You can combine malto with plain glucose (bought bulk from same sort of place where you buy malto), add some lemon or lime juice, or brewed tea for flavoring.
A 50lb tub of malto is not a bad deal. A 5lbs bag last for a month between me and my BF.
Do the Dew… 
Couldn’t you flavor it with something like Crystal Light?
Probably could, but I’m not sure about pumping all that artificial sweeteners into one’s bloodstream.
~Matt
Tea? I’m sure there are ALOT of potential flavorings, teh problem is finding one you actually like AND making it so it’s convenient.
Frankly you can’t bring lemon juice or brewed tea with you on a long ride. The flavoring would have to be powder form just like G-aide or other. Might be able to get away with a gel flavoring or some sort.
To me and as other people have posted, time is an issue as well. If I have to brew tea and or make some juice and then make the sport drink it looses alot of it’s appeal. OTOH if I could buy malto, glucose, electrolytes and flavoring mix up a tub of powder and do it cheap, THAT would be worth it.
The other advantage would be similar to what Infint offers and that you’d be able to mix and match according to conditions and personal need.
~Matt
mix the rest of the ingredients in a tub, then pre-ride squirt some lemon juice from one of those lemon-shaped plastic squeeze bottles from the grocery.
I just go without flavoring.
Or a person could contact a company like **THIS **and see if they sell to the general public. Looks like they have every flavor under the sun in several different forms.
~Matt
PM me your address and I will donate to you a large supply of powder gatorade. This stuff people are discussing makes me want to gag.
Cool recipes, but only recipe 3 is cheaper than gatorade and it probably tastes aweful.
Buy the gatorade powder or just drink water with sugar and salt added.
I make my own drink using honey, maltodextrin, and dextrose. Maltodextrin is $1/lb and Dextrose $0.50/lb from http://www.jmswank.com/; shipping is about $30 per 50-lb bag. I have packed about 1500 kcal in one small bottle by diluting 100g of honey, then adding 150g of maltodextrin, 150g of dextrose, and 15g of salt – and that was enough for a 7-hour ride.
Get in touch with JMSwank and see if they have a UK representative; if not, you should be able to find a similarly cheap source of these ingredients there.
John
I use a combination of Infinit and water/Gu for 2 hour+ workouts and all races. Although Gu does not have the level of electrolytes that I need for long distance events. I use water for anything shorter than 2 hours–except maybe the occasional intense 1.5 hour TT.
Unless you’re willing to delve into the details of nutrition, I recommend sticking to a reputable energy drink provider like Gatorade Endurance or Infinit. Personally, it’s hard enough for me to find time to fit 10 to 20 hours of training into my week. I don’t care to mess around with saving a few bucks making my own drink–which may or may not be functional.
Check it out… http://www.infinitnutrition.com/. They cover the UK, too.
While that’s a very generous offer, I think the shipping to the UK would kill you! Thanks anyway for the thought.
That sounds like an expensive recipe at one part honey for one part water. If you make up a water bottle work, at 20 oz, that’s 10 oz. of honey! Even filling up half a flask with honey would get pricey, considering a jar of honey is perhaps two full flasks worth.
Honey is less than half the price of Gu or other prepackaged gels. Honey has about 80 calories per ounce. The cost of honey is about 25-50 cents per ounce (or cheaper).
http://www.carlislehoney.com/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=honey&utm_content=honey02&utm_campaign=organic%2Bhoney
http://www.totaldiscountvitamins.com/Merchant/ysframe.htm ($4 for 16 oz).
A Gu is about 1.1 oz and gives you 100 calories (or 90 calories per oz). Gu costs about $1.00.
If you make up a 20 oz water bottle, as you said, that is 800 calories. That’s alot of calories and will work for an ironman. For irondistance races, I’ve used to honey flasks (about 350 calories each) mixed with enduralytes. Additional calories I get from gatoraid and clif bars and stuff on course.
Plus with honey you don’t have to deal with sticky trash. Though triathletes generally are not “green”, using honey reduces packaging waste, and thus it would be a green thing to do. Nevermind avoiding HFCS.
My swim friend says his homemade energy drink is honey, cinnamon, and water: a little of the first two and a lot of the last. Wouldn’t appeal to me, but to each his/her own…
Didn’t they used to drink pickle juice before Gatorade? Sounds awful to me, but I think pro and college footballers used to live on that stuff during hot summer training camps.
Bernie