Home Made Energy Gels

Triathlon Forum
1

I’m thinking of trying my hand at some home made energy gels. Anyone have any recipes they use? Recommend? Ones to avoid?

I’m basing mine off of Brendan Brazier’s Thrive/vega recipes and using dates as the primary sugar source with some water to dissolve it and adding some salt, some kind of flavor to it maybe some coconut oil.

I thought this would be a cost effective option since I typically have the above ingredients in my pantry anyways (or it’s cheap enough to buy). Any ideas would be great.

2

I tried a few different things…

I tried fruit juices with chia seeds as the “gelling” agent. It wasn’t bad as far as taste go, but it was a pain to store: the little seeds do not go through most gel flasks caps.

Honey by itself isn’t bad - although it does get (surprisingly) very liquid in the heat. Mixing it with molasses and/or brown rice syrup improved consistency. Vanilla, cocoa, cinnamon can also be added easily for flavoring.

Maple syrup. Now that one is interesting, but way too liquid. It can however be thickened by boiling it further more and it tastes great.

Fruit purees aren’t bad either, and can easily be stored in gel flasks.

edit Disclaimer: all these tries proved too much hassle. Clif and Powerbar gels are less than a dollar each when purchased by case. I ended up saving a few pennies per gels and spending too much time in the kitchen.

3

I have used this homemade energy bar:

Take the rice Krispy square recipe. Substitute Vector cereal roe the rice krispies. Add in a trail mix of your choosing. Done.

4

For IMAZ last year I used only homemade oatmeal bars (well more like gels when I got to them on the bike given the heat). Worked out really well for both the bike and run - not heavy on stomach at all, plus you can prepare them in a hotel room or even grab some from the breakfast bar.

I used some almonds, dried fruit, honey / brown sugar, coconut and salt. Also added some dried fruits / chocolate for the ones to be consumed during the run - at that point I just needed the comfort of it…

But I ain’t no nutritionist - probably not the best substitute for a gel - however it worked fine for me (FYI I used Skratch only in bottles, nothing else).

Good luck!

5

The recipe in Thrive is solid, I’ve tried it. One point that I thought of is why are we making gel? Haven’t we suffered enough? Just seed a date stuff with some almond butter or not and bam! Also the energy bar recipe in there is perfect to start with.

6

What distance are you training for?

7

I often do this one:

Buy a juice of choice. Chug first quarter of it. Fill bottle with the rest. Tadaaa.

8

I’ve tried variations with honey, it provides the best taste(in my opinion) and provides quick sugar to the body. There have been quite a few messes made on my bike! Also looking into stuff like 50% glucose… the kind of stuff carried by EMTs for diabetic patients and just trying to flavor it or add some other components that will release nutrients/sugar a little slower.

9

As a ff/medic trust me you don’t want that oral glucose very nasty. Just buy a gel if your gonna spend the money on oral glucose.

10

For the last year I have been using a recipe I found on a road biker website:
3/4 cup brown rice syrup
1/2 cup agave nectar
1/2 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Few notes:

  • around 140 calories/36 g of carb per ounce
  • have stored for a month or two with no trouble at room temperature, however, I have the stomach of a goat so be cautious.
  • have added up to 4 teaspoons of cocoa for flavor.
  • pay attention you can get low calorie agave by accident, kinda defeats point of an energy gel

Cheers, Alan

11

The main ingredient of most energy gels is maltodextrin which can be purchased from supplements stores, it’s usually marketed as a carbohydrate supplement and it’s pretty cheap. You can use this as a base and use a small amount of liquid to get a gel like consistency, no need to cook. Then throw in whatever you want for flavoring and whatever amount of salt and potassium you feel is optimal.

Some other things I would consider throwing in are:

  1. BCAAs
  2. Caffein
  3. Bits of fruit
  4. Dextrose

If you want to go the more organic route I’ve tried honey with chia in a flask which worked out pretty well.

12

I do Xterras mostly so 3ish hour races tops. Bars usually don’t work for me for off road stuff. It’s typically too intense for me to easily digest something solid and too bumpy for me to be futzing around with a bar wrapper.

13

Yeah, I liked the recipes in Thrive even though I found some of his “science” a bit questionable to put it mildly. I like the idea of using real ingredients too and I’d rather have a reusable gel flask than worrying about those stupid sticky gel packages when I’m done.

Lots of good ideas. Thanks everyone

14

Half a cup barley malt syrup
One cup rice malt syrup
Heat gently and mix

Dissolved strong instant coffee & salt to taste. When it tastes right, it is right.

Got me through multiple full & half IM & many long training days.

15

I know you asked about gels, but there are some comments on energy bars and I’d throw this one in… A while ago I was watching GCN videos and they had a video to bake flapjacks. They looked great but I couldn’t quite nail the consistency - mine tasted great but were quite soft, oily and hard to carry. So I looked around for an alternative and found this, and have been making it since: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2097638/multiseed-flapjack

Now… a lot of your calories there will be from fat (per portion: 25g carbs, 13g fat, 4g protein) - I use that exclusively on the bike, on long training rides. But the taste is awesome and they hold extremely well. You can probably play around a bit with ingredients (however, butter is the main one here… it’s really what holds everything together. I tried to replace it with peanut butter, super butter and coconut oil and the results were not good. Mix became crumbly - I recycled it as some kind of granola for yogurt though!)

16

Got this recipe from this forum a couple of years back. Has worked great for me and tastes great.
50% brown rice syrup
30% honey
20% black strap molasses
salt
vanilla extract for flavor

17

I think I started with a thrive recipe but here is what I have ended up happy with after many weeks of altering the recipe. This makes about 8 oz, something like 800 calories.

4 dates
1/2 c agave
1.5 T lemon juice
1 T peanut butter
1 T coconut oil (mix in as liquid)
1 T cocoa powder
cinnamon
salt
water or coffee if needed to get the consistency that you like

18

As a diabetic, you can also trust me that you don’t want oral glucose gel. It’s more expensive than GU and TERRIBLE.

19

That looks pretty solid. And 800 calories will definitely cover me for Xterra/OD races.

I know I mentioned gels in the original post but everyone contributing their ideas about bars is also really helpful. I’ll definitely give the bar recipes a shot for long rides. Gels just happen to work better for me for races (running with food in my stomach is never pleasant).

Thanks for all the inspiration! Keep 'em coming.

20

if you have 2 cages on the bike an easy option is to run on bottle with maltodextrin mixed strong along with a little salt and potassium. Then the other can be water, if you are picky do the math and put marks on the bottle for when you want to consume it.

I used this strategy for 6 hour mtb races and it works fine