The OP is still only working up to 30-40 mile rides. What I see all too often is people getting caught up in the marketing and spending 10 bucks a ride on crap they dont need. None of it 'improves' your performance, its all to replenish electrolytes and ingest calories. If your not depleting your glycogen stores you dont need to worry about replenishing them while on the bike. Depleting them takes close to 3 hours. Anything 2 hours and less save it for after the ride and eat real food, that has taste and enjoyment to it, and costs less.

I see people go on 2 hour rides and they start with a sportsdrink to hydrate prior to the ride, eat 4 gells, a cliff bar or 2, add in 2 bottles of water mixed with accelerade/cytomax, then have a designer recovery drink costing a few bucks. You can drive a car the same distance for cheaper. And they would have rode the same without it all.