DIY Maurten 320: the same 1:0.8 formula for a fraction of the price
The drink that made the alginate-pectin hydrogel a household name in the WorldTour peloton. Real chemistry, contested performance benefit, and a maltodextrin-and-fructose backbone that mixes cleanly at home.
·By Croix
Educational, not medical advice. Recipes and dosages are starting points — individual tolerance varies. Consult a healthcare professional or registered dietitian before changing your nutrition strategy. Full disclaimer.
What am I actually paying Maurten for?
| Maurten Drink Mix 320 | DIY recipe | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per serving | $3.75 | $0.86 |
| Cost per gram of carb | $0.047 | $0.011 |
| Carbs | 80g | 80g |
| Glucose:Fructose ratio | 1:0.8 | 1:0.8 |
| Sodium | 200mg | 200mg |
| Ingredients | Maltodextrin, Fructose, salt | Maltodextrin, fructose, salt |
| ~77% cheaper per serving |
Default recipe
~$0.86/serving- Maltodextrin46.3g
- Fructose36.0g
- Table Salt (NaCl)0.5g
- Water500ml
What do I need to buy?
Everything you need to mix this at home. We primarily recommend Nutricost-brand products (made in GMP-compliant, FDA-registered facilities, third-party tested) and fall back to NOW Foods or BulkSupplements for the few ingredients Nutricost doesn't stock. Each row shows the same product across Nutricost, iHerb, and Amazon — sorted by unit price, with the cheapest highlighted. Links are affiliate — we earn a small commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you.
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
- Maltodextrin46.3 g per serving
- Fructose36.0 g per serving
- Table Salt (NaCl)0.51 g per servingComing soon
If you're experimenting with this at high carb rates (80g+ per hour) for the first time, test it on a long training ride before committing to it on race day. GI systems need a few sessions to adapt to high-concentration drinks.
DIY wins
- Matches the macros exactly — 80g carbs, 1:0.8 ratio, ~200mg sodium — at roughly 80¢ per serving instead of $3.75.
- Ingredient list is short and commodity: maltodextrin, fructose, salt. No proprietary sources or trademarked carb sources to chase down.
- Stable for at least 24 hours refrigerated, so batch-prepping two or three bottles the night before a long ride is straightforward.
Where Maurten still earns its price
- No hydrogel. The slightly thick, slightly slippery gel mouthfeel is the one thing DIY cannot replicate.
- Branded taste and texture is real race-day equity — if familiarity settles your nerves, Maurten earns its price on A-race morning.
- Pre-measured grab-and-go sachets are genuinely useful for travel and feed-zone handoffs that a home-mixed bottle can't match.
Is Maurten Drink Mix 320 actually worth it?
Maurten 320 sells at roughly $3.75 for a single 80g serving — on a per-gram-of-carb basis, that's four to five times what you'll pay making the identical macro profile at home. The ingredient list behind the price is refreshingly short: maltodextrin, fructose, calcium carbonate, sodium alginate, gluconic acid, and salt. There's no proprietary electrolyte blend, no trademarked carb source. The expensive part is what happens once the powder hits your stomach.
That part is Maurten's hydrogel: sodium alginate plus pectin form a loose gel in stomach acid around pH 2–3, which the Maurten team argues helps the carbohydrate clear the stomach faster and with less gastric distress at high intake rates. It's a real phenomenon — you can observe it in a glass of vinegar — and the reasoning is mechanistically coherent. What's less clear is whether the gel delivers a performance or comfort advantage meaningful enough to justify the price over a plain 1:0.8 maltodextrin-plus-fructose mix at matched carb density.
Most of the supportive hydrogel research has come from Maurten-sponsored studies. The independent peer-reviewed matched-dose literature, consolidated in the 2022 Podlogar & Wallis review in Sports Medicine, has been consistently skeptical: hydrogel drinks compared head-to-head against matched 1:0.8 carb-only drinks have not reliably moved gastric emptying, exogenous carb oxidation, GI symptoms, or time-trial performance. Elite adoption isn't nothing — Jumbo-Visma/Visma has fueled on Maurten for years, and INEOS Grenadiers signed a three-year Maurten partnership starting in 2025 — but elite use doesn't isolate the hydrogel from branding, taste familiarity, and sponsorship economics.
The honest summary: DIY matches Maurten's macros — 80g carbs, 1:0.8 glucose-to-fructose, ~200mg sodium — and dissolves into a stable, palatable drink. What DIY does not replicate is the slightly thick, slightly slippery gel mouthfeel. If that texture is central to how you enjoy or tolerate the drink, that's a real reason to pay for Maurten. If you're paying $3.75 because you believe it's meaningfully faster than homemade 1:0.8 at the same carb load, the evidence for that claim is thinner than the marketing implies.
A reasonable middle ground for most people: run the DIY version on training rides where $3.75 per bottle doesn't justify itself, and save Maurten for A-races where the familiar taste and texture genuinely matters to your head. For what it's worth, that's how several coaches we've talked to actually fuel their athletes — branded product on race day, DIY the rest of the year.
What's in this recipe?
Each ingredient links to a deeper guide — what it is, how it works in your gut, and where to buy it in bulk.
- Maltodextrin
The glucose-polymer workhorse in almost every high-carb sports drink — same energy as dextrose, far lower osmolality, nearly tasteless.
- Fructose
The GLUT5-transported sugar that lets you push past the 60 g/hr glucose ceiling — pair with maltodextrin at ~1:0.8 for the modern dual-transporter formula.
- Table Salt (Sodium Chloride)
The cheapest, most-bioavailable sodium source in your kitchen — pennies per gram and chemically identical to what's in any electrolyte tab.
How do I tune this for my own ride?
The builder below is pre-loaded with the Maurten Drink Mix 320 recipe. Drag the sliders to tune carbs, ratio, or sodium to your own sweat rate and ride duration.
Frequently asked questions
Does the DIY version replicate Maurten's hydrogel?+
No. The hydrogel requires sodium alginate plus pectin and a specific acid balance to form the gel matrix in your stomach, and without that texture you're drinking a normal dissolved sports drink. What the DIY version does match is the macronutrient profile — 80g of carbs at a 1:0.8 glucose-to-fructose ratio with ~200mg sodium — which is the part most of the training and absorption research actually studies.
Which maltodextrin should I buy for the cheapest cost per serving?+
Nutricost Maltodextrin Powder is the workhorse pick — same product is carried direct at nutricost.com, on iHerb, and on Amazon, so the right buy is whichever channel has the lowest unit price the day you order. The 8 lb bag (~$38 direct from Nutricost) lands around $0.011/g, the cheapest unit cost we've found and roughly half the 2 lb bag. That puts a full Maurten-equivalent maltodextrin dose around 50¢, with a few cents of fructose and salt on top to land near a 60–80¢ finished serving. Avoid anything labeled 'Cluster Dextrin' or 'Highly Branched Cyclic Dextrin' for this purpose — it's far more expensive and doesn't meaningfully improve what maltodextrin already does.
Why 1:0.8 instead of 2:1?+
At 80g of carbs per hour, a 2:1 ratio would overload the SGLT1 glucose transporter while leaving fructose absorption (GLUT5) under-utilized. The 1:0.8 ratio is the experimental sweet spot from O'Brien & Rowlands' 2013 MSSE 12-cyclist sprint-performance study — and it's what Maurten and SiS Beta Fuel both target. Below about 60g/hr the ratio matters less; above 80g/hr it matters a lot.
Can I use table salt instead of sodium citrate?+
Yes — Maurten 320 itself uses plain sodium chloride. At 200mg of sodium, the difference in GI tolerance between NaCl and sodium citrate is minor. If you're pushing sodium above 500mg per bottle in a hot-weather setup, that's where switching to (or blending in) citrate starts to reduce stomach cramping.
Will this taste like Maurten?+
Flavor-wise, no — Maurten's neutral taste comes largely from the carbohydrate doing the flavoring and the hydrogel muting sweetness. The DIY version will taste sweeter than Maurten at the same concentration because dissolved maltodextrin + fructose hits the tongue differently than gelled maltodextrin + fructose. A pinch of citric acid (0.5g) and a few drops of lemon extract or LMNT-style flavoring solves it. The flavoring guide on the site has more options.
Is 200mg of sodium enough for a hot-weather race?+
For most people, no. 200mg per bottle is Maurten's choice because the product is marketed as a fuel first, not an electrolyte drink. On a hot ride where you're losing 800-1200mg of sodium per hour in sweat, you'll want to decouple: keep your DIY fuel drink at 300-500mg sodium, and drink plain water or a low-carb electrolyte mix alongside it. The builder lets you tune sodium separately from carbs.
Can I mix a whole-day's worth ahead of time?+
Yes, dissolved maltodextrin + fructose + sodium is stable for at least 24 hours refrigerated, and most cyclists pre-batch two or three bottles the night before a long ride. Flavored versions degrade faster — citrus oils in particular fade — so add flavoring the morning of, not the night before.
Also worth looking at
- DIY SiS Beta Fuel: the most copyable branded fuel on the shelf
- DIY Skratch Super High-Carb: the glucose-heavy outlier, copied honestly
- DIY Tailwind Endurance: tune sodium to your own sweat rate
- DIY Precision PF 30: replace the fuel, not the sweat test
- DIY Neversecond C30: the research-forward gel without the $3.50 price tag
- DIY Maurten Gel 100: the gel half of the $3.50 hydrogel argument
- DIY Tailwind High Carb: 90g of race fuel from grocery-store sugar
- DIY GU Roctane: the premium-tier GU gel without the $2.40 markup
- DIY Skratch Sport Hydration: real-fruit flavor without the $1 scoop