Skratch Clear Hydration Drink Mix is a sports drink that tastes like water (with a twist of citrus). Athletes kept asking founder Allen Lim for a sports drink with less flavor than the company's famed Sport Hydration Drink Mix. These athletes had flavor fatigue and were craving crisp, cold water on hot days. This sparked a new challenge for Skratch: to make a drink mix that tasted as light as water but still had the benefits of a high-performing sports drink. Allen hit the lab with a Clear vision to make water even better, while retaining its essence and adding just the right amount of electrolytes and the lightest amount of citrus flavor. So you might think, Clear Hydration Mix was born, but it wasn't quite that simple. Though many of the details are here, you can explore more of the process of developing Clear on the Skratch blog- which is the direct source of much that you will read here.

With a goal to create sports drink that tastes as close to water as possible while also giving athletes all of the carbohydrate and sodium they need to optimize their performance, several questions had to be asked and answered. The key formative component was evidence that, for a sweating athlete, there’s no situation where drinking plain water is better than drinking something with a little bit of carbohydrate and sodium. The carbohydrate helps to keep blood sugar up during activity and along with sodium helps to facilitate water transport across the small intestine. Replacing the sodium lost in sweat also helps to appropriately drive thirst so that the body can stay both hydrated and in electrolyte balance- in other words, something water alone can't do.

What drove the process of creating Clear Hydration Drink Mix the questions and needs of athletes. Per Allen Lim, the athletes he worked with just wanted variety. They wanted the option for something sweet as well as the option for something that wasn’t. They wanted plain water to wash down the salty and sweet portable foods they consumed, like rice cakes or energy chews. They wanted plain water because they were concerned about consuming too much simple sugar. They wanted plain water to reset. They wanted plain water because in the middle of a hard day, tasteless can taste great. But how could Skratch achieve this?

With considerable examination, science and lab work, the team at Skratch worked with Highly Branched Cyclic Dextrin (i.e., HBCD or Cluster Dextrin®) - an extraordinarily heavy, complex, and soluble carbohydrate molecule. Initially, Skratch thought that they needed a lot of Cluster Dextrin for it to hide the taste of electrolytes and other sugars. But, they were pleasantly surprised when they were able to find a blend of carbohydrates and sodium that was enough to hydrate- but was easily masked by much less Cluster Dextrin. This gave Skratch a sports drink that could be mixed to the same ratio of carbohydrate to electrolyte as their Sport Drink Mix, with the caveat that it also tasted like plain water - clear of any taste whatsoever. It is true that with a vast distribution of people, some are more taste sensitive to some ingredients than others, and some people have a different response to the flavor and the electrolyte components. With a subtle hint of infused flavor from real lemons or oranges you can experience a crisp, light tasting, refreshing way to get the electrolytes you need and some of those potential specific taste interactions may be mitigated, but that ultimately comes down to the individual. For some, flavor reactions may also differ depending on hydration and electrolyte levels at the time of use- just like with most other hydration drinks. To be sure, Clear is easy on your gut and easy on your taste buds for hydrating all day long, or going long all day. It is also non-GMO, gluten free, dairy free, vegan, and kosher.

Skratch has some specific instructions for mixing Clear Hydration and emphasizes that the user can mix alternate serving sizes. The company says Clear is flexible, in that they mean that whether you make it at half the recommended concentration or twice the recommended concentration, the clear taste of water stays consistent. This gives individual users the flexibility to make Clear at a concentration that meets their individual needs for carbohydrate and sodium without affecting taste. Per Skratch, you can achieve optimal preparation results by mixing this product with room temperature water and once dissolved topping it with cold water or iced water. You can also make it up to 24 hours ahead of use and chill it in the fridge if you follow this procedure- again, in the serving size of your choice.