Make SIS BETA fuel yourself just a few pence per bottle

I do this for mtb rides. I mix one very dense bottle that I put on the bike and it will feed me for 2 hours. I then just put pure water in my camelback for normal sipping.

For the mixing of malto and fructose, are people just mixing them at time of bottle preparation or are people pre-mixing them in a big tub?
I am not sure if the latter puts at risk not getting a 2:1 mix if they do not mix thoroughly in the big container.
I have tapioca maltodextrin and the powder is crazy fine/lite in weight for volume. As such I need a lot of scoops to get 90 ish grams per bottle total with a 2:1 malto:fructose. Was thinking to pre mix but then thought they may not mix thoroughly so maybe shouldn’t.
Love to hear what others are doing to optimize my process.

For sodium citrate, what are people shooting for for Na content per bottle? 1g?
And is it 4.5-5 grams of sodium citrate = 1 gram of sodium?

I always mix on the day or night before. Not all rides will be long/hard enough to warrant any fructose. And can also tailor the carbs in the bottle to dovetail with the real food I take in.

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I mix around 600g of carbs in a bag at time and then use a stand mixer to make sure they are thoroughly mixed together. I do sometimes just mix 1 at a time.

I am still trying to get an isotonic gel made like SIS. Can’t quite figure that one out.

I just mix and measure it in the bottle on a scale. Sodium Citrate can vary from about 20-30% sodium depending on the brand. I use about 2g of Sodium Citrate for about 500mg of sodium in a 20oz bottle.

Orange juice is an even mix of glucose and fructose (some bound up as sucrose, and some free). Softdrinks are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup… the fructose usually 55% of the sugars, so slightly heavy on the fructose.

Fructose is much sweeter than glucose. Per gram of sugar, something that is all fructose would be much too sweet

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I mix in a batch that fills an old protein mix container, which is 18 x 76g servings. I have no idea how well the fructose/malto/salts are actually mixed but it seems to work out ok.

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Outstanding! Thanks

Here’s a video from one of EF’s nutritionists, where he talks about making this drink mix. He has a little more info about what concentrations to mix that may be useful.

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Thank you for posting.

I have seen a lot of people assuming Gatorade is 1:1 glucose:fructose, but I’m looking at the ingredients label on Gatorade and it includes “sugar”(presumably sucrose, 1:1 glucose:fructose) followed by dextrose(glucose). This would imply a more than 1:1 ratio, although its hard to know how much dextrose there is. Has anyone else noticed this? Is this amount of dextrose small enough that it is essentially still 1:1?

Totally agree. I just bought carbo gain from amazon and 100% fructose from Nuts.com vs assuming to know what the ratio was on Gatorade. If I’m going to go to this much effort to mix my own drink mix I’m not going to assume what the ingredients are on any of the items.

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There’s a bunch of different gatorade formulations, so not surprising. Looking at labels on the gatorade website it looks like:

  • thirst-quentcher has the added dextrose, and it’s barely anything (112 floz bottle is 22g total carbs, 21 of which are sucrose per the nutrition label, so maybe 1g/5% dextrose?).
  • G2 is just sugar.
  • GZero obviously has almost none, but unshockingly not 0g
  • Endurance mix seems to have quite a bit more dextrose… might actually be close to 2:1 already. And it has more electrolytes that plants crave…
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1 1/3 cup Gatorade powder
2 1/3 cup Maltodextrin

I think your measurements might be reversed. I think you want about half as much maltodextrin as gatorade powder as gatorade is already about 1:1 glucose fructose so with the measurements above you’ll end up with roughly 6:1. glucose:fructose

I’ve seen this mistake made a couple times on this thread and I just wanted to chime in to make sure I’m not the one mistaken here since I’m also using gatorade as my base. Perhaps I’m missing something.

Edit: I see there is a bit of a discussion further down about what the ratio is in gatorade without any concrete conclusion. I still think if we assume roughly 1:1 we should be going for 2:1 gatorade to malto to get close to the 2:1 malto:fructose mix.

Thanks, I’ll double check. I do know the malto is significantly less dense than the gatorade, so when measuring by volume like I am it seems like a lot more malto.

So just checking, I am using - by weight - 2 parts malto to one part fructose, that’s the ‘correct’ ratio isn’t it? Cheers

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I’ve gone down the bulk powders route, thanks for all the info - how many g of electrolytes per 1kg of carb mix would people recommend?

For context I’ve mixed 5kg/2.5kg Malto to Fructose, then 500g of SIS Go I had left over for taste. So for 8kg of mix where I want 80g or so per bottle, is it as simple as 1g per serving so 100g in 8kg?

Aware there’s already 6g in the SIS powder I’ve added.

Has anyone been able to find a good source on maltodextrin/fructose in canada?

I’m in the U.S. but my fructose dealer, nuts.com, appears to ship to Canada.

Edit: google suggests a number of Canadian craft brewing sites that will ship 50lb maltodextrin. Here’s one: Maltodextrin - 10DE (50 lb) — Toronto Brewing

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Malto I get direct from amazon.ca
Still trying to find a fructose supply

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