Homemade Citrus Hydration Powder (LMNT Citrus Salt Clone Recipe)

Written By Glenn Frazee

Note: I am not a doctor or nutritionist. Your use of the information in this article is at your own risk.
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I recently started using LMNT electrolyte drink mix after hearing about it on a podcast. I use it as an additive to my daily water intake, and also as a sports drink when playing volleyball. I find that, especially when I use it in the morning, it helps me feel less sluggish and bit sharper.

However, the drink packets themselves are a little expensive - about $1.50 (USD) each at the time I’m writing this. Compared to a cup of Starbuck’s coffee that’s not too much, but for what’s basically a packet of salt, it seems a bit much to me.

LMNT, to their credit, does publish a few recipes that mimic their powder flavors. The recipes use a mix of units and measurement techniques, which isn’t great for repeatability. Also, these recipes use liquid flavorings or pieces of fruit, which aren’t great for portability or shelf storage. At the most basic, one LMNT powder packet contains the following:

  • 1,000 mg sodium (Na)

  • 200 mg potassium (K)

  • 60 mg magnesium (Mg)

These salts are easy enough to get from regular non-iodized table salt (sodium chloride), Morton lite salt (mix of sodium chloride and potassium chloride), and magnesium malate. You can also buy potassium chloride by itself, but I’ve found it more cost-effective to buy the lite salt instead. Lite salt does have iodine, however, if that’s a concern.

Now for a bit of math. The three items I listed above contain Na, K, and Mg in the following proportions:

  • table salt (non-iodized): 40% Na by weight

  • lite salt: 20.7% Na and 25% K by weight

  • magnesium malate: 15% Mg by weight

To work out the proportions of each you need, simply divide the dose amount by the proportion available in the compounds listed. For magnesium, (60 mg) / (0.15) = 400 mg of magnesium malate required. For potassium, (200 mg) / (0.25) = 800 mg of lite salt required. However, lite salt also includes sodium, which we need to take into account. This 800 mg of lite salt also has (800 mg) * (0.207) = 166 mg of sodium. Subtract this from the 1,000 mg of sodium in the recipe and you get a remainder of 834 mg needed from table salt. For the remainder of sodium, (834 mg) / (0.40) = 2,084 mg of table salt. Thus, for one serving of electrolyte powder, you will need

  • 2,084 mg table salt

  • 800 mg lite salt

  • 400 mg magnesium malate

At this point it’s just a matter of working out convenient package sizes that will create this mix in bulk without having leftovers. Also, assuming you don’t want to drink pure saltwater, you will also want to sweeten this mix and include some sort of flavoring. The ingredients list on the LMNT packet gives you an idea of the proportions of the flavoring components. Ingredients are always listed from highest proportion to lowest. So, we know that the weight of citric acid in the powder is somewhere between the weight of sodium chloride and magnesium malate (that is, between 2,500 mg and 400 mg). Your taste may vary from mine, but I found that somewhere between 1,000 mg and 1,500 mg of citric acid per serving to be good. The tartness provided by the acid gives you that thirst-quenching feeling since it makes you salivate.

I added lemon powder to mine for taste, and the amount needed will vary depending on the exact powder you use. For the lemon powder I used, I found that 1,000 to 2,000 mg per serving tasted good. Add to this stevia powder, which for me tasted right at a dosing of about 0.16 mg per serving (stevia is very potent). When you buy stevia powder, make sure you’re getting pure stevia, not the stevia sweeteners that are cut with erythritol or other non-sugar sweeteners.

The Recipe

For making this in bulk, the recipe below will make a total of 750 servings of an LMNT Citrus Salt clone. You can store this in a large container and scoop it out with a properly sized spoon for the correct serving size. I have provided product links that are in quantities as close as I can get to the target (or can be bought in multiples to get there), so there should be minimal excess. Prices are given at the time I wrote this (October 2023).

Mixing these all together in the quantities listed will yield a weight of about 6.8 g per serving. Find a measuring spoon that will scoop out precisely this amount of powder per scoop and keep it in the same container, and you’ll be good to go! With the prices as shown, this equates to about $0.23 per serving, which is an 84% discount from the retail price of LMNT powder packets! The biggest proportion of the cost here is the lemon juice powder, so if you can find a less-expensive version of that, the cost per serving will go down even more.

Glenn Frazee
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