more sodium than potassium in your sweat.
Ah thanks dude! Will adjust my recipe.
Might also explain the cramps, or maybe it was just the hard work on the turbo.
Mine is not really DIY but…
2 scoops of Tang powder (65g of Carbs), 1 scoop of Gatorade. (25ish g carbs). It’s not full diy, but it’s easy and cheaper than the cycling-specific stuff. So about 90g carbs. That will last me about an hour to hour and a half.
I’m a pack guy. The (4hr-ish MTB) races/rides I do just don’t let me drink easily from a bottle, thus when using a bottle I never drink. Mostly, I use my drink to supplement my other nutrition. In my 1.5 USWE, I use 2-3 scoops of Scratch hydrate (pick your fav. flavor) then 4-5 scoops of 25g home-grown Glucose:Fructose mix (1:0.8). Note: weigh the powders, don’t mix by volume (i.e. scoops) as Maltodex is less dense than fructose 
I also carry 1 small bottle of water on bike.
I supplement this with gels. I have tried and tried to eat solids but they generally just sit in my cheek forever. I love the SIS gels as they go down sooooo easy. So, I made my own.
Gregs gel recipe– trust me you’ll love it.
1 GU flask
2-3 SCOOPS (50g-75g) of pre-mentioned concoction (depends on your gut and mouth palatability)
1/4 to 1/2 nuun tablet.
water.
I take this “gel” every 45 min. For me 1 hr is too long between intervals and 30 min is too soon. If you do 50g every 45 min thats ~70g/hr. Its so watery it’ll go down in < 1 sec and you can modify to your liking.
If you don’t need/want gels, you could do all this in your pack or bottles, but I find it harder to “know” where I’m at calorie-wise.
NOTE: when mixing put the nuun in last. powder-shake shake shake- nuun. if you do the nuun first, well try it and let me know. 
I do something similar but toss in a nuun tab which has the benefit of electrolytes.
Just saw this. I think I’m going to give it a whirl for the next few weeks. How sweet does it come out? I was dumping Gatorade powder into my flavorless Flow last year to sneak out more carbs, add some salt, and a bit of flavor. But I lost my super duper flow hookup this year so looking DIY or maybe even Formula 369.
I mean it’s got a bit of sweetness to it, but I would say it’s better than like sugar water. Just very concentrated. I started with drinking just Gatorade. Then would mix 1 scoop Gatorade 1 scoop tang. (Gatorade for some electrolytes and Tang for carbs) then got used to that then did 2 scoops tang 1 scoop gatorade. Its not a thin liquid. But ain’t too thick for just drinking. You really got to shake it. Make sure you shake it well so it all mixed. Otherwise you get a bunch left at the bottom. I have grown to love it. Cheep and gets the job done.
I used this over the weekend. Not bad! Doesn’t feel thick or too sweet. This weekend, I might increase to three scoops of Tang with one serving of the Gatorade powder or two scoops of Gatorade to get more sodium.
Dang thats a lot. Keep me updated on how it gose. How many carbs an hr?
Just buy a bag of sodium citrate to bump sodium. It’s very easy on the gut and can help cut sweetness a bit.
So about a month of fueling my harder and longer rides, and gotta say, Tang is where it’s at. I’m doing about 120 grams of carbs an hour, and it doesn’t feel too sweet or thick. Also took webdev511’s advice about sodiam citrate to bump up the sodium; so far so good. Also good on the wallet.
If the weather holds, this weekend I’ll do a gravel race sim. 5 or so hours with two big bottles and my USWE pack loaded.
Awsome! I hope it helps. Kinda a poor mans fule stuff. You can buy it in bulk, which is super nice. I dont know how yall are doing 120g of carbs. I can do about 80 in a road race. I usually do a 1l bottle with 160g for 3h. Good on ya man.
I have used many big containers of Nutricost brand from amazon , tasteless and mixes well. BulkSupplements brand has also been great.
To avoid any clumping with any of the mixes I add cool (not super cold) water 1/4 full… add all ingredients and then shake vigorously… then top up with water/ice after shaking.
I typically then add flavored electrolyte powders like Sports Research, Propel etc… then add Saltivate unflavored electrolytes (or similar) to get sodium where I would like it depending on weather/duration etc.
For best mixing results use warm water. Warm water dissolves both sugar and salt (sodium ) faster and more efficiently than cold water because higher temperatures increase molecular motion, allowing particles to break away and dissolve quicker.
I will give that a try again - in the past when I have tried warmer water with the same goal as you said… it would turn into a clump ball that wouldn’t break up. Maybe it was when I was using some multi-carb premix stuff that had some waxy maize, malto and fructose all together. Like with corn starch if you add to a cold liquid it mixes better, doesn’t dissolve… but mixes into a slurry easier w/o clumps. Warm water it creates a slime that doesn’t break up.