Whether for cost or environmental reasons, making your own energy gel is a worthwhile experiment. This is an extremely simple recipe that can be pimped up or modified to suit your own tastes.
The recipe below is Apple-Cinnamon. I have no idea how other juice flavours work out..the ingredients are cheap enough to experiment yourself.
Ingredients
Keri Keri 1L Apple juice
500g Maltodextrin
(Optional) 1 teaspoon of sea salt.. I use 5-10ml of Elete electrolyte add-in instead
(Optional) 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
This makes around 700g of gel, or ~ 20 standard portions. Costs as of writing are around $6 NZD. The current price for a 32g GU gel is ~ $4 NZD, so making your own provides a significant saving and reduces the amount of plastic wrappers floating around the place.
Maltodextrin is readily available (try the brewshop.co.nz) where 1kg of Maltodextrin is around $5 – enough for 2 batches of the above recipe.
Method
Easy bit
1. Pour 1L apple juice into a pan – it’s easier if there are measurements etched onto the inside but not essential. Heat the 1L of apple juice till it reduces down to ~333ml. This takes a while so go and watch some cat videos for half an hour.
2. Once reduced, add a teaspoon of cinnamon and ~ 1 tsp salt (I use 5-10ml Elete add-in liquid)
Messy bit
Prepare all of your stuff and be ready to move quickly. If you’ve reduced the juice in a small pan, I’d recommend transferring to a massive pan before adding the maltodextrin as this will make it easier to combine.
3. Take off heat and immediately mix 500g maltodextrin into the juice with a fork or whisk. The Maltodextrin will form big sticky chunks very quickly so whisk as you’re adding the powder. You will still end up with plenty of big chunks but break down as many as you can. Even a hand blender will not get everything – don’t worry about it.
4. Pass it through a sieve to remove all the large chunks
5. Pour back into 1L Keri juice bottle and refrigerate.
Usage
I decant gel into small squeeze flasks from Macpac. Annoyingly they seem out of stock most of the time – other options are available but are massively over-priced compared to the Macpac ones which were 2 for $5! The Macpac flasks hold around 100ml and I add a little water to make it easier to squirt.
Bon Appétit