The Best Way To Mix A Powdered Drink Is The Opposite Of What You Probably Do

Whether you're mixing up a glass of powdered lemonade or preparing a hydrating electrolyte drink, a truly human pain is watching clumps of powder swirling around your glass, refusing to dissolve. You've tried putting the water in first — and a layer of powder stubbornly tops the glass. You've put the powder in first — which holds its ground, clinging to the bottom of the glass as you stir. But fear not, weary reader, there is a solution (pun intended). By first combining your powder with a smaller proportion of water and mixing that into a slurry or paste, the two ingredients come together more smoothly.

Powder and water struggle to mix for a few reasons. Firstly, as particles hydrate on the surface of clumps as they form while stirring, they can create a semi-hydrated gel interface, which saturates the outer layer and prevents powder on the inside of the clumps from accessing water. The size of particles also contribute to clumping, as finer particles form lumps more easily, because there are smaller microscopic gaps between each particle in which air can get trapped, and the particles themselves can become compacted. This means your favorite powdered drink can quickly become a marathon stirring exercise. By first adding a small amount of water to the glass — a few ounces or so — then adding your powder and vigorously stirring that into a slurry before adding the remaining water, you can prevent some of these processes from occurring.

By shifting the ratio of powder to water closer to a one-to-one, there's less chance for hydrophobic clumps to reject integration with the water. In other words, stirring a full glass of water with clumps in it is more likely to simply move those clumps around the glass. Pre-wetting the powder by working it into a paste or slurry with water puts it into a suspended state and means that when the rest of the water is added, gel barriers and interstices (microscopic pockets) of trapped air have already been disrupted. To really ramp up the mixing, you might even want to use a teeny-tiny whisk to help break up clumps that can form as the powder hydrates. Think of it like making matcha, breaking up the powder and integrating it fully with water before adding adding it to the drink proper. 

One thing to bear in mind is that if there's a specific powder-to-water ratio for the final product, make sure to factor that into this process. For example, if you're mixing an electrolyte drink that requires 16 ounces of water, and you use 2 ounces to make the slurry, you only need to add 14 ounces to finish the drink.