For me, 1 cup per water bottle. That's it.

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I think you are really starting to freak people out with how simple you are making it...You know Slowtwitch,everything has to be tried,tested then tested again before being presented to the ST brains trust for approval...You are not supposed to just "wing it"!

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Actually, it's been tried, tested, and refined for me, by me, for my own training, and that's what I've found worked best.

Amongst what I have tried:
- Dense concentrations (like a 4 cup in one bottle) - Too goopy and required heating to fully dissolve. Pain in the rear
- Ultradense concentrations to make gels - Even more of a royal pain to make, and I hated the gel flask
- Light concentrations - Not bad, but I needed more calories
- Flavoring - Crystal light, 'orange drink' generic stuff, gatorade powder, etc. Kind of a hassle, and I actually like the mellow sugary taste of malto
- Salt & electrolytes - HEED, salt - Screws with the flavor and I found I liked my electrolytes separate
- Dissolving the night before - No difference once on bike. YOu might start the ride with chunks in your drink but they're all gone by the time you're thirsty enough to drink

There's more, but at least for me, 1 cup/bottle was the sweet spot for convenience and performance. I do bring Saltstick salt tabs for rides 4+ hrs.

I've looked up the calories and amounts others were reportedly using and it's pretty similar to 1cup/bottle as well.

and here I thought I was crazy for not putting in glutamate, BCAA, ribose, carnosine, carnitine, malic acid, vitamin e/c/d, all the powerful b vitamins, caffeine, three different monosaccharides, carbon fiber, and a buffer or two.

I like your style. I've cut out all flavoring. Just riding now with malto and a combination of salts.

I have a challenge for this group.

Post a recipe for a HEED clone and write the cost per serving.

A single serving of HEED costs precisely $2 at REI. How much can you get the serving price down by making it yourself ?

Do we have to put vitamin b6, chromium plynicotinate, ... in it?

Lets stick to carbohydrate and electrolytes.

1/2 cup of Malto is about 300 calories, 75 grams. QD product is about 1 cup per 300 calories because of the larger grain size to get it to be Quick Dissolve.

On the non QD products and Tate & Lyle products, I use about 3/4 cup for approx 450 calories. I'm a sweater and drink a lot so 600 calories in one bottle would be too much for me. I seem to do well with about 450 calories per bottle and I'll do numerous bottles on a long ride.

I add a some pure black cherry juice just to the point of getting a light, fresh taste. Crystal light tea works well for me also. I tried V8 Vfusion strawberry/banana juice yesterday and it was much to sweet for my taste.
I have some organic raspberry extract and black cherry extract on the way in the mail...want to try like a raspberry with a squeeze of lemon or something.

Just plain with no flavor wouldn't be terrible, but not as clean as straight water so I'd rather have a bit of flavor.

MetaCaps or Salt Stick caps taken for electolytes as needed depending on the day/effort, etc.

Challenge accepted:

50lbs of honeyville malto: $60 shipped - 870 servings of 26grams of carb

Endurolytes: 6 x 150 serving power jugs - 900 servings of same electrolytes as heed, minus glycine, l-carnosine, chromine, but more tyrosine. ($120 shipped)

Total: $180
Servings: 870

20 cents a serving... cost is going to go way down if I just use Lite Sate/Sea Salt/CaMag.

BOOM!

Super win! Thank you.

Pretty clear that I've been throwing a lot of money away.

1/10th cost is about what I have been generally figuring...right on!

Also FYI here is where I get my electrolytes:

Potassium and some sodium : lite salt http://www.mortonsalt.com/...on-lite-salt-mixture
The rest of the sodium I need: Sea salt http://www.mortonsalt.com/...alt-fine-and-coarse/
Calcium and Magnesium: http://www.amazon.com/...CalMag/dp/B000K9AHJK

Get all three for ~30 locally and are more than enough to make 900 servings of your own electrolyte brew or copy any commercial one out there.

That would bring the total down to 10 cents a serving.

If you think you need anything beyond Ca, Mg, Na, and K... I'd like to here your reasoning cause I might be missing something.

I've now made what I think is a definite link between my new use of Malto and increased bowel movements (fun stuff, I know). So I'm wondering if maybe it's something to do with the particular Malto I bought. Got it from a beer brewing store. I never had this issue using Perpetuem, which I do hate btw.

If you're in south west Ontario (Canada) and are looking for bulk maltodextrin, homebrew-supplies.ca will sell you a 50-lb bag for $98, pickup only. They're in Brampton, a little NW of the 407/410 intersection.

Nice! Thanks. The Endurolytes don't provide nearly as much as I need. Metasalts is good but expensive. I wasn't sure where to get bulk electrolytes so this is great!
Thanks!



I've never had any diff in BMs while using Malto. Kind of relates back to my earlier post that there are lots of different Maltos and it's prudent to know what brand, product line and DE you are getting so you can adjust, if needed. Maybe different bulk factors make a difference in your BM (high bulking Malto creates higher bulking BM??:-) For me, when first trying it out, I tried M040, M100, Star rite 5 and QD 500 to see what works best for my needs. M040 is DE5 M100 and QD M500 are DE 10. I like the DE 5 products but the 10 works pretty good also and the QD is quick dissolve - dissolves immediately and the mix is almost all clear.

Some of the bodybuilding nutrition sites sell Malto in much smaller (1 lb.) tubs for a little over $2/lb, sweetened with your choice of sweetener and flavor.

That probably would have been a good step for me. I don't know, and didn't keep the packaging, from the stuff I bought. To do a comparison I did pick up a little CarboPro to try this weekend.

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.”
-Albert Einstein
President and CEO, CarboPro

I just ordered a 50lb bag of Maltrin QD M500 for JM Swank Co in Iowa. I emailed an inquiry to them and customer service responded quickly and I gave them a call and placed an order. With shipping my order comes to about $100, so more than $60 but still much cheaper than $20 per pound for other products. I've been testing malto the past couple of months by buying some from a local brewing store and have had good luck with it so I'm looking forward to trying out a higher quality product.

Did you ask specifically for QD M500, or for the optimal malto for sports drinks? Or is M500 recognized as being optimal?

I asked specifically for QD M500.

Thanks, this looks like an even better price if its the correct one:

http://www.roundeyesupply.com/...xtrin-p/de527694.htm

Do they make a non QD 10DE malto? Description is a bit vague.

Got mine in Waterloo froma bulk food store. $50 for 50 pounds their cost.

Yes there is non QD 10 DE. Most brewer use the non QD stuff. A few pages back a posted a link to a long list of GPC's maltodexrin products.

I believe they make a couple kinds of malto that have are 10DE so it might not be the same stuff as the QD M500. I don't know enough about malto to comment on what the differences might be. My cost with shipping came to about $2 per pound for the QD M500 and when you compare that to products like Carbo Pro that sell for around $20 per pound I figure I'm saving a lot of money so I wanted to make sure I was getting the Maltrin QD M500 even if it meant paying a little more compared to ordering a malto online and not knowing exactly what I was getting.

I think one of the biggest advantages of ordering a large supply like this is that I'll get a chance to practice my race day nutrition more often. I put in a lot of miles, especially on the bike, so I can burn through products like Perpetuem pretty quickly. With the cost of those products I tend to conserve them and only practice my nutrition on key workouts and not my longer mid-week rides. With this being cheaper and having a large supply, I won't feel the need to save it for key rides. I like to do one or two 3-hour rides during the week and I never practice my race day nutrition on those because I go through it too quickly. Last year I added up how much I would spend if I practiced race day nutrition on all rides 2 hours or longer and runs of 90 min or longer (I use gels for those and plan to continue buying gels) and it was more than $100 per month. Ouch. Now I'll use malto for all of those rides and the added practice should help me dial in my nutrition and help my gut get used to processing this stuff. Win win.