PF30 Inspired Gels

Making your own gels is a lot easier than you think. This post provides insight into how to make your own modern-style endurance gel with 30 grams of carbs per gel and a similar texture to the popular PF30. Let’s get straight to the recipe, and then you can read my long-winded explanation below it…if you wish.

🍋 Lime-Flavoured Endurance Gel – Batch for 15 Gels (PF30 Style)

🧪 Ingredients:

Maltodextrin 300 grams
Fructose 150 grams
Pectin 9 grams
Citric Acid 3 grams
Lime Juice 15ml (or about the juice of 1 lime)
Water 420 ml

Method:

1. Prepare Dry Mix:

  • In a bowl, combine pectin, maltodextrin, and fructose.

  • Mix thoroughly with a whisk to coat pectin with sugars (helps prevent clumping).

2. Heat Water + Lime Juice:

  • Combine water + lime juice in a saucepan.

  • Heat to about 60–70°C —warm but not boiling, it will start to steam a bit.

3. Add Dry Mix Gradually:

  • Slowly whisk in the sugar/pectin blend.

  • Stir constantly to fully dissolve and prevent clumping.

  • Continue heating gently to ~80–85°C until the mixture thickens slightly.

4. Acidify:

  • Once smooth and dissolved, add the citric acid.

  • Stir thoroughly—this triggers the gel structure.

5. Cool and Portion:

  • Allow to cool to room temp, stirring every couple of minutes until it cools, then transfer into soft flasks

  • Store in fridge for up to 1–2 weeks.

✅ Each Gel Delivers:

  • ~30g carbohydrates

  • ~53g total weight

  • Subtle, natural lime flavour with balanced gel texture

When training for the 11s project one week, I accidentally calculated how much I was spending on gels. My partner was also in a big training block and whilst we had switched to using the cheapest gels we could find (shout-out Pak n Save Petone), we were still spending a crazy amount of money on gels each week. In the peak of the block we were each going through 10 gels a week, and when I did the math across weeks and months, as well as estimating what it might cost to fuel the full 11 days this way it just didn’t make sense anymore.

Having watched a youtube video where Jon Albon made his own gels I started to think this might need a new approach.

I knew what was inside gels, they are pretty simple—some combination of maltodextrin, fructose, maybe a gelling agent, acidifier, preservatives, and a little flavour. The more I looked into it, the more I thought: I can probably make these myself.

And so the experiments began.

Right from the start they were totally fine and we quickly switched to fueling the majority of long runs with home-made gels. These were more like a Gu style syrup, inspired by a recipe I had found on the New Zealand Alpine Club Blog. I used these for a long time and eventually fueled the 11s largely on a mix of these gels and some Precision Hydration packets that we had bought to mix up the palette.

After the 11s I started thinking about how much easier the more liquidy pectin based gels were to get down, especially on hard efforts, but these were more like $6-7 NZD per gel. I was also looking to increase my carbs per hour as that was all the rage at the time, so I wanted my gels to be 30grams of carbs instead of 21, which meant a further increase in costs.

That’s when I decided to see if I could develop a pectin-based gel.

For anyone who hasn’t worked with pectin before, it’s the stuff that sets jams and jellies. Sometimes you can even just buy it at the supermarket and food scientists use it to create all kinds of textures,; it’s what is in many of the less gu-more-gel-type sports nutrition.

It wasn’t simple. Pectin can be fussy—it needs the right balance of sugar, acid, and heat to activate properly. My first attempts produced clumpy, grainy mixtures that either wouldn’t set or set far too much.

So I went down the rabbit hole. I researched how food manufacturers handle pectin, experimented with dissolving techniques, adjusted water content, and tested both citric acid and ascorbic acid for pH control. I learned that:

  • Pre-mixing pectin with the sugars prevents clumps.

  • Citric acid helps activate pectin better than ascorbic acid alone.

  • Cooling too fast or storing too cold can cause sugar crystallisation (those “grainy” gels I kept getting early on).

  • Even little things like blending vs whisking change the texture.

Each batch taught me something new. Some ended up too liquid. Others too firm. Some stayed clear and smooth, while others turned cloudy in the fridge.

But over months of trial and error, I kept inching closer. I brought the water volume down from my early batches and learned to pre-disperse the pectin with the maltodextrin and fructose before adding to water. That was a game-changer—no more little clumps floating around.

As my training built again and I was sometimes taking in 5-6 of these in a session, I was craving a tiny touch of flavour to break up the sweetness. I decided to try a simple squeeze of fresh lime juice. You could easily leave this out, or use lemon juice.

The recipe above makes 15 gels and I usually just make it up in whatever size batch we need for the weekend. For smaller days, I’ll often use one of these flasks, which tends to hold 3-4 gels worth, or for bigger days, these work great and hold more like 6-7 gels worth.

If you’re curious about making your own, I’d encourage you to give it a try. Start simple, don’t worry if the first few batches aren’t perfect, and treat it like another part of your training. Slowly edge in on what works best for you and keep refining and iterating as you go.

Each ingredient has a link to how I source it, being based in Aotearoa, New Zealand, but any version of the ingredient should work.