Homemade Sports Drink: A Measured Bottle Recipe

Sixty grams of sugar, 1.5 grams of table salt, and enough water to make a liter. That's a homemade sports drink you can measure, repeat, and pour into the bottles you already own.

The useful part is knowing what's in it. A half-finished bottle delivers half the fuel, even if the nutrition plan on your phone says you nailed the hour. So we'll make the drink first, then work out what you actually get while riding or running.

Start with one measured liter

For the plain base recipe, use:

• 60 g granulated white sugar
• 1.5 g ordinary table salt
• Water to make 1 liter of finished drink

Dissolve the sugar and salt in less than a liter of drinking water, then top up to the 1-liter mark and mix thoroughly. Starting with a full liter of water and adding ingredients afterward gives you more than a liter of finished drink, which changes the concentration.

Use a scale that can measure the salt quantity reliably. If yours only reads whole grams, 1.5 g is a guess. A suitable small-quantity scale or a larger, proportionally measured batch makes more sense than pretending a generous pinch is a unit.

This batch supplies approximately 60 g of carbohydrate and 590 mg of sodium. The sugar calculation uses USDA's composition data for granulated sugar, food 19335, which is almost entirely carbohydrate. The sodium estimate comes from the Morton table salt label: 1.5 g of salt provides 590 mg of sodium. These are practical rounded amounts, not a lab analysis of your kitchen bottle.

And this is one starting recipe, not a claim that everyone needs this much salt or sugar. Don't swap in reduced-sodium salt, a potassium salt substitute, or an electrolyte powder and assume the same weight gives the same result.

What goes in your 500 mL or 750 mL bottle?

Make the liter, mix it well, then pour the portion you need. That avoids trying to weigh awkward fractions of a gram for each small bottle.

Finished drink poured	Carbohydrate	Sodium
500 mL	About 30 g	About 295 mg
750 mL	About 45 g	About 443 mg
1,000 mL	About 60 g	About 590 mg

The 750 mL sodium calculation is 590 × 0.75 = 442.5 mg, rounded to 443 mg. The last milligram isn't the point; measuring the drink consistently is.

Want flavor? You can test a flavoring you like, but the table describes the plain recipe. If you add juice, syrup, or a sweetened flavoring, count its carbohydrate too and keep the finished volume the same. A vague splash is fine for taste, but it stops being an exact nutrition calculation.

Why this strength? Sixty grams in a liter is 6 g per 100 mL, commonly written as 6%. The Australian Institute of Sport sports-drink guidance describes drinks with 4–8% carbohydrate and 23–69 mg sodium per 100 mL. This recipe sits within those ranges, at about 59 mg sodium per 100 mL. That gives us a reasonable composition to try; it doesn't prove equal performance or stomach comfort compared with Maurten, Skratch, or any other commercial mix.

The bottle isn't automatically your hourly target

Suppose your practiced plan calls for 60 g of carbs during an hour, and you drink one 750 mL bottle of this recipe in that time. That's 45 g, leaving 15 g to come from another source. This is an arithmetic example, not a recommendation to drink 750 mL every hour.

Now suppose you drink only 500 mL from that bottle. You got 30 g of carbs and about 295 mg of sodium. Add an illustrative gel labeled 25 g of carbohydrate and your total becomes 55 g of carbs, plus whatever sodium the gel's own label lists. You still have 250 mL of drink left.

Easy to miss.

And if you pour some drink over your head, that doesn't count as intake either. Your jersey isn't absorbing your lunch.

Need an hourly starting point before you choose bottles and gels? The free EnduranceOS planner estimates carbs, fluids, and sodium from your race details. Compare those estimates with what you've actually tolerated in training.

For the longer ride itself, the century and gran fondo fueling guide covers stops, carrying fuel, and missed refills. Here, the job is simpler: count what went into you, not what went onto the bike.

More sugar makes a different setup

Could you double the sugar? You could, but 120 g in one liter is a 12% drink, and 120 g in 500 mL is 24%. Neither is the 6% recipe above.

That's a meaningful change to test separately. Concentrated fuel bottles can also make the bookkeeping harder: the bottle holds your carbs, while another bottle or aid station supplies additional water. Write down both.

The AIS guidance treats carbohydrate and fluid needs as things that don't always line up. If the drink alone doesn't cover your practiced carb target, food or gels can supply the difference; if you need more fluid, water can sit alongside the fuel. Our glucose-to-fructose guide explains why higher-carb plans deserve more thought than just making the bottle sweeter.

But don't force down extra fluid to finish a carb target. NATA's fluid-replacement position statement recommends individualized fluid plans and avoiding weight gain from overdrinking during exercise. When you don't know your sweat rate, thirst is a useful safeguard against drinking too much.

Body size and sex don't turn this recipe into a personal prescription. A smaller runner and a larger cyclist can use the same measured mixture while needing different amounts of fluid and fuel. The sweat-rate guide helps you collect your own training data, and the hot-weather nutrition guide covers what to reconsider when conditions change.

Take it on a normal training day first

I'd start with a ride or run where a rejected bottle won't ruin the whole day. Write the recipe on the bottle or in your training notes, record how much you drank, and note whether you still liked the taste near the end. Then repeat it during sessions closer to race intensity and conditions.

Worth the rehearsal.

For a long ride with refills, carry a labeled portion for each planned liter and check that you can actually measure the finished volume at the stop. If the only option is an unmarked paper cup and a fountain, a premixed bottle or a commercial packet with clear bottle instructions may be less hassle.

You don't need to prove a point about homemade fuel. If your usual mix works and is easy to carry, that's a perfectly good reason to keep it.

Put the recipe into a race plan

Before race day, you should be able to answer four questions: how much is in the bottle, how much you'll likely drink, where the remaining carbs come from, and where you can refill. Otherwise you've made a nice drink and left the race plan in the kitchen.

This is general sports-nutrition guidance. The ingredient amounts are transparent, but your fluid and sodium needs still require individual judgment, particularly if you've been given medical advice about either.

Build your starting timeline with the EnduranceOS planner, then put the bottles and backup fuel through training. The best test of a recipe is whether you can keep using it when you're tired and the next water stop is farther away than you'd like.