Many of us have heard people say "You don’t need to use [expensive carb mix], just mix up [some mix of table sugar, salt, maltodextrin, lemon juice, etc] and it’ll work just the same
I tried this, estimating the quantities the best I could, and (a) it didn’t really taste or feel the same, and (b) I just didn’t have any confidence that the ratios were accurate enough to work properly
To get more precise, I created a spreadsheet to clone my favorite drinks more accurately. But as I got more curious about the science, and tried to optimize more, the spreadsheet became messier and less useful.
This led me to create a web app called carbhack.com.
What it actually does:
- Clone the expensive stuff: Reverse-engineer popular sports drinks so you can buy bulk powder and make them at home (often for 70-88% off retail cost).
- Compare brands: Visualize the actual differences between top mixes on the market.
- Build custom formulations: Dial in your preferred exact carb ratios and sodium levels from scratch.
It’s completely free and still a work in progress. If you do your own DIY mixing, I’d love for you to test it out. Let me know what you think, what brands I should add to the database, or if you run into any bugs!
Wow! this is a really nice app. Thanks for sharing. Definitely going to be making myself some Tailwind replica.
So like that Saturday app but more vibe code?
I mean sure. But it’s vibe coding mixture ratios for maltodextrin, fructose, etc. and where to source the ingredients to save money.
not exactly giving you healthcare or financial advice.
Hi, I did use AI programming tools to help out building it, although I’d personally say that it was AI assisted over vibe coded (not everyone makes a distinction, but as a programmer to me there is a big difference). Honestly, without the AI, I don’t know that I’d have ever have taken the time to build it in this form over the google sheet I had before
There are some parallels to Saturday, although obviously fully free versus paid as well - to be honest, Saturday was off my radar until recently when the app was already completed. I’d always mostly just tinkered on my own and wasn’t familiar with it, but it sounds like they were working from a similar idea
I personally am skeptical of things on the internet, but I have personally been experimenting with DIY fueling strategies for a long time, and use these approaches myself - I built the app to be something I’ll want to use
Thanks for the feedback
Hi, thanks for checking it out! I’d like to add too that the formulations really aren’t “vibe coded” by most definitions at all - I include some information on the site on my methodology for creating the formulations, and by using published information, you are actually able to quite easily come up with precise formulations - really not even approximations
I know that people are particular about their mixes, myself and my girlfriend included, so I did want it to be accurate
Thanks for checking it out!
Awesome, glad you like it! Please do let me know if you have any feedback once you’re using it!
I didn’t think the formulations were “vibe coded” more just the overall UI and app itself.
I been mixing my own with TR Jonathan’s DIY mix but I like the looks of your app for providing different options to try out.
I’ve been playing with it some and it’s a really nice tool, having the osmolality calculator in there is something that I think gets overlooked a lot when people home brew their own drink mixes. One thing I noticed, and maybe it’s my own misunderstanding, but it looks like it calculates everything using maltodextrin. Once you go over about 50g of carbs per hour you would have to drink a substantial amount of water to keep osmolality at a comfortable level. Once you cross that threshold it seems to make more sense to switch to Highly Branched Cyclic Dextrin as the base which has several beneficial properties when doing those longer and harder efforts that require more than 50g per hour of fueling. It’s more expensive for sure, but it seems to me based on what I’ve looked at that trying to fuel more than 60g per hour without HBCD requires an uncomfortable amount of hydration to be manageable.
