I’m curious, when I went closer to 1:1 gl:fr using maltodextrin:fructose I could hardly take in the drink mix it was so sweet. I’ve done some more at 2:1 and found it much more palatable. I’m just not sure how to get to 1:1 with the sweetness not getting cranked up so high.
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Try Citric acid. I’m not sure if anything else that might help.
Plain fructose is the sweetest of the sugars so higher ratios you would notice.
I’ve made mix with cluster dextrin, sucrose, and fructose at 1:.8 for this very reason
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As noted above, maltodextrin is chained glucose. Some people don’t tolerate it well, others have no problem digesting it. The glucose comes from dextrose, which is simply glucose from corn - but glucose, regardless of the source, is just glucose.
A fairly inexpensive way to make your sugar water is to purchase a cannister of Gatorade powder (a 76.5 ounce container is around $12 on Amazon and will last a year if not longer) and add some sodium chloride (i.e. regular table salt) and some potassium chloride powder. For a large bike bottle in the summer heat I usually add 1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp potassium (I sweat a ton of salt and have had heat stroke a few times so to each his own).
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Where did you buy cluster dextrin?
Direct from manufacturer Glico now. I started geluminati.com
Before that was
Bulk.com from Europe that I had 3rd party shipped to US.
True nutrition also sells it at $20 a lb
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More salt or sodium citrate may help, too. Moving the ratio slightly closer to 2:1 gluc:fruc can also help attenuate the sweetness and is also usually well-tolerated in many cases. I personally find the best way to mitigate sweetness is
- Use a flavor of some kind (any powdered mix with flavor, in small quantity, or squeeze of lemon juice).
- Use plenty of sodium, with >70% of sodium coming from sodium citrate, but do include some sodium from table salt.
- Use sugar for most of the mix, instead of maltodextrin/fructose. Makes it less gel-like and more drinkable, which seems to help with the sweetness intensity.
- Don’t use a drink with strong flavor intensity because it can become overwhelming to the palate in flavor intensity and sweetness which is a lot of palate overwhelm.
All the above is very much a mix of my n=1 personal preferences and the food science.
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@Dr_Alex_Harrison - What’s the quick reason for this one? Currently using ~1200 mg Sodium per Liter, but all from Sodium Citrate.
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Personal flavor preference. 
(PS. the reason for still including mostly sodium citrate = gut comfort)
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Gotcha. I’ve actually got no problem with 50/50 Malto and fructose with 100% sodium citrate, so I guess no need to change it up.
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100% Cane Sugar(table sugar) here in Australia- 1:1 Glucose/Fructose
I regularly consume 90-120g per hour with no gut issues whatsoever
This is also taking in about 1litre water per hour .
(950ml bottles with 90gram sugar )
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