What do you mean
It would mean that if you want 90g of carbs then you would do 60g of Gatorade and 30g of Malto. Then add water to required consistency
Ok thanks. I also wonder what the upper limits are in terms of processing. I have done 150g in an hour without much issue and I could do 80-100g without any ‘gut training’.
I think @IamLeven is referring to the presence of other ingredients and water content within powders. Maltodextrin often has 28-29g per 30g scoop, I believe. And Gatorade may have ~1g of “other stuff” (electrolytes, flavor, color, etc) per 23g serving. So to get 60g carbs from Gatorade it looks like roughly 63g product. If 28g carbs from 30g malto, then, I’d estimate about 95g carbs from 100g of mix.
If adding salt or sodium citrate, then yeah, 92g per 100g mixture sounds about right.
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I suspect minimal if any differences.
I sometimes add more table salt or sodium citrate just to combat sweetness as much as I do for hydration management. If my solution is below ~500mg sodium per 100g carbs, it’s too sweet for me (assuming 90% sugar and close to 1:1 gluc:fruc ratio as a result).
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This is a great suggestion. On my last Century I started with a 4hr 100g/hr bottle, but switched to gels and food for the second half. On a recon ride I tried zip lock bags of powder that leaked/spilled and made a gross sticky mess of my backside for the rest of the ride. It would be great to do one bottle mixing stop and then just refill water along the way. Do you have bags that you can rip open, or do you bring a knief with you?
Any other suggestions for reusable sealable containers that people have had luck with for carrying mix?
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Small ziplock sandwich bags. Reusable. Minimize waste.
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And double bag. If I have a bag per bottle I will put those bags in another bag. I’ve found this method to work well enough in case a corner of the ziploc happens to open. I also make sure ALL of the air is squeezed out of each bag,
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A friend is telling me that you can have cyclic dextrin above 60g per hour with no need for fructose? If this is true why aren’t we just having 90-120g of cyclic dextrin? I tried doing a google search and couldn’t find any supporting evidence.
Edit, he’s taking scratch labs super fuel, just checked the ingredients, it has fructose.
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So I want to make my own gel and hydration mix. Firstly because of the costs and secondly because of the adjustability of the recipe. I took some references from here, others from reddit and the rest of the internet(I actually posted the same thread on reddit, lets see what I can learn)
For the gel I am considering for 25 servings:
- 320g Fructose/ 400g Maltodextrin/ 550g Water/ 10g Citric Acid/ 10g Citrus Aroma (True Orange/Lemon)/ 2.5g Caffeine/ 2g Salt
Process: heat water to almost boild, pour in rest of ingredients and stir untill combined
Which comes out for one serving to
- 51.6g/ 115 kcal/ 27g Carbs/ 26g Sugar/ 31mg Sodium/ 100mg Caffeine (I think I will make a batch with and a batch without caffeine)
For the hydration mix I am also considering 25 servings:
- 640g Fructose/ 800g Maltodextrin/ 10g Citric Acid/ 10g Citrus Aroma (True Orange/Lemon)/ 15g Salt/ 15g Morton Lite Salt / 7g Epsom Salt/ 1g CaCl
Which comes out for one serving to
- 60g/ 230 kcal/ 54g Carbs/ 52g Sugar/ 356mg Sodium/ 15mg Calcium/ 270mg Magnesium/ 25.5mg Chloride/ 150mg Potassium/ 109mg Sulfates
As a base I took the idea of the SIS Beta Fuel Maltodextrin to Fructose 1:0.8
and for electorlytes I took a Nuun Tab as reference.
Now my questions:
- How necessary do you see the citrus aroma if I already have citric acid in the gel?
- Where can I source caffeine? I saw it on pure bulk, but they only sell it to businesses, Is an option to buy pills and open them up to get to the powder?
- The gel will almost be pure sugar water, is it necessary to store it in the fridge or can it be at room temperature?
- Has anybody done any experimenting with SodaStream flavours for the gels? Or any other flavoring?
- Any input on the composition of gel and hydration mix; am I overlooking something?
- I seen some gels that use L-Carnitine and I have some meta studies that show (not 100% conclusive) that most likely L-Carnitine helps with recovery, so I am tempted to include something to get to 250mg in one serving, again does somebody has any experience?
- In these investigations I also stumbled over very expensive recovery shakes and I was thinking, this could also be somewhat easily reproducable with some vitamins and protein powder, does anybody make his own recovery shakes?
I’ve gone down the electrolyte rabbit hole here:
If I had to do it over again I would use sodium citrate (I use it now), and potassium would be the only other electrolyte I would consider adding. I don’t think there is good evidence that the remainder need to be replenished during exercise, even for extended periods of time. You need such small quantities of these, and have to buy so much that you end up with more than you will likely ever use.
Your magnesium numbers look odd - being higher than potassium seems strange.
My take on the electrolyte contents of many of the commercial offerings is that this is feature creep/checkbox based - meaning that they are selling really expensive salt/sugar, so adding these things makes it ‘better’. If their competitor has calcium, then they better have calcium too, as it is cheap, and they don’t want a ‘calcium gap’ to their competitor.
For Potassium there are some alternate salt-substitutes available that are pure KCL, rather than the half/half mix of Morton light salt.
For flavoring I have used true lemon/lime, and like those. I have tried some other ‘powdered fruit’, and found it terrible. Powdered gatorade is also reasonable for flavor. I have not used citric acid in anything so I can’t comment on if that is enough for flavor.
I would be very careful with caffeine powder - really just don’t do it. Getting math wrong could be quite dangerous, and measuring small amounts is hard.
I would also refrigerate this after making it. I usually pre-mix my gatorade+sugar mix and keep that in the fridge, and even there one bottle went ‘bad’ after it got neglected for a while.
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How many packets? I tried one and then two per litre. Barely tasted it. And do they have a bulk version? Ripping those packets open is a pain and super wasteful.
You can buy at least the lemon and lime in shaker dispensors - I probably put the equivalent of 3ish packets per 750ml. I mostly use this with just electrolytes - ie no sugar, so a mild flavor to cover the salt is all I am looking for. I would probably need more in a very sweet drink to add meaningful flavor.
Quite honestly the flavoring is the hardest part of the the DIY hydration game.
Thanks for this big answer.
So you replace the salt with sodium citrate? Why do you do this?
I am a home beer brewer so I have epsom and CaCl laying around, aswell as a scale for small amounts. I will however be carefull with the caffeine, although I think if I buy it in tablet form, I can use that as guidance, for example if I want 1 g of caffeine I throw in 4-5 200mg tablets, since those are sold openly they should have a very close production tolerance.
The magnesium is a typo, its actually 27g, not 270g ups 
So you use Potassium chloride instead of morton salt? Is there anything bad that can happen with a lot of chloride in the mix? Since KCL is almost ~50% chlroide?
So you replace the salt with sodium citrate? Why do you do this?
2 reasons:
- more sodium atoms/molecule, so for same sodium contributes less to osmolarity.
- lack of flavor - it doesn’t taste salty, and hardly has flavor at all. This requires less flavoring to mask, especially at higher concentrations. My first mix that I copied from another writeup was using NaCl and baking soda for sodium, and it tasted nasty and needed flavoring to overcome, so this is a real improvement. I actually just had to test this, since I hadn’t had the sodium citrate alone - I just sprinkled some in my hand and ate it - barely tasted anything. Doing that with salt would have made me gag.
If you have the raw ingredients around for the other electrolytes I would throw them in - it’s not much extra work, but I don’t think it is worth the cost/hassle of buying them and storing them just for this. Since I have them, I will continue to use them, but if/when I run out, I won’t repurchase them.
As I recal, Morton light salt is half NaCl, half KCl. All I want out of it is the potassium so I found "Nu-Salt Salt substitute’ at the grocery store that is just KCl. Using straight NaCl for the sodium seems fine for people, so I don’t think too much chloride is generally a problem. Even for concerns about high salt diets the concern is the sodium, not the chloride from what I understand.
The magnesium is a typo, its actually 27g, not 270g ups
This is why powdered caffeine is not a good idea - accidentally consuming 10x the already high doses of caffeine that are taken to improve performance could put you into the ‘visit to the ER’ or worse territory. (I don’t offhand know what the toxic levels are, but it can kill you.) It’s easy to make mistakes like this, so I think working with tablets even if you crush them is a good idea. I think most people would realize something is wrong if they were grinding up 10x the expected number of tablets 
If you haven’t read them already, there are a few threads on hydration and carb fueling either started by or with lots of comments by @Dr_Alex_Harrison which provide some good insight on these topics.
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Thanks a lot, I think I am on the right track and will whip up a batch with your recommendations and read up on dr alex harrisons posts to improve it. and then hopefully also produce something drinkable
and you are 100% right with the powdered caffeine.
Wow, I am just a rookie who found about beta fuel powder. (which is currently out of stock) and found this thread.
What is the final consensus after several trials from different members?
So I got Gatorade thirst quencher powder orange or lime flavor, nuun hidration tablets, and I am not sure what type of maltodextrine to buy from amazon.
What is the recommended receipt mix, and how much per water bottle?
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After reading this for well over a year and trying a lot of different suggestions I’ve gone for the KISS recipe as it ticks the boxes for maximising performance/intake, it’s available from any supermarket/corner store, and I can remember it.
- 4kg plain sugar (sucrose = 1:1 glucose/malto).
- 500g (or near enough) commercial electrolyte mix. I generally use Gatorage but not really fussed (it’s really only for flavour, so don’t care what brand as long as it tastes ok).
- 100g table salt (200g sodium citrate if I find any available locally)
I mix 90-120g of this to a 650-700ml bottle, aiming to drink a bottle/hour. With a very scientific bit less powder/more liquid on hot days as my gut can struggle with lots of carbs on long 35c+ days.
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Thanks! And the maltodextrine? Already ordered carbogain
I don’t bother with maltodextrine/glucose anymore. Sucrose is 1:1 fructose:glucose so it takes away from needing to do the math to get to 0.8:1 (or whatever ratio is ‘perfect’). I’ve tried various ratios of glucose to malto and my experience is that sucrose does the job just as well. YMMV.
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