Originally Posted by
Trevtassie
Big fan now of gas stoves with a hose and a preheat tube. Much lower center of gravity, you can use a wrap around heat shield and you can invert the canister to feed liquid gas when it's cold. Plus if you are feeling economical you can use an adapter and those cheap horizontal butane cartridges.
Those look interesting. I can see a number of advantages over my old Pocket Rocket and a couple small disadvantages.
How easily available are the cheap butane cartridges when on the road? I know they are used by the food service industry and often sold by the 12 pack. Are they an every Walmart and Target kind of item? Can you easily find singles? Is the tare weight much more than the usual MSR and Jet Boil type canisters of a similar size? The 8oz. size is more than I'd typically carry on tour at a time, but it would mean not needing to buy fuel too frequently. It would last quite a lot longer than a 12oz. bottle of yellow Heet which is my usual fuel on tour. That is in part because butane has more btus per weight than alcohol and in part because there is more waste with alcohol due to having to guess how full to fill the stove for a cook inevitably leaving excess to burn off.