Introducing RAT MILK

“you’re really leaning into this rat thing huh”

Due to funding cuts our lab rats must forgo on-brand on-bike nutrition from the people you’ve heard of. Enter Rat Milk, a resource available at low cost to all rats and anyone else who wants to drink it. This is a high-but-not-that-high carb, unflavored, electrolyte-containing drink mix that you can modify as you please–from the rats you’ve never heard of!

It’s an odd rat indeed who can secrete enough milk to sustain you on your ride. Our furriest scientists have been scurrying around the bench day and night to perfect our non-secret and non-secreted nutritious (contains nutrients!) Rat Milk (vegan!). More perfection to come, surely.

The current formulation is tabulated here. In the interests of open science we are also providing commentary from our test subjects’ lab notebooks.

Most recent batch:

Ingredient	Quantity (grams)	Note
Dextrose	540
Granulated sugar	270	Can tune sucrose-glucose ratio as needed
Citric acid	80	Mainly for taste. This quantity produces a noticeably sour flavor. Consider reducing for a more neutral flavor and less fang degradation. Consider increasing for neurological stimulus.
Sodium citrate	27
Table salt	18.5	Can adjust to taste. Key is to balance total sodium between this and the sodium citrate.
Potassium chloride	5.5
Magnesium citrate	4
Calcium carbonate	2

How many servings does this make?

We recommend anything between a “pipsqueak” dose of 50 g / bottle to a “rat king” dose of about 75 g / bottle. So this makes between about 12 and 18 servings, depending on the dosing rat(e).

Why a batch of ~900 g?

Unless you are using two different scales, it’s unlikely you can get your quantities measured much (or any) better than to 1 g. So there is some tradeoff with reproducibility and convenience: if you e.g. double the recipe, you can get more reproducible formulations (since you can measure out the electrolytes more accurately), but then you have a lot of powder to get through. Even distribution becomes more important by the same factor.

When do I break even versus the good stuff?

Our rats have had excellent results with many of the widely available formulations put together by the good people at e.g. Skratch, Tailwind, SIS, Maurten, etc. The only claim we make competitively against these other products is that ours is worse. But liking biking is already expensive. To drop ~$200 on a bulk order of mostly sugar that will disappear rapidly with heavy training is a tough pill to swallow–particularly for a rat, since normal pills are big relative to our gullets, and our wallets are similarly undersized.

So we drink Rat Milk to save money. But, while you win on the sugar purchase, you can typically only buy the electrolytes in big quantities, which isn’t necessarily cheap. Versus the good stuff, you should nevertheless break even after around 3-5 kg of Rat Milk powder, depending on which good stuff you’re replacing.

The outlay for my first 2025 vintage 950 g batch of Rat Milk is below:

Ingredient	Bag size	Bag cost	Number of batches (projected)	“Long term” cost per batch (no waste)
Dextrose	5 lb	$19.99	4.2	$4.76
Sugar		(lying around)	based on CH 4 lb bag / $2.87, 6.85	$0.42
Citric acid	2 lb	$14.99	11.3 (more if less sour)	$1.32 (less if less sour)
Sodium citrate	1 lb	$11.99	16.8	$0.71
Table salt		(lying around)	based on Morton 737 g / $3.99: 39.8	$0.10
Potassium chloride	1 kg	$22.95	185	$0.12
Magnesium citrate	2 lb	$28.95	227	$0.13
Calcium carbonate	1 lb	$12.99	227	$0.06
Total costs		$111.86 (initial outlay)		$7.62 (per 950 g)

Note that in the short term (when you buy 1 bag of everything) the non-sugar components account for about 80% of the total cost. In the long term, the dextrose accounts for 62.5% of the total cost.

Contemporary pricing for bulk Skratch is $22/440 g (hydration sport drink mix, equivalent $47.50/950 g) and Tailwind $40/1300 g (equivalent $29/950 g). So you would need to buy ~3 bags of Tailwind or 6 bags of Skratch to match the initial outlay. Or, more usefully, in terms of Rat Milk batches you amortize the upfront costs at ❤ batches (Skratch) or 4-5 batches (Tailwind). And after that you’re making money!

A plausible takeaway is that you’re not getting ripped off by the Tailwind people (or the other people, depending on how effective you find the specifics of their formulations, the taste of the flavors, and so on).

If the startup costs are prohibitive, you could also consider being a little more choosy with the sourcing of the electrolytes to break even sooner. Unless you’re Milking and selling at cost to your friends, you probably won’t realistically get through >200 servings of like calcium carbonate in a plausible amount of time before spoilage. A viable option is splitting the outlay with your roommates or significant other or whatever other team you’ve assembled.

In the long run, a different glucose/sucrose mix (e.g. 1:1) could affect the pricing a little, given the >5x difference in pricing for the sugars, but this also affects the Milk’s effect.

Finally, this goes nearly without saying, but you break even much sooner if you unfairly compare to the single serving packets of e.g. even my beloved Tailwind. That goes for $1.90/54 g if you buy the bundles and $2.50/54 g if you buy individually. Those rates ($33/950 g and $44/950 g), obviously, compare unfavorably to their own bulk rate ($29/950 g) as well as Rat Milk’s (see above), which has a hypothetical long-term single-serving equivalent cost of $0.43/54 g.

The Brazil nut problem

Perhaps the biggest issue confronting you is distributing the comparatively tiny amount of electrolyte powder (4% of total). We suggest you mix the electrolytes first and distribute into the dextrose, which is a finer powder than the sucrose. (Break up clumps as you see them.) Then mix in all the coarser crystals. We also recommend using a big jar so you can get a spoon in and stir it all. Try to avoid top-bottom stratification, which will lead to bad bottle-to-bottle variation. For dispensing, spooning out is better than shaking out–don’t let nature spoil your Rat Milk!

How to take a few servings on a ride

Option 1: Dispense a known number of servings into an empty, dry bidon. Eyeball portions into your active bidons as you go.

Option 2: Foil packets. Crimp foil envelopes by hand. Aluminum foil is cheap, abundant, and easily recycled. It, however, must be kept dry–you can’t keep these in your jersey pockets. A burrito bag or similar is ideal, but you could also stuff them into an empty, dry bidon.

A crappier, related option (since it uses single-use plastic) is to dispense into baggies or cling film. Besides the difficulty of then getting it all into your bidon on the fly, you might have to explain to someone that it’s not drugs making you go fast.

Option 3: Forthcoming from oddratcove’s top secret R&D division, RAT WORKS. Stay tuned…

What does it taste like?

Our original formulation tastes a little lemony but predominantly just sweet and a little sour. Add whatever you want for flavor (e.g. lime, cranberry juice, pickle brine). Anything is possible if you like it sweet and a little sour.

How can I make it milkier?

We hear you. The People Want It Milky. This is an area of active research for us. Stay tuned.