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How to make Homemade Gatorade

Here’s a fun, at-home project for you: How to Make Homemade Gatorade!

Bottles of Homemade Gatorade

Sports drinks like Gatorade are beverages that are specially formulated to help people rehydrate during or after exercise.  Gatorade is sometimes tough to find on store shelves these days, but you can easily make a copycat Gatorade recipe like this one at home. It’s a fun project for your kids to do. And it’s neat to show them that things like Gatorade can be made homemade!

Ingredients for Homemade Gatorade

Ingredients needed for Homemade Gatorade:

  • water
  • Kool-Aid packet (any flavor)
  • freshly squeezed orange, lime or lemon juice
  • agave syrup (or desired sweetener)
  • Light salt (important ingredient– and it’s sold near the regular salt)
  • Sea salt (make sure it’s “sea salt.” If you happen to have the pink Himalayan sea salt, that works well).

Making Homemade Gatorade

How to make Homemade Gatorade:

Start with 8 cups of water. Add one Kool-Aid packet to the water. That’s what I’m using to flavor the Gatorade. And the nice thing about it is that you can use any flavor you want!

Making Homemade Gatorade

A little bit of freshly squeezed juice is added in too. You can use lemon, lime or orange juice.

Making Homemade Gatorade

Agave syrup is what I use for the sweetener in the recipe. 1/2 cup is just right, according to taste testers around here. But if you want to reduce the sweetness a little bit, or if you want to try using honey or a sugar-substitute sweetener then that’s totally up to you.

Making Homemade Gatorade

Salt is what adds the sodium and potassium to Gatorade, which helps make up the electrolytes that you want in there when you’re making a sports drink. When you drink a lot of water while exercising, your body tends to lose a fair amount of electrolytes because of sweating so much. So the thought is that a sport drink with electrolytes can help balance that.

Nutritional information for this recipe per bottle- 5 bottles of Gatorade:

  • 74 calories
  • 18g carbs
  • 1g protein
  • 1g fat
  • 176mg sodium
  • 95mg potassium
  • 16g sugar

Homemade Gatorade

Sport Water Bottle Purchase Recommendation (affiliate link):

I found a set of SIX bottles on Amazon for a super cheap price. These are perfect water bottles for storing your homemade Gatorade.

Here are a few more drinks to make at home that you might like to try:

Bottles of Homemade Gatorade

Homemade Gatorade

RecipeBoy.com
Easy recipe for your favorite sport drink!
Prep Time 10 minutes
Course Beverage
Cuisine American
Servings 5 servings

Ingredients
  

  • 8 cups water (2 quarts)
  • One .13-ounce envelope Kool-Aid (any flavor)
  • 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lime, lemon or orange juice
  • 1/2 cup agave syrup (can use honey in its place)
  • 1/4 teaspoon "light" salt (available at any market)
  • 1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Instructions
 

  • Stir all ingredients together in a large pitcher. Then pour the Gatorade into water bottles and refrigerate until you are ready to enjoy some homemade Gatorade!

Notes

Nutritional information per serving using orange juice and agave syrup (5 servings in the recipe):
  • 74 calories
  • 18g carbs
  • 1g protein
  • 1g fat
  • 176 mg. sodium
  • 95mg potassium
  • 16g sugar
Keyword gatorade
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
Recipe Rating




Holly

Monday 24th of June 2024

I would like to make blue frost do you know how it would do that?

RecipeGirl

Monday 15th of July 2024

We don't know how to make that one specifically.

Brian

Friday 29th of September 2023

I used 1 tablespoon of lime juice concentrate plus an extra 1/2 cup water for the juice. Followed the recipe from there. I believe this is better than actual Gatorade. Much cheaper to make also. This will be a standard bearer in my household. Thank you for the recipe.

RecipeGirl

Monday 2nd of October 2023

Great to hear, thank you!

Sam

Wednesday 25th of January 2023

How long would this last if I put it in mason jars and stored them in my basement?

RecipeGirl

Monday 30th of January 2023

I'm not sure!

ALLEN D

Sunday 24th of January 2021

About how long does it keep - days to use?

RecipeGirl

Tuesday 2nd of February 2021

Maybe a week?

Pam

Friday 29th of May 2020

Can I use something besides kool-aid?

Joan

Friday 16th of July 2021

Sure you can. It won't be this recipe but the Kool Aid is just for flavor. You can add whatever flavor you like from concentrated frozen juice to flavored syrups. The nutritional info (specifically calories) may change. You'd have to experiment with it to find what you like best.

recipeboy

Saturday 30th of May 2020

No, that's the key to the way this one is made :)