The thickness is a real issue with a higher concentration. I found that skipping the sodium algenate helps reduce the gel-iness.
More water is generally easier to come by than more sugar mixture.
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That sounds ideal, 300g sugar bottle plus a bag of haribo should see me through 5 hours. Any more, and I’d likely have a stop somewhere anyway. Will see if I can get it to stay liquid.
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I had 320g in a 750ml bottle and 2 liters of water in my camelbag on my 4hour mtb ride last Sunday.
However It is easy to consume too much sugar this way as it’s difficult to keep track. I will set up my Garmin next time to help with this.
Haribo is more of a generic term around here. I actually like jelly beans, 88g carbs and £1/200g. That is my normal ride food, but going to try and add liquid carbs to that.
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I really like the Decathlon Fruit Jellies
https://www.decathlon.fr/p/pate-de-fruits-energetique-mix-12x25g/_/R-p-328219?mc=8602989
Softer than Haribo or jelly beans but a bit more substantial than a gel. About 21g of carbs per 25g bar (varies slightly by flavour). 7€ for 12, but I’ve just stocked up on some Christmas ones that my local Aldi is selling at half price: 1.44€ for a 550g box 
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Great thread! Thanks for all they ideas and experiments.
@Dr_Alex_Harrison Given the grams shown on that website Electrolyte powder sports drink, and given that sucrose is half fructose and half glucose, it would seem this backs up your previous assumption that gatorade was basically 2:1 glucose:fructose. 11.3g of sucrose would be 5.65g fructose and 5.65g glucose, and then they list 4.5g glucose, so 10.1g glucose to 5.65g fructose. Does that make sense?
@Dr_Alex_Harrison when does one use maltodextrin and when does one use dextrose? Would you use them together?
What is/would be an example of a cluster dextrin? What is Isomaltulose and why use it? Would you make a carb drink without glucose, but using fructose and sucrose?
Yep, at first glance, this looks correct.
I’d never use dextrose. It’s not bad. But malto provides same input but with lower sweetness and lower osmolarity, which both may matter to a small degree.
As in a specific chemical name of one? No idea!
It’s a disaccharide like sucrose but the fructose-glucose bond is different, which makes for slower absorption and greater risk of GI distress. I’d never use it.
Probably not. It would put the glucose:fructose ratio higher than 1:1, and there is a low enough likelihood that higher fructose than glucose is optimal (not ruled out, but low likelihood) that it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Plus, fructose is sweet, and optimizing beverage sweetness generally has folks erring on the side of less sweet than more sweet.
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great - thanks
I’ll just counterpoint this with my anecdote: I’ve been running this mixture on my 3-4 hour rides for the last month. So far I think 7 rides in…
I feel markedly better on my rides than when I was fueling with ~250cal/hr of Tailwind. I’m up to about 1200 calories in the single bottle, using Glacier Cherry Frost Gatorade for flavor, and I actually enjoy it. Yes, you do have to wash it down with water, but it’s quite a bit easier than messing around with gels or solid food or salt tabs or refilling a bottle with more drink mix halfway through a ride. I’m lucky to have some routes where I know there are available bottle fillers or water available, so most of my rides, I carry two bottles and make one stop for restroom and water refill. The best part is by the end of the 3-4 hour ride, I’m not wasted… I feel really strong and it carries through the rest of the day. It’s been truly game changing for my long rides.
The only part of @Dr_Alex_Harrison’s plan that I don’t follow is the third bottle mount which doesn’t work on my frame. That said, carrying an additional smaller water bottle in my pocket on the rides where there isn’t easily available water isn’t an issue since I don’t have to carry food or gels anymore, just my multitool and phone. I could put a small bottle in a handlebar bag, but I haven’t defiled my road bike like that (yet?).
All that said, I’d agree with you that there’s really no need for this on shorter/faster races. For <1hr, I’m just using Skratch (if anything). For my 90+ min race a couple of weeks ago, I used about 300cal of Tailwind and a bottle of Skratch. But I’d totally do this for a 3hr road race, so long as I knew I could get additional water along the way.
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Totally agree. For crits or any race under 90 minutes (XC MTB, short road circuit races, cyclocross), Michelle (pro, RD, wife etc!) and I will just do a more dilute solution because aint nobody got time for drinking from 2 bottles every time a drink is needed. To heck with dental health! 
Reasons for the concentrate approach:
1. Dental health
2. Ability to store very high carbs & electrolyte amounts, without being forced into consuming sub-optimally high-concentration solution, exclusively. As in. If you want to carry 500g carbs plus 5000mg sodium in solution at ride start, but only have capacity for 2 liters of fluid and want to stop for a water top refill mid-ride, the concentrate approach is wiser than being forced into consuming 25% carb solution for the first 1-2 hrs of your ride. You can instead concentrate the front bottle and consume sips of it while drinking enough fresh water to keep net concentration of solution consumed at closer to 8-14%, then once your fresh water bottle is ran dry, refill both.
3. Having the flexibility to titrate fuel/electrolytes vs. fluid, as demanded by temps, sweat rate, effort level etc.
If you are not concerned about the above reasons, there is no reason not to split all carbs & electrolytes across all bottles evenly.
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One thing I tried for a race was to use a 500ml soft flask with a high concentrate, which I put in my jersey pocket, because I only had space for one bottle on the bike. You could easily have two bottles on a road bike though, and maybe don’t need to stop? I like the soft flask because it wouldn’t hurt as much crashing on it, and it gets smaller with use. It was a bit difficult to get out of my pocked though, so will need to work on that.
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I use two 250 ml soft flasks ,I can use the other bidon for extra water this way.
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Lyne and wolftooth both make some cool products for mounting 2 bottles where only one bottle mount exists on a frame. I carry 2x600mL bottles on my size large 2020 Scott Spark, within the frame triangle, and could probably fit 1 x 700mL + 1 x 600mL bottle if I really pressed the issue. Can’t remember if I’ve got lyne or wolftooth’s setup on there! Both are awesome.
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See my reply above, to @splash
Just passing it along because I thought it might be interesting to you.
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I only have the one road frame, and it’s the same one I race. Swapping bottle cages is a hassle (and the bolts specialized uses for frame attachment suck to the point I just use regular nickel screws from the hardware store now). I liked the idea of the velcro-attachable one, and it is very secure. I’ll use it on my TT/tri rig eventually but it just doesn’t work on the Venge. If I didn’t run a Varia and have a Di2 port on the back of my seatpost, that’d be where it would go.
For now, route selection with available water and an extra bottle in my jersey pocket if needed will have to suffice. But your recipe and plan have been game-changers for my long rides. So much less hassle and I feel 100% better on the long rides.
Thanks for posting!
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According to the latest research, the optimal maltodextrin / Fructose ratio is 1 : 0.8
So if I want about 200 kcal for a 750ml water bottle for medium intensity:
-30g Maltodextrin 114kcal (28.5g CHO)
-24g Fructose 95kcal (24g CHO)
Total: 209 kcal 52.5g CHO
Is that enough for a drink or should I add more electrolytes ??
Is it enough to just add salt ? About 700mg?
How many grams of salt would you recommend adding to a 750ml can?
See the I love carbs topic. Think you asked the same thing there.
Update: Used this for a few years now… its spot on!! Still works great, no changes to the recipe at all… even got me through the Celtman as 100% of my nutrition, several 70.3’s etc