Camping with Huel

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Just thought I’d pass on some experience and thoughts on using Huel camping, since we used it for a couple of days out over the weekend.

In prep I did some density calculations and concluded that you could fit one three-scoop meal into ~190ml; I rounded this up to 200ml and went to pre-mix powders (I use ⅔ U/U, ⅓ vanilla) and flavour for four meals. Quickly concluded I’d be better off with 250ml volume per meal: a one litre container with four meals in it has enough free space for you to shake and mix the powders really thoroughly, and to store the scoop. So one litre for four meals was convenient for ease of prep.

In practice it worked really well: just staggered down to the stream, filled, mixed, topped up and if we’d had anywhere urgent to go I’d’ve been moving with my breakfast in hand pretty much immediately, while there was quite a lot of ongoing camping stove trauma being suffered by others. I used matcha as flavouring, so the morning’s caffeine hit was taken care of as well.

Two notes on “in practice” — firstly, I needed an extra water container to top up the last 300ml of water; I guess you might be able to just submerge the shaker in the stream, at a pinch. Secondly, the Huel shaker actually did pretty well as a water bottle in between meals. This surprised me: I figured the rubber-free seal wouldn’t be up to keeping water in the bottle, but it seemed to work. Wouldn’t bank on it, but It Worked For Me™.

Future thoughts: I found working with the 1l container fine, but in worse weather conditions it might have gone badly. Next time I might experiment with getting some small plastic bags, mixing all the powders in bulk and then loading one meal into each bag. I note that the Huel shaker itself has an internal capacity of 750ml, so you should be able to fit 3 or even 4 meals in there if you’re using bags and squeeze them in tight. That would have decreased packing volume by a good amount, though I’d worry a bit about the bags’ integrity while out of the shaker when I’m actually using it for a meal.

Obviously there are great advantages to having some warm food or a hot drink; we mixed and matched a bit, but on this basis I’ll definitely be using Huel again.

One final question I have for @TimOfficeHuel — did Huel design their own shaker, or is it just something generic you’ve had branded? If the former, then noting my above comment of 750ml internal volume, I speculate that you could custom-design three odd-shaped plastic containers that would stack inside of it, each containing exactly one three-scoop Huel meal in powdered form. What do you think?

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Afterthought: also brought some bars for snacking; since a Huel bar rates as (I think?) half a three-scoop meal, bars are pretty competitive with the above, as well as being extremely convenient. A pair of bars clocks in at a volume of 240ml and weight of 140g per “meal” carried, compared with 200‒250ml and 100g (+ container) for the above.

I further note though that their intensive and exclusive use is deprecated due to potential laxative effect!

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Firstly, great to hear that you have been experimenting with Huel ‘in the field’ and that you will be doing so again, thank you so much! Really useful feedback for all the outdoor enthusiasts here.

Secondly, I think I have misinterpreted this bit:

It sounds like you are using a 1lt tub with 4 x 3 scoop meals in and adding water to the tub and shaking it, is that right? I assume you were just using the tub to store the powder until you mixed it with water in your shaker?

On your question, the shaker we use is a Buchsteiner Mixmaster and is a blank we have printed - not custom. Interestingly we did experiment for a long time to develop a custom canister to mix and shake Huel in, but the result was cumbersome and inferior to the shaker. With you stacking containers, would they stack inside of the shaker when it was empty?

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Hi Tim, yeah I’m just using containers to store the dry powder — the point being that if you want to mix the dry U/U, vanilla and a flavour before you leave, then a 1lt container can hold 4×3 = 12 scoops of Huel + ~4 teaspoons of flavouring and has enough airspace that you can shake it and see the flavouring visibly mix through everything else. I suspect that with an 800ml container you couldn’t do that. Of course what you could do instead is mix in a 1lt container, then transfer into 800ml. Given how Huel likes to fly around my kitchen though, I think that 1lt→800ml transfer might get messy!

And yes, I was thinking of three containers designed to stack perfectly inside the Mixmaster, below the plastic grating. Because the Mixmaster is quite a complex shape, to fit three meals I think you’d need three different shapes for the three stacking parts, to pretty much fill the entire available volume. We know that 750ml of water fits, but the internal base diameter, from flat edge to flat edge, is around 6.5cm, with a height of 15cm. So if you just put a 6.5cm×15cm cylinder in there you’d only be able to use 500ml of that 750ml volume (and that’s not even thinking about the volume of the powder container’s own plastic walls).

With some messing around with maths and elliptical frustum volumes, I think that if you built three containers that perfectly fit into the shaker, using 2mm thick plastic and of heights 5.6cm (bottom one), 4.9cm and 4.5cm, each would have an internal volume of about 207ml. That’s definitely enough to carry three 3-scoop meals dry inside the shaker, and leaves a decent bit of wiggle room for whatever you’d need to do to make them seal nicely and be easy to slip in and out. I wonder could Buchsteiner be persuaded to give it a try, since presumably they sell these to a much wider audience than just Huel…?

Afterthought: the inside of the lid itself holds about 190ml: with some engineering, it might be capped to hold a fourth meal…! Would have to be the first you consumed, but still. Fitting four meals into the shaker itself would be pretty impressive, at least for packaholics (possibly rather a small subset of users, I admit).

For the first time ever, I think I could do something pointlessly useful with a 3D printer.

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This is just what I’m looking for. Currently using a protein shaker with two screw on compartments at the bottom but it’s too bulky for camping use and I need to carry additional meals in bags. One of the considerations when starting huel was weight saving when hiking/camping as a days food is generally about a kilo or tasteless dehydrated meals.
Closest I could find was https://www.amazon.co.uk/Core150-Litre-Shaker-Storage-Compartments/dp/B00H12AV54 but it won’t store 3 full meals.

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Something like:-https://www.henchnutrition.com/our-range/clothing-accessories/bottles-shakers/hench-powertower-supplement-storage
But contoured to fit inside the shaker would be ideal

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I recommend bars for camping weekends / festivals, but I’d wish for bars with higher kcal per unit. Maybe we can get those in the future.

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So yeah they have the right idea but are being really inefficient with space, which they can borderline get away with because they’ve a bigger container (though obviously from what you say, that’s still not enough volume). I think three separate stackable containers would be preferable because you could just scoop each through your powder to fill 'em.

@Johnny, yeah bars are good, super convenient, but I’d prefer to use them as an “extra” on a camping trip: Huel provides the proper meals, and the bars are what you take if you’re flagging on the final ascent…

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I thought I put my way too. I just got a 300ml shaker bottle and a skoop with me and measured the amount at home in silicone bags in 4 meals. It’s not the most affective way for camping but it seems the easiest for me.
Seemed to work fine. It was a bit dusty and the bag save to be placed against something so it wount fall.
But all in all it works.

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I went camping the other week but only took enough powder for 2 shakes as I didn’t have a good container.

I’ve seen people recommend the 330ml Addis pots here before
https://www.addis.co.uk/seal-tight-330ml-beaker.asp

If they stack in each other when empty, that would be good.

This pop and store might work

https://www.addis.co.uk/pop-store-300ml-round.asp

Although as you say, something that fits in the Huel shackle would be ideal.

What plastic bags are people using?

Shaking without a blender wasn’t as bad as I thought.