Ekdog

I love my Jetboil Sol Aluminum Cook System. It's light, compact, nests together and burns very hot and efficiently.

cyccommute 

I have to disagree. I don't find canister stoves to be particularly unstable nor do I find determining how much fuel I have left to be difficult. I can determine the amount of fuel left by three methods. The canister cools significantly during use...it's called the Joule/Thompson effect. The liquid fuel is slightly warmer than the gas over the liquid. I can also tell by weight. The contents of the canister also slosh when the canister is shaken.

I also question the ability to tell how much fuel you have left in the alcohol 'cat can' stoves or stoves like the Trangia. Since they are mass burn stoves, you really have no idea how much fuel you have left. And what happens if you run out of fuel during cooking? I can change canisters on the fly if I run out but how do you add more fuel to a hot stove when you have to pour it in? I work with flammable materials all the time so I have a overdeveloped safety nanny sense but I'm not about to try to pour fuel into a stove that is even warm and try to reignite it.

There is also the issue of handling the fuel. At least with butane stoves and pressurized liquid stoves, the fuel is contained in a vessel and metered through a valve. If something goes wrong, I can close the valve and stop the process. With mass burn stoves, there is no valve. Someone here in Colorado started a forest fire with a mass burn stove when it got away from him.

I also "cook" on my stoves. I don't just reheat water. The control valve on every butane stove I've used is fine enough to have a hard boil or a slow simmer and every thing in between. If anything the control is almost better than my kitchen stove.

Niles H.

Have tried many. Alternate now depending on trip.

Stoves without good flame control are less versatile. Some foods burn or scorch easily with these stoves.

The Dragonfly has good flame control.

It's loud but you can buy or make silencers.

Multifuel stoves are nice for some trips. The option of using gasoline can be good to have. After I started using a light-weight siphon system, my happiness or satisfaction level with these multi-fuel stoves went up several notches (and it was already high). May start a thread in case others would be interested in some of the details of how and why.

The canister stove I use is the hose-to-MSR-bottle type -- more stable than burner-over-canister types. And much better for windscreen use.

Canister stoves are clean, easy to light (esp. those with piezo ignition), require no priming or waiting, often have good or excellent flame control, and many people love them. Others don't care for the canister availability issues in some areas and countries, among other things.

They are the simplest to use.

Alcohol stoves are just too slow and weak for the types of cooking I do.

Sometimes I go stoveless but take a light titanium pot. Then I use it as a bowl, and occasionally cook something in it, over an improvised twig-fire hearth or mini-trench. Weighs nothing but still allows you to cook once in a while.

Rowan

I can look in the burner to see how much fuel is left. And I can look in the clear plastic bottle, or inside the Heet bottle to see how much I have left for multiple usage.

The safety aspect of refuelling a hot Trangia burner is overstated. If it extinguishes, I just refill it. The burner is not hot enough for it to set alight the new fuel without a flame.

You should also know that immediately you put any fuel under pressure, the dangers associated with it go up. Alcohol stoves don't use fuel under pressure.

If a forest fire was started by someone using an mass burn stove, then tell us what type and how it was being used. I can then tell you about people who have been burned very badly by propane explosions in their tents. Or how they've singed their eyebrows trying to bring a rampant pressure gas stove under control.

Plus, we have already advised the OP to practice at home, which includes judging how the type of fuel he chooses does work.

I specifically mentioned the Pocket Rocket as being unstable. Others may or may not be. I commented on what I found with that burner. I like the way Trangia sets work with a stable base that by their very design help prevent pots from being spilled.

You may be a competent cook with the stove you desire to use. I have seen many others who are not. This largely comes back to the type of stove they have been using, and they weren't alcohol ones.

I also have issues with propane cartridge disposal. You can't refill them...

Gas has additives that aren't nice, and any leakage into a pannier is going to be awful to clean up, unlike alcohol that simply... evaporates.

I've also seen the result first hand of neglect with a propane gas stove, left on as its owners went to bed in a tent. The explosion resulted in shrapnel being scattered up to 20 metres around the campsite. Fortunately, no-one was hurt.

I think we've all used different stoves over a period. Your long-held belief that alcohol simply isn't efficient enough in BTU terms for you is OK. For others, they choose what works for them. The OP then can weigh up the pros and cons, including and beyond the BTUs (as a professional chef, I'm sure he is aware of those issues), and go from there.

Rowan

What types of cooking do you do? I am (again) genuinely curious. Perhaps you can post some pictures of your culinary delights. I mean, I can post some of my work with alcohol stoves, and we can compare...

djyak

I use the MSR Pocket Rocket. I don't do a lot of cooking, most campgrounds here in Europe have beer gardens set up on site already. But I love the option, and my coffee in the morning is a must. If I do cook, it's just one pot meals anyway.

Burton

Hot food isn't a priority during the summer months and preprepared salads, sandwiches and hot or cold drinks are usually pretty easy to come by at supermarkets, restaurants and convenience stores. But there might still be the odd occasion I might want to cook.


My preference for bike-touring (which is largely a warm weather activity) has long been an alcohol stove and I managed to pick up a couple SS versions before they were discontinued.

Alcohol or fondue fuel is pretty universal, and easy to find. It doesn't have the smell/contamination issues associated with gasoline or kerosene when packed in a pannier. The heat output can't be regulated directly, but there's a way around that.


The stove is used with Thai, Zebra brand tiffin stainless steel food containers.
https://www.zebra-head.com/en/product...yid=0000000007


The containers stack and although tiffins are usually used to DELIVER, not COOK food - they're perfect for a one burner heat source. Something can be started in the bottom, and then shifted up the stack to continue cooking at a lower temperature. The same principal as a double boiler. That approach not only gives more cooking options - it increases fuel efficiency. The concept may not suit everyone's cooking reauirements, but is effective enough that MEC marketed an exact equivalent (for a lot more money).


As well as being stackable, the containers are available in a variety of sizes and configurations and can double as storage units for food, or you can eat directly out of them. A Thermos comes in handy too ocassionally.

Ekdog

Most useful! Here's a direct link to the article: https://seattlebackpackersmagazine.co...o-i-have-left/

Tourist in MSN

For short trips or trips where I expect to use very little fuel, canister stoves as long as it won't get too cold. Primus Powercook (discontinued), Primus Yellowstone (older model), Optimus Crux.

For longer trips or when it will get cold, liquid fuel. If practical, white gas instead of kerosene. Primus Omnifuel and Optimus Nova (not the plus model). Regarding the Nova, recommend the newer valve arrangement where there is a manual shutoff valve on the pump unit, the older valves that were supposed to automatically shut off sometimes did not.

I still have several older Gaz cartridges that I want to get rid of, so I expect to use my vintage Bluet stove on some warm weather trips, but I am not buying more of these cartridges.

Occasionally dig out the Optimus 111B or 111T or Phoebus 625 if I am feeling nostalgic.

cyccommute 

Just as I can tell how much fuel is left in my canisters by feeling them, weighing them or shaking them.

Adding fuel to a hot open burn stove is a safety issue. A volatile fuel like an alcohol (ethanol or methanol) evaporates when it is poured. If the device is hot, the amount of evaporation is greater and there is an invisible cloud of fuel mixed with air over the device. Reigniting the stove means passing a flame through that mixture which will ignite at the outer edge and burn inward. It could easily flare. Depending on the heat of the device and the size of the cloud, the size of the fireball can be quite large.

The dangers only go up if the pressure is released and an air/fuel mixture is allowed to form. If the fuel is within a pressure vessel and the release is controlled, there is little to no danger. The same can't be said for a open pool of flammable liquid.

There is a Denver Post story here on the Hewlett fire. As for people being burned by propane explosions in their tent or singing their eyebrows with stoves, you can't fix stupid. Anyone who cooks in their tent...with any stove... is beyond dumb as is anyone who puts their face over any stove while lighting it.

The Pocket Rocket uses the same base as most other butane stoves, i.e. the canister. I've never had a problem with one falling over but I also think about where I place my stove before I put a pot on it. If I were worried about stability, there are bases that can be added to the canister to stabilize it. Or you can use an Omnifuel stove that doesn't sit on the canister but is on it's own base. It's as stable as the Trangia...maybe even more so.


It's not the stove's fault but user error. So all high BTU stoves are bad? I don't follow the logic.

No, you can't refill them but then you don't usually refill a Heet bottle either. And, since the BTUs are about half of butane, you have to use twice as many bottles. You can purchase a tool to puncture the gas canister and make it recyclable.

Gasoline has additives but then so does Heet. I have never had to use gasoline for fuel but use white gas (known by various names around the world) which evaporates as cleanly as alcohol and is less toxic than methanol (the major ingredient in Heet). Butane never leaks in my experience and, if it did, would evaporate even more quickly than white gas or methanol.

As I said, you can't fix stupid. We have first hand experience in my state with what happens when an alcohol stove is used carelessly. 7000 acres of charred forest, 5 days of intense fire fighting and millions of dollars spent to fight it, to, be exact. That's a lot of damage for a 'safe' fuel.

Although heat value is important to me...I do occasionally like boiling water and would rather not wait around all day for it...it's not the only consideration. Containing the flame, having the ability to meter the heat, having control over turning the stove off and on and, yes, the safe handling of the fuel is just as important. I don't really like using white gas and I will avoid it as much as possible. I have the same problem with it as I do with other liquid fuels. It's just too easy to mishandle it. Butane is easier to use all the way around because it doesn't pool, it doesn't flare and you can't spill it. Since I never, ever, ever, never cook inside my tents and would suggest that no one cook in theirs, I don't have any issues with explosions or even the possibility of one. If someone does cook with propane in their tent, they are just as likely to cook with alcohol and they would still be in the same boat...the fast boat to gene pool removal.

robow

I simply carry a second little cat stove with me and as my flame slowly diminishes, (it does give you a hint that in the next minute it will go out) I fill and light a second stove and just transfer the food to the other stove sitting next to it with no lost time in between flames. Repeat as necessary. Now I'll admit I don't cook the most exotic of meals and one stove ignition is enough for most of my meals, two at most. Those aluminum cat food cans cool amazingly fast within just a few seconds so a second stove is not a necessity but I often find myself giving one away to a fellow rider or hiker so it's nice to carry.

Also a small alcohol fire like that is easy to snuff out in just a second, so those who weren't Smokey's friends must not have been very bright.

Rowan

Errr... just how many times have you used an alcohol stove, cyccommute? You really do come across as someone who hasn't.

And your melodramatic claims about 7000 acres of charred forest come back to... you guessed it... operator error. Just like you justify certain aspects of gas and propane misuse.

You are incorrect in that heat output from a burner cannot be controlled. In my experience, you are incorrect about the flare from relighting after refilling an alcohol burner. Heet is not a fuel that I have used at all -- and methylated spirits doesn't have the same additives as gasoline. You provide solutions for cannister disposal, that require acquisition of tools and more weight to tour with. Plus weighing the cannister? Really? On tour? And you are plain flat out wrong about waiting all day for a pot of water to boil when using alcohol.

At least you might have thrown up the fact that alcohol doesn't perform that well in high altitudes or in very low temperatures. I've had a few issues in that regard, but really only on one trip. Cycling and travelling through the Canadian Rockies at quite high elevations haven't presented any significant issues. Again, it will depend on the type of touring that chefisaac wants to do.

------------

chefisaac, this sort of discussion is almost inevitable when you talk about stoves. It's like Brooks, carbon fibre, helmets and so on, but it's just restricted to touring.

Maybe you should visit your REI shop again, and see if the staff can give you a demonstration of the merits of each of the types of stoves we've been discussing here. It's unlikely, but it's worth a shot. The principle stoves to consider are gasoline, propane, alcohol, solid fuel, and another version which they might not stock that burns wood.

Each does have its own merits. But the reason why I asked about what sort of fuel you use for normal cooking, and I suppose we should ask what sort of food do you want to cook on tour... is that cooking with thin aluminium, stainless steel or titanium pots requires a different heating strategy than does cooking with pots that have thick bases.

Rowan

Alcohol is the one liquid fuel that you can extinguish with water.

Rowan

One of the real pluses for me with the Trangia is it stability.

One of the models I have has a hole in the side of the stand so that a gas burner can be used in it. That could mean the best of both worlds for anyone who wants pot-stand stability and the claimed "instant heat" of gasoline (or, I believe, propane with a small hose).

And if I was travelling to a remote location where alcohol fuel was not available, but only gasoline, I would certainly consider adding an MSR bottle and burner to the Trangia set-up. There are mix-and-match possibilities with the Trangia that few other stoves, if any, offer.

Carbonfiberboy 

For the chef - here's a sample recipe from our Real Meals Outdoors cookbook. One can substitute any fresh, frozen, or canned green vegetable for the FD peas. We eat well, and this is why we carry that Optimus, which boils fast and simmers well. BTW, aluminum pots are the Only Thing. Nothing else that's light enough to carry conducts heat well enough to cook on. We've been doing this together for almost 40 years.

Almond Rice

1 Tbsp. butter
4 oz. whole wheat spaghetti
¾ c. instant brown rice
1 c. (or pkg.)freeze-dried peas
½ c. chopped almonds
1 pkg. dried onion/mushroom soup
1 Tbsp. dried parsley
½ tsp. salt
water


Melt butter and brown the rice and almonds. Add remaining ingredients, with enough water to cook the rice according to the package directions, plus 2 c. Bring to a boil and simmer covered, 15-20 minutes until rice and spaghetti are done and liquid is almost gone. Stir occasionally. When this is done there is not a lot of sauce. Taste the spaghetti to see if it is done, and add more water if necessary. The amount of water depends on the brands of rice and noodles, and your elevation. Serves two.


Per serving: 750 cal., 33% (244 cal.) from fat; 12% (22g) protein; 27g fat (6g sat.); 55% (104g) carbo.; 2240mg sodium; 16mg chol.

cyccommute 

I've experimented with a 'cat food' can stove at home. I wasn't impressed. There is absolutely no control over the flame with that kind of stove. There is no low, high or medium setting since it just a pool of alcohol that burns. I did try white gas in one too. I'd not suggest anyone try that since the fire is far too hot for the materials used to construct the stove. It didn't melt but the foil tape holding the cans together didn't fair too well in just a few minutes of burning.

As for other alcohol stoves, I've not tried them. I'm not likely to either since I have several stoves that work very well and I can't see the point of a low heat value fuel like alcohol

Talk to the people who were impacted by 7000 acres (~ 12 sq miles) of forest that was burned as to whether or not it is melodramatic. I'll agree that it was operator error but it's an error that would be extremely difficult to repeat with a pressurized white gas stove and impossible to repeat with a butane stove. I suppose if I dropped a butane stove in a pile of pine needles or waved it around the limbs of a tree, I could get a good blaze going but that goes beyond operator error.

It's also a little disingenuous to complain about 'melodrama' when you have your own melodramatic issues. Going on about blowing up a tent with a propane canister is a tad melodramatic as well.

How do you control the heat from a burner that burns from a pool of liquid? I can adjust the valve on any of my stoves so that I have a flame that is barely visible or a flame that is almost hot enough to melt steel.
I see nothing in the Trangia stove that looks like a regulator or flame control. And I know that catfood can stoves have zero regulation.

You are the one who mentioned Heet, not me. One could easily assume that you've used it. You are also the one who mentioned low temperature heating

One could draw the conclusion that boiling water isn't important to you and, from my experiments at home, it's rather difficult to achieve with alcohol.

I don't 'just reheat or boil water' when I cook over a camp stove but I also like the fact that I can boil a pot of water for coffee in a very short period of time.

There are also many ways of 'weighing' something. The canister has heft to it so you can 'weigh' it in your hand. An empty canister is lighter than a full one.

Can't cover everything. But that is more an issue with the boiling point of water than it is with the fuel. I'm used to living at 5000+ feet so adjusting to altitude isn't much of a problem. Going down in altitude is more of a problem because stuff cooks faster than I expect.

I, too, suggest that Chefisaac try stoves before he buys. He should seriously consider how the fuel is handled, how it is dispensed, how it is controlled and even how hot the flame is. You may like to do 'slow cooking' but some people may not.

cyccommute 

I agree that it should have been easy to snuff out. But that's his story and Colorado has a history of people doing incredible stupid things that create huge disasters, like starting the largest forest fire in the state by burning a Dear John letter (US Forest Service employee to boot) or the Army firing tracer rounds during one of the driest summers on record or a group of kids accidentally setting their tent on fire.

zoltani

cyccommute, it is extremely obvious that you have never used a proper trangia stove, instead only trying the homemade style. They are different in many respects. Also, you should probably not get so worked up over something as simple as ones stove choice.

I do not understand how the forest fire really started, it says the man turned away from the stove and when he looked back there was a fire. There is more to the story, IMO.

zoltani

By the way, if you decide to go with a trangia I highly recommend the full blow stove with wind screen instead of the mini trangia as displayed on REI's website. I have never seen the full trangia being sold at REI, only the mini.

MMACH 5

Cooking with alcohol takes some practice. I've built dozens of different sizes and designs. Most of them with some sort of apparatus like a "simmer ring" to control the flame. The reason I came back to the penny stove is because, it operates with the principle of heating the alcohol inside the stove, thus creating more vapors and pressurizing the fuel, inside. The penny acts as a regulator, releasing excess pressure to keep the flame at a consistent level. To turn the flame down you drop a simmer ring on it which pushes the flame inward and away from the edges of the stove. This cools the aluminum, in turn cooling the alcohol and reducing the vapors and pressure pushing the fuel out.

Nothing against using what your comfortable with, but alcohol stoves don't deserve most of the criticisms that folks apply to them.

Doug64

+1 for the MSR Pocket Rocket. It is light (3 ounces), has good flame control, and fuel is relatively easy to find in the U. S. and Europe.





It is versatile too. The MSR Whisperlite works a little better for extended trips or when a lot of water needs to be boiled or snow melted.

Lasse

That's why every Trangia burner includes a simmer ring that can be regulated manually to alter the opening of the burner (the part on the right in this picture: https://zenstoves.net/TopBurner/Trangia2.jpg ).
I find the simmer ring less practical than just turning the valve on a gas stove, but it's no problem to operate and it's really simple and durable. Not much to go wrong. When making pasta I usually operate the Trangia without simmer ring (burning gasified alcohol, at full power) until the water boils after which I put the simmer ring in place at a setting I want (easy job with the included pot holder, no need to turn off the fire) and throw in whatever is to be cooked.

Both gas and alcohol stoves have their advantages and are perfectly capable to be used cooking a proper meal. It's really situation dependent and subjective to say which type is better overall, not to mention huge differences between different gas and alcohol stoves...

As to the speed to get to full heat which is slower with an alcohol stove because it's a moderate flame until the burner is heated to the point at which the alcohol starts to gasify enough for the jet flame to start: most people I know don't mind sitting around, cooking in the evening for 1 or 2 minutes longer when they're camping... In which situation would you care? We're not even talking about 5 minutes longer. Even when cooking next to a friend who is cooking with his gas burner, I never even noticed the speed difference.

And in case you like the stability and windscreen and pots and pan and pot gripper of the Trangia that all fit into each other but would like to use an other fuel, e.g. when cycling around the world, you can just buy their gas or multifuel kits and use those instead of the alcohol burner: multifuel: https://youtu.be/39RfXfuVj2g or gas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay3MpRKUgdA

cyccommute 

First, you are using the wrong term. The fuel is volatilized, not gasified. White gas, alcohol, gasoline and other liquid fuels all evaporate to take a gas like form. The material isn't a real 'gas' in that it could be recovered to the liquid state by simply cooling the vapors. Without heat, the material would remain as a liquid.

Butane, on the other hand, does form a gas that can't be simply condensed to liquid without going through a much more involved process. If you puncture the container, the liquid butane would escape and form into what we chemists call a 'permanent' gas. Methane (natural gas), oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, butane, carbon monoxide, etc. are all permanent gases. They can be made into liquids but not easily and not usually by cooling the gas. I don't know anyone in my field of study that would use the term 'gasify' to describe even turning a condensed liquid 'gas' into a permanent gas. Gasification usually implies something very different like converting a solid material like biomass into permanent gases like carbon monoxide, hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

Now on to the stove. The Trangia site doesn't make clear that the stove has a simmer ring nor how to use it. Your link clears up a misconception on my part. That said, the simmer ring looks like a crude method. And having to lift the pot contents off to set the simmer ring on seems very cumbersome. Not something that seems easy to do on the fly nor offers much in the way of fine control. Even the worst stove for control I've used...the MSR Whisperlite... is easier to regulate than dropping a ring of metal onto the fire and bumping a metal flap open and closed as needed.

cyccommute 

No, I have not used a Trangia stove. I don't see the point. I prefer butane but will use white gas if I have to...my stove will burn both as well as gasoline if I absolutely had to. Butane is relatively light, burns hot, can be easily regulated to burn not so hot, is safe and performs like the stove I have in my kitchen. Most importantly, it would be almost impossible to set a forest on fire with it.

There may be more to the story about setting a forest on fire with a camp stove. I will tell you that I was on a month long tour in the south when the guy set the forest ablaze. My wife told me about the fire and said that the reports said that it was an upset stove. I didn't even need to hear what kind of fuel he was using to know that it was an alcohol open burn stove. Quite frankly, I can't see how any stove other than an alcohol stove could start a fire like that.

andrewclaus

The last stove I used was a home-made Pepsi-can alky stove. It was wonderful, for what it was--free and light. Of course it had limitations. There is no best stove or there would only be one stove. One method I haven't seen mentioned yet for flame control with alcohol is lifting up the pot and adding a capful of water to the fuel. I used to simmer rice fairly well doing that. Alky stoves are really only good for limited use. If you cook two meals a day and/or have to melt snow, the weight of the fuel starts getting too much. I read somewhere that the break even point is about 10 ounces of fuel--if you find yourself carrying more than that, gas might be better for you. My pepsi can stove wasn't very stable--it got blown over twice in high winds. If I hadn't been habitually careful with surrounding fuels, there could have been a fire. The alcohol wasn't the issue--the surface fuels could have been.

I don't carry a stove any more, and haven't for many seasons and many miles. My hiking and biking just got better when I stopped cooking, or trying to cook is more like it.

Here's a pretty good stove summary from the hiking world: https://www.pmags.com/stove-comparison-real-world-use