Lets talk energy gels

[DieselnDust]

10 hours ago, Mamil said:

https://www.dischem.co.za/nature-s-choice-fructose-500g-786

https://www.takealot.com/npl-maltodextrin-1-5kg/PLID46977504

Nice men on motorbikes deliver it.

 

Motoman….?

[Jbr]

you guys go through so many energy gels ? I only use gels in races, when I can't carry enough carbs in my bottles.

I also do some of my training rides on white sugar only, the big sessions in intensity or duration (or both) on enduren carbs mix and only add the gels in if I need to add some caffein and/or need some extra carbs to maintain my target carbs/hour.

[shaper]

11 hours ago, MaMc said:

Where do you buy your maltodextrin and fructose? Been looking around to start myself and so far only seen home brewing websites for maltodextrin

I get my malto from https://www.beerplus.co.za/product/maltodextrin-1kg/3302/231 and the fructose from Dischem https://www.dischem.co.za/nature-s-choice-sweetener-fructose-1kg-636

[Mamil]

4 minutes ago, shaper said:

I get my malto from https://www.beerplus.co.za/product/maltodextrin-1kg/3302/231 and the fructose from Dischem https://www.dischem.co.za/nature-s-choice-sweetener-fructose-1kg-636

Much cheaper. Shot!

[bleedToWin]

19 hours ago, The Ouzo said:

This looks like a nice option. Just struggling to find the nutritional info. Strange for a nutrition brand.

[SSCC]

51 minutes ago, Mamil said:

Much cheaper. Shot!

There are many different grades or types of Maltodextrin. Some have almost no sweetness at all whereas others can be a lot sweeter. It’s a key ingredient because you want the very low sweetness type to counter the extreme sweetness of fructose. Point being they are not all the same so switching suppliers may give you a very different product.

[dexterdent]

I got 25kg of high DE maltodextrin delivered from one of the beer places for around R1100, and got 10kg of fructose from Komati Foods for around R700. My cupboard looks like a drug dealer's now.

Theoretically, lower DE malto would be better but I struggled to find it, and the mix doesn't taste overly sweet to me at a 1:0.8 ratio, even with 100g in a 750ml bottle (I'm not really bothered by sweet stuff anyway). I've only used it for energy drink powder (in combination with some salts, citric acid and Oros), but I'll definitely try making a gel or two next, where the sweetness may become more of an issue.

[Baracuda]

After trying many I settled on 32GI - they do the job at a great price.

There is SIS and other "high end" gels that are great, but if one works it out ZAR per unit mass / carb, 32GI seems to be best and one can order bulk boxes directly from them - often on special.

[The Ouzo]

2 minutes ago, Baracuda said:

After trying many I settled on 32GI - they do the job at a great price.

There is SIS and other "high end" gels that are great, but if one works it out ZAR per unit mass / carb, 32GI seems to be best and one can order bulk boxes directly from them - often on special.

even with 32gi's "unique" opening method (on the standard gels), it always makes a mess for me, thats why I stopped using them. The G-Shots are awesome though.

[Max Headroom]

What do you think of this gel:

• Fructose: 38.2%
• Glucose: 31.3%
• Maltose: 7.1%
• Sucrose: 1.3%
• Water: 17.2%
• Higher sugars: 1.5%

[SwissVan]

Has anyone tried Maurten gels?

Not sure if they are available in SA.

Ive recently bought a pack of the gels with caffeine and quite like them, they are not exactly a gel in the true sense, kind of between gel and solid and don’t taste overly sweet. They do seem to work as I felt wide awake the day I took one whereas I would normally feel quite tired after a hard session.

https://www.maurten.com/de/innovation

[Max Headroom]

10 minutes ago, SwissVan said:

Has anyone tried Maurten gels?

Not sure if they are available in SA.

Ive recently bought a pack of the gels with caffeine and quite like them, they are not exactly a gel in the true sense, kind of between gel and solid and don’t taste overly sweet. They do seem to work as I felt wide awake the day I took one whereas I would normally feel quite tired after a hard session.

https://www.maurten.com/de/innovation

https://maurten.co.za/

[dexterdent]

17 minutes ago, Max Headroom said:

What do you think of this gel:

• Fructose: 38.2%
• Glucose: 31.3%
• Maltose: 7.1%
• Sucrose: 1.3%
• Water: 17.2%
• Higher sugars: 1.5%

That sounds very sweet (low malto, replacement for glucose) and seems high in fructose (current preferred ratio seems to be around 1:0.8 Glucose:Fructose). 

12 minutes ago, SwissVan said:

Has anyone tried Maurten gels?

-snip-

Yes, and I absolutely hated the texture (which to me felt like someone had made some fridge jelly with slightly too much water and then ran it through a blender for 10 secs). Very neutral taste and contents are obviously fine (many athletes swear by it) but couldn't get around the texture.

Edited August 21 by dexterdent
Missing words

[cadenceblur]

Maurten on the pricier side, so I’ve avoided it thus far, 

[Baracuda]

8 hours ago, The Ouzo said:

even with 32gi's "unique" opening method (on the standard gels), it always makes a mess for me, thats why I stopped using them. The G-Shots are awesome though.

On these: https://32gi.com/products/sports-gels. ?

I found the fold in half thing works great. You can do it with one hand and quickly.

[mikkelz]

I'm a big fan of PowerBar's HydroGel, but they cost an arm and a leg: https://www.powerbarsa.co.za/types/hydrogel/