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Whether you’re riding all day long or for a quick spin after work, hydrating and fueling your body properly is important—especially in hot summer weather. While water is better than having nothing to drink on rides, it doesn’t provide the carbohydrates or electrolytes your body needs to perform at its highest level—plus, plain water gets boring after a while in the saddle. This is why nutritionists and experts recommend using a sports hydration drink for your rides and training.
Over the years, our editors have used dozens of different brands, flavors, and formulations of drink mixes for our road, gravel, and mountain bike rides and races. These mixes, typically powders or tablets, are offered by well-known brands and smaller-scale start-ups and sold at bike shops, grocery stores, and online retailers. Some focus on fueling your efforts with higher levels of carbohydrates, while others center on hydration and replenishing electrolytes lost through sweat.
The Best Tasting Hydration Mixes
First Place Overall: Mortal Hydration
Second Place: LMNT Electrolyte Drink Mix
Third Place: Liquid I.V. Hydration Multiplier
Honorable Mention: Tailwind, Endurance Fuel
Honorable Mention: SiS Hydro
Some drink mixes seem to work well for certain riders, while others don’t. The reasons are varied, but it usually comes down to personal fueling needs and what our bodies can tolerate on rides. Every rider is different, and bodies react differently to some drink mixes than others.
However, the biggest factor when choosing a sports drink mix is often simply whether or not you like the flavor. And no matter how many nutrients, electrolytes, or carbohydrates a brand packs into a drink mix, if you don’t like its taste, that drink is going to sit in your bottle unused. So, it’s often better to pick a brand, flavor, or formulation that you like and will actually drink on rides.
10 Tested Mixes
With peak summer riding now here, we gathered ten different sports drink mixes from seven brands. To help level the playing field, we selected mango flavor for all the mixes—it’s a fun, summer flavor versus an old standby like lemon-lime. Additionally, mango seems to be the hot flavor trend for this summer. But if mango isn’t your thing, each of these products is also available in multiple other flavors.
All of the mixes below are available through online retailers (such as Amazon and The Feed). Most are also found at bicycle shops, and some can even be purchased at your local grocery store or big box retailer. These are the ten we tested (listed alphabetically).
The Taste Testing
Upon receiving the selected drink mixes, my colleague, Senior Health and Fitness Editor Jason Griffin, and I gathered the ten flavors and set up a blind taste test of the mango drink mixes in our office. Our goal was simple: Which drink mixes taste best, and which would we take with us on rides?
All tested powders and tablets were mixed according to the instructions listed on the brands’ packaging. We used chilled, filtered water from our office water dispenser.
After we prepared the drinks, nineteen coworkers from Bicycling and Runner‘s World sampled each flavor. Taste testers were asked to rank their top three choices based solely on taste and whether they would drink it on rides or runs—five points were assigned to first-place votes, three points for second-place, and third received one point. Following taste testing by our staff, I tried the top five mixes on rides to confirm the on-bike drinkability.
Winners and Losers
Our taste testing demonstrates why personal choice and preferences are important when choosing a drink mix. And the results made me think about some of my usual go-to drink mix choices and consider other options for future rides.
When votes were tallied, LMNT’s Mango Chili Electrolyte Drink Mix received the highest number of first-place votes but finished in second based on points. However, the Mango Sports Drink mix from Mortal Hydration received the most overall points. Our taste testers liked its light and fruity flavor, and one said it “tastes like juice.” (If you seek a little more salt in your hydration mix, Mortal also offers a Salty Mango option.)
Liquid I.V.’s mango-flavor Hydration Multiplier mix rounded out the podium in third-place overall. An honorable mention goes to Tailwind for its Mango Yuzu Endurance Fuel—this limited-edition flavor placed fourth in points. But of the top five finishers, I found it the most drinkable on rides.
🥇 Mortal Hydration, Mango
🥈 LMNT Electrolyte Drink Mix, Mango Chili
🥉 Liquid IV Hydration Multiplier, Mango
Only two clear losers stood out from the pack; both registered zero first, second, or third-place votes from our taste testers. Honestly, we expected one pick to receive a low ranking. However, the other drink mix that did not receive any votes is from a usual fan-favorite and trusted cycling nutrition brand.
The RTR Mango mix from Unbroken received no votes and was unanimously panned by taste testers. “Never again,” “tastes like rotten fruit,” and “like the Malört of energy mix” were some of the comments shared. And based on its ingredients and strong scent, those comments and the low ranking were not unexpected. (Further demonstrating how subjective taste is to personal preference, the elite cyclocross mountain bike racer on staff disliked the winning Mortal Hydration.)
Unbroken claims its product is “made from 100% fresh Norwegian salmon protein,” and that is very obvious once you open the tube and smell the tablet. This is an excellent example that even if a drink mix is the healthiest or best performance option on paper, if you won’t actually use it, then it’s not the best for you.
Surprisingly, Skratch Lab’s Mango Super High-Carb mix also received no votes from taste testers. Two people commented that it was too viscous, and others felt it didn’t have enough mango taste. I’ve used this product and personally liked it. But, as with the lemon-lime and raspberry-flavor Skratch Super High-Carb, it does have a weaker taste than many other mixes. So, I sometimes add a little of the brand’s standard Hydration Sport Drink Mix to punch up the flavor.
Despite the low ranking, I’ll personally continue using this drink mix. Of the high-carb mixes I’ve used, Skratch’s tends to sit best in my tummy, and I don’t feel as bloated on long rides.
Our Expert’s Drink Mix Advice
After the dust settled, I asked Senior Health and Fitness Editor Jason Griffin—Bicycling’s resident expert on topics of training and nutrition—to weigh in on the drink mixes. I asked Griffin for his recommendations on the best and worst picks (of the tested choices) for a cyclist’s health.
Best
“Objectively, the healthiest pick is Unbroken, made from hydrolyzed salmon protein that’s rich in amino acids. No sugar and no artificial ingredients—and from my experience, I’ve noticed a difference in what the brand refers to as “real time recovery.” My best way to drink it is to take two tablets in a glass with about a shot’s worth of freezing cold water. Let them dissolve and throw it all back. Drinking it like that is easier to get down than a lot of the gels that are out there, in my opinion.” - J.G.
Worst
“The ‘worst’ is relative. Some of the things you need when doing endurance activities are high levels of sugar and sodium. The taste testers’ number one pick (Mortal Hydration) has high levels of sodium and sugar (it's even higher for the Salty Mango flavor). Unsurprisingly, the sweet and salty tasting mix ended up high on the list. While I wouldn’t drink this sitting around watching the Tour de France, I would take this on a long ride on a hot day.” - J.G.
