TLDR: A homemade sports drink can do the same job as a branded one for a fraction of the price. Sports drinks are just carbohydrate, water and (sometimes) sodium. Mix maltodextrin with fructose, or with plain table sugar, at a 2:1 or 1:0.8 ratio.
Is a homemade sports drink as good as the branded stuff?
Back in 2004, a group of researchers had nine cyclists ride a 64 km time trial three times. Each time they took 15 g of carbohydrate every 16 km, either as honey, as dextrose (glucose) or as a placebo. With honey they averaged 128 minutes 42 seconds and with dextrose 128 minutes 18 seconds: just 24 seconds apart over more than two hours of riding. On the placebo they averaged 131 minutes 18 seconds, and the two carbohydrate trials together were faster than placebo (Earnest et al., 2004).
It was a small study but it makes a useful point. A sports drink isn’t magic. It’s a high-carbohydrate fluid, and if you swap it for another high-carbohydrate fluid made with the right sugars, your body doesn’t know the difference.
That’s why I’ve recommended homemade mixes to plenty of clients. The ingredients in most carb drinks are cheap and easy to buy online. Some people switch purely for the savings, some because they want more control over what goes in the bottle, and some, if I’m honest, enjoy the feeling of working around the system a little and sticking it to the corporations.
What’s actually in a carb drink?
Most modern sports drinks use two carbohydrates:
- Maltodextrin: chains of glucose made from starch. It’s absorbed as glucose but isn’t very sweet.
- Fructose: fruit sugar. It’s absorbed through a different transporter in the gut, and it’s very sweet: roughly 1.2 to 1.8 times sweeter than table sugar.
Using both lets you absorb and use more carbohydrate per hour than glucose alone, because you’re using two routes into the body rather than one. A 2015 review of 14 studies found glucose-fructose blends improved performance and gut comfort compared with the same amount of glucose, especially in events over two hours (Rowlands et al., 2015). I’ve covered the background in my article on multiple transportable carbohydrates.
Look at the labels of most branded drinks and you’ll see the same thing: a 2:1 or 1:0.8 ratio of maltodextrin (or glucose) to fructose. On the carbohydrate side, the brands are much of a muchness. Where they really differ is flavour.
If you already have a drink you like and want to copy it, here’s where some popular ones sit:
| Ratio | Examples |
|---|---|
| 2:1 | Precision Fuel & Hydration, High5 Energy Drink, TORQ, Enervit |
| 1:0.8 | SiS Beta Fuel, STYRKR, Maurten |
Find your drink’s ratio, then use the matching columns in the recipe tables below.
Should you use a 2:1 or 1:0.8 ratio?
Both work. The difference might show up at higher intakes.
- When cyclists took about 90 g an hour, a drink closer to 1:0.8 led to about 18% more of the drink’s carbohydrate being used than a roughly 2:1 mix, and about 3% more sprint power at the end (O’Brien et al., 2013).
- A 2022 review concluded that ratios near 1:0.8 are preferable to 2:1 once you go above 60 g an hour (Podlogar & Wallis, 2022).
My practical take: the jury is still out, so I wouldn’t get too hung up on this. Either ratio is likely fine for most people. If you’re pushing towards 90 g an hour in a long race and fancy experimenting, 1:0.8 is worth a go in training, but the best mix is the one your gut tolerates and you’re happy to keep drinking. If you’re not sure what your hourly target should be, the free Race-Day Fuel Calculator will give you carbohydrate, fluid and sodium targets for your event.
How do you make your own sports drink? The recipe tables
Pick how many grams of carbohydrate you want in the bottle, then weigh out the amounts below. The concentration column assumes a 750 ml bottle.
Option 1: maltodextrin and fructose
| Carbs per bottle | 2:1 maltodextrin | 2:1 fructose | 1:0.8 maltodextrin | 1:0.8 fructose | Concentration (750 ml) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 g | 20 g | 10 g | 17 g | 13 g | 4% |
| 45 g | 30 g | 15 g | 25 g | 20 g | 6% |
| 60 g | 40 g | 20 g | 33 g | 27 g | 8% |
| 75 g | 50 g | 25 g | 42 g | 33 g | 10% |
| 90 g | 60 g | 30 g | 50 g | 40 g | 12% |
Option 2: maltodextrin and table sugar (the cheapest route)
Table sugar (sucrose) is half glucose, half fructose, and it works just as well as pure fructose in a carb mix (Trommelen et al., 2017). So you don’t need to buy fructose at all. Maltodextrin plus supermarket sugar gets you the same ratios:
| Carbs per bottle | 2:1 maltodextrin | 2:1 table sugar | 1:0.8 maltodextrin | 1:0.8 table sugar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 g | 10 g | 20 g | 3 g | 27 g |
| 45 g | 15 g | 30 g | 5 g | 40 g |
| 60 g | 20 g | 40 g | 7 g | 53 g |
| 75 g | 25 g | 50 g | 8 g | 67 g |
| 90 g | 30 g | 60 g | 10 g | 80 g |
Notice that a 1:0.8 mix made this way is almost all sugar, which makes it very sweet. More on that below.
How much salt should go in a homemade sports drink?
Table salt is about 39% sodium, so the conversion is easy: sodium × 2.5 = salt. If you want 500 mg of sodium in a bottle, you need about 1.25 g of salt.
| Sodium target | Table salt to weigh |
|---|---|
| 200 mg | 0.5 g |
| 300 mg | 0.75 g |
| 500 mg | 1.25 g |
| 750 mg | 1.9 g |
| 1,000 mg | 2.5 g |
Weigh it on a small digital scale rather than using a “pinch” or a teaspoon, because those vary a lot. Or, if you’d rather not faff, just drop an electrolyte tablet into the bottle.
How much you need depends on you. Sweat sodium varies roughly fourfold between athletes, from about 420 to over 1,600 mg per litre of sweat, and sweat rates vary even more (Baker et al., 2016). That’s one of the beauties of making your own: you don’t have to put electrolytes in every bottle. Short, cool sessions may not need any. A long, hot race might need more. My article on when to take electrolytes goes into more detail.
How do you make a homemade carb drink taste good?
This is where the brands earn their money. They’re good at formulating drinks that taste decent, because they know the fructose (and sugar) side of the mix is very sweet. Sweet is fine for an hour. For 10 to 15 hours of an Ironman, it can become something you dread.
So ask yourself honestly: would you happily drink a bottle of sugar water, or a honey drink, all day? If the answer is no, flavour is the part of DIY that needs the most work. A few things I’ve found useful in practice:
- Add a squeeze of lemon or lime juice. A small amount takes the edge off the sweetness. Add more if you like it sour.
- Dissolve the maltodextrin in a little warm water first. It can clump in cold water. Stir it into a splash of warm or hot water, then top up with cold.
- Experiment in training. Try different additions until you find a version you’d still drink late in a long day. It may take a few goes, and that’s normal.
- Practise your race-day mix. Your gut adapts to the amount of carbohydrate you train with, so build up gradually. My article on training the gut explains how.
How strong can you make a bottle?
This is a common DIY mistake. The more concentrated a drink, the more slowly it leaves the stomach, although it still delivers more carbohydrate overall (Vist & Maughan, 1994). Traditional guidance suggested drinks of around 4–8% carbohydrate, and studies at about 90 g an hour have used drinks of around 11%.
For context, 60 g in a 750 ml bottle is 8%. Squeeze 90 g into a 500 ml bottle and you’re at 18%, which is well beyond what’s been tested and a recipe for a sloshing, unhappy stomach. If you need a lot of carbohydrate per hour, spread it across more fluid, or combine your drink with gels or chews.
Is a homemade sports drink safe?
For most people, yes, as long as you think about hygiene. Sugary drinks and warm bottles are a good home for bacteria.
- Wash bottles in hot, soapy water and let them dry fully.
- Pre-weigh your dry powder into bags or tubs, then add water close to when you’ll drink it.
- Don’t leave mixed bottles sitting in a warm car or kit bag for hours.
- Replace bottles that are scratched, stained or smell, however well you wash them.
If you’re a tested athlete: under anti-doping rules you’re responsible for anything in your system, even from a contaminated product. UK Anti-Doping advises using only batch-tested supplements. Supermarket table sugar is ordinary food, but bulk “sports” maltodextrin or fructose bought online usually isn’t batch tested. If you compete under anti-doping rules, weigh that up, or look for batch-tested carbohydrate powders on Informed Sport.
Does saving a few quid really matter?
I worked with an athlete preparing for an Ironman. It was his first ever triathlon. By race day he’d spent hundreds of pounds on the entry, travel and kit, so being able to fuel well for a fraction of the price really appealed. He got so into the sport that, by the end, every penny he saved on his bottles went into his new bike fund. He had a drink that did exactly what he needed, and it left a bit more money for the things he enjoyed.
That’s the best case for DIY. It isn’t better than the branded drinks. It’s just as good, cheaper and yours to adjust. If you value convenience, consistent taste or a product that’s batch tested, buying branded is a perfectly sensible choice too.
Want to see how your homemade drink fits into a full race plan? Use the Race-Day Fuel Calculator to set your hourly targets.
