Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Using the term 'mumbo jumbo' is just short hand for saying that you don't understand something and don't want to understand. You really can't use "technical mumbo-jumbo" unless you have some understanding of the "technical" part. And the only way to get understanding is with real world education and experience. I have a more then passing understanding and knowledge of fuels because that has been the way that I make my money for bicycle touring for the last 30 years.
Although I may not have extensive experience with using alcohol fuels for cooking, I don't have zero experience. I don't have to jump off a cliff to know the problems and pitfalls. (I have actual first hand experience with falling off a cliff. It hurts.) just as I don't have to have thousands of hours of experience with alcohol cooking to know the problems and pitfalls with alcohol stoves as compared to hydrocarbon fueled stoves.
I understand your mumbo-jumbo. What you don't understand is how it's irrelevant to bike touring. When questionned on experience, you mention lab work and playing with cat stoves at home (yet wonder how people see how much fuel is left?). You don't like alcool stoves? Fine. Others have extensive field experience with other types of fuel and still prefer alcool so maybe there's something to it and you should tone down your crusades against things you have little to no field experience with. Here are a few other things that are relevent to bike touring:
- Cost: one decent punch makes thousands of alcool stoves.
- Weight: almost nothing.
- Size: smaller than anything else.
- Simple and reliable, no moving parts.
- Fuel found in gas station, auto store and/or hardware store. Canisters need a store with a less common "sporting goods" label. Those stores also have shorter opening hours.
- Silent. After a day of noisy cars, a canister/naphta stove is just another annoying engine. The quiet blue-flamed alcool stove is relaxing. you can't test that over the kitchen counter.
- The joy of making a stove out of a freakin' tuna can.
- Makes a good fire starter.
I had a MSR Dragonfly pump fail on the first day of a trip. I tried to fix it, tried to find a pump in a good size town but no luck. I did found a cat stove that I forgot in my stuff. They're that small and light. I used it for the rest of the trip.
This year, I brought both a canister and cat stoves. I used the canister stoves at first because yes, it's easy to use. Then I got in a town and the sporting good store was close. In the next town, a hardware store only had poke-through canisters but did have alcool. I switched stoves and told them to get screw-on canisters instead. The funny thing is when I used the canister stove, the tuna can was just a thing in my cookset. When I switched to the cat stove, the canister stove was an annoying thing in my cookset that served no purpose. I tried NOT to use a cat stove but it keeps coming back. BTUs don't say anything about that.