SiS's new pink grapefruit flavoured gel could overcome one of the gooey energy products’ biggest problems – that more often than not, they come in such sweet flavours that you’re soon ignoring feed intervals for fear of that growing feeling of nausea in the base of your stomach.
Each 60ml gel packs 22g of carbs (almost exclusively from maltodextrin, with 0.6g sugar), 87 calories and a tiny injection of salt (0.01g). The gels come as singles (£1.29), packs of six (£7.74) or 30 (£30.99), making them good value.
Like most sports nutrition, the gels taste different with sweat trickling down your brow than when testing at home. Out on the road, the gel didn’t taste as sharp as we expected – think sugar-dusted grapefruit – but it was zingy enough to be fairly refreshing and didn’t have us reaching for the sick bags after downing a few.
It’s also thinner than a lot of gels, which makes it simple to get down quickly between heaving breaths when riding hard.
The packet can be a little tough to pull open with teeth, so you may want to make some tiny nicks near the opening before loading them into your jersey pocket. We did find the corners a little sharp on the inside of the mouth as well.
Necking each gel gave a swift and noticeable boost of energy that didn’t drop off too steeply before the next feed was due. The calorie count is a little lower than some other brands though.
SiS’s isotonic formulation is designed to make the gel’s hit of energy easily digestible without excess water, so one of our test rides included forgoing fluids for two hours.
We’re pleased to report that even in these conditions, the gels sat comfortably in the stomach – though we’d still recommend a swig of water to wash the sticky liquid down.