I need a stove! And I kind of need to stay on the low priced end.

I have Celiac disease and will probably be cooking most of my meals because it's hard to find restaurants that have a gluten free menu. Taking my disease into account, I will be cooking meals rather than boiling pasta--meat, fish, chicken, veggies, etc. I will be hitting grocery stores everyday.

I've been eying up the Trangia 27-3, but am wondering how well it'll work cooking what I described above. The MSR pocket rocket looks great, but I'm afraid of running out of fuel and not finding canisters. And the Coleman 533 seems perfect, but maybe too heavy it bulky?

My first real tour will be the GAP/C&O from DC to Pittsburgh. If I fall in love with touring, who knows where I may go? I'd love to ride around lake Erie!

I need to stay in the $100 range for the stove and cookware. I can go over a little, but not much.

Oh, I'll be using a BOB, not panniers.

I don't think canisters are as much of a problem to find as they once were. Walmart - as much as I hate to direct you to them - was carrying butane canisters last year. I found them in every HelMart I walked into from Colorado to Arkansas. Check several HelMarts near where you live (I'm sure there are a few hundred within 5 or so miles of you) to see if they are available around you. Chances are that you'll find similar availability elsewhere.

Alternatively, you can buy larger canisters of fuel from places like REI (not by mail) or you could carry multiples. I find that I go through roughly a canister a week on tour when cooking an evening meal and doing coffee in the morning.

Liquid fuel stoves like the MSR Whisperlite are also an alternative. Again HelMart sells smaller bottles of white gas and you can also run the Whisperlite on gasoline.

That has not been my experience. On the TA we didn't see one from Pueblo to Virginia (granted that was in 2007) and we stopped in lots of walmarts. Walmarts do not stock the same items in all geographic regions. There was a place in Carbondale IL, that had them, but they were closed when we passed through. Even when we did finally see them it was in a cyclist's "help yourself" pantry at a church that put kindly cyclists up near the KY/VA line.

I saw none at all on my 2009 tour and last year in the Sierras, near the Sierra Crest Trail pretty much the whole time, starting in San Diego and riding right out of town without looking, we first saw a canister in the park store in Yosemite well into the trip (day twenty something I think). Fortunately I also took a pop can stove and we found yellow bottle Heet just about everywhere we went. I'll concede that we were mostly in the boonies or small towns and didn't see many big stores.

Bottom line I have continued to be disappointed with the availability of butane canisters, but have found the pop can stove to be a good alternative.

I find that If I do take the Pocket Rocket it is worth also taking the pop can stove since it uses the same pot and windscreen and therefore adds less than an ounce to the load.

I tend to favor the Optimus Nova stove. It is a liquid gas stove that burns white gas/Coleman fuel, pump gas or diesel fuel. I usually run mine on Coleman fuel. It is compact, metal, has a metal pump and will actually simmer. That last item is rare in liquid fuel stoves. The down side is it is fairly expensive.
An alternative stove is the MSR Dragonfly. It is much like the Nova, but MSR uses a plastic pump.
https://www.rei.com/product/709002/msr-dragonfly-backpacking-stove

For pots, I have finally settled on a Evernew titanium pot and lid. For me by myself, I am happy with a 1.4 liter pot. When I go out with my wife, I need a bigger pot. I have the 2 liter pot for that. The lid can be used as a frying pan or plate. Both the pot and lid have built in handles. Both are also Teflon coated. By using the lid as a plate or bowl, I eliminate taking a separate plate or bowl. REI sells it under their name.
https://www.rei.com/product/764178/rei-ti-ware-nonstick-titanium-cookset

go to Zen backpacking stoves,a wealth of info also crazyguyonabike.com

+1 on the MSR Whisperlite. And forget the white gas, just fill it up on unleaded at any gas station.

I've been enjoying my Trangia, although it's only been used for maybe a dozen meals since I picked it up. Some of that has been boiling water for heat-and-eat meals, some frying of eggs and hot dogs. My biggest issue is that even with the simmer ring, I do not feel like I've successfully gotten a good, low-temp simmer out of it. It's either varying degrees of very hot, or it's off. Probably that comes with practice, which I haven't had much of. I just know that I'd like to cook my eggs a little slower some times.

I use the Clikstand, and it works great and packs small. My only problem there is finding a pot/fry pan that fits in the wind screen. Of course you don't necessarily need the windscreen all or most of the time, but I like having the option, and since I'm cooking for one, keeping my cookware small seemed reasonable. I found that the small set from the Bugaboo cookset fits in just right, although retrieving the fry pan is best done with some needle nose pliers. The part where you would attach the handle is partially blocked by the wind screen. I also use the Ketalist set (from GSI, as is the Bugaboo) with the windscreen, and it's a good fit.

All-in-all, I like the set-up for being small, simple, and low tech. As long as you can get your hands on some fuel, it's hard to see how this set up could be messed up.

Trangia 27 is a very reliable, stable, capable stove for real cooking. You can buy an optional gas burner to replace the alcohol burner.
I used one for 8 weeks cooking proper evening meals. The simmer ring takes some getting used to, I handled mine with some Leatherman pliers but once you get used to it, you can get a good low, even heat.
I found the whole setup pretty quick and convenient so that I would rustle up roadside lunches of noodles. When I get to camp, I fire up the stove (prefilled and carried with a small amount of fuel) then pitch my tent, then drink a mug of tea.

My most elaborate meal was a 3 course steak dinner. I cooked fish by poaching in water. I never cooked chicken but you could fry it in the base of a pot then add liquid stock/beer/wine to make a stew.

The disadvantages of Trangia are the alleged slow boil time, weight and low energy density of the fuel. None of these were a deal-breaker for me. I found I could leave the kettle to boil unattended and plastic fuel bottles weigh less than metal canisters or bottles.
The only mishap I experienced was with a new batch of fuel from a German hardware shop, it must have been leftover rocket fuel with a much higher purity than normal. The liquid in the burner boiled and flared but fortunately it was outside and no tent involved. Test your fuel before cooking anywhere near a tent. Concentrated fuel can be tamed by adding a few drops of water to the burner contents.
Once I extinguished the flame with the carrying lid. The rubber ring came off and I light it up again, destroying the ring. You cant carry fuel in the burner without the ring but you can get these as spares.


I met a vegan who used a vacuum flask to pre-soak lentils in hot water, you should think about carrying a flask as well.

The MSR Whisperlite is a very flexible option. It will burn pretty much anything--somewhere read it will even burn Everclear. But white gas and unleaded are certainly easy possibilities.

I have a Trangia and don't know why you would need anything else. You can find HEET at pretty much any car parts store and most grocery stores in my area carry it.
When backpacking my wife and I use the Pocket Rocket (we carry 2 canisters just to be safe) and the Trangia

One thing that has not been mentioned: since you are going to be doing more involved cooking--not just boiling water for dehydrated meals--the alcohol stoves MIGHT have a slight handicap. Since you can only put a fairly small amount of alcohol in them at a time you are more limited on cooking time than a canister or liquid fuel stove. You can always refill the alcohol stove and start it back up but you will need to give it a bit of time to cool down first. You don't want to run out of fire in the middle of some gourmet creation. (Yes, the canister or liquid gas stove will also run out of fuel eventually, but with the alcohol stove you are going be more limited on continuous cooking time.) You will need to assess if this is an actual handicap in your situation or not. If you are not going to need 15 minute cooking times then this is not a worry. If you do choose the alcohol stove, you should definitely try it out at home to see how long you can get one one fill of fuel.

We've had this discussion before. 2007 was a long time ago. I've had trouble finding them in 2003 and 2005 but if I can find butane canisters in Colby, Hays, Salina, Wichita KS and in Texarkanna, Mena, Hot Springs, and DeQueen AR, I doubt that anyone would have problems finding them in HelMarts PA and Maryland. That's why I suggested checking at local HelMarts before B.Alive selects a stove.

lightest and simplest is an Alcohol burning stove.
so basic , it's like a tray to burn the alcohol in.
you can make one from old soda cans.
abundant how to's on the web.

OTOH, I have used a MSR Dragonfly exclusively, on unleaded motor fuel.

You can cook with those , simmer rather than boil,
because it has a second needle valve on the burner head.

If you're keeping costs low, why not just make a few cat/soda stoves? The weight is so low that you could make several and not have a problem w/longer cooking times by having one ready in reserve.There was also a posting a bit back where someone made a decent wood-burning stove out of a coffee can.

I have a Trangia and really like it, but I'll also be carrying a coffee can, too.

Trangia uninterrupted cooking time is about 35 minutes. This includes some full-power but mostly simmering.
It takes about 1 minute for the burner to cool down to refill. Ideally you want it hand hot but I found I could refil at higher temperatures. If you refill at the flash point of alcohol, it can be dangerous BUT filling the burner full of fuel sucks a lot of heat out.

For sure the canisters are readily available here in the Baltimore area. Still, we were weeks into our 2010 Sierras tour before we found any canisters. I figured that on a route that fairly closely follows the Pacific Crest hiking trail they should be easy to find. As it was I was very glad I took the alcohol stove too and on hind sight I probably would have left the canister stove home. I maintain that it doesn't pay to rely on canisters being readily available everywhere.

For the tour that the B.Free is planning he can just take enough cartridges for the whole trip, so yeah for this trip it is a non issue.

FWIW, being aluminum and not much of it the pop can stoves cool really fast. Almost as quick as you get them out from under the pot they are cool enough.

One more vote for liquid multifuel (ie MSR Whisperlite / Optimus Nova / etc). I'm not sure why so many people are insisting on canister or alcohol solutions. Regardless of Walmart or any other retailer's current stocking policy, no one can possibly argue that canisters or bottled alcohol are easier to find than gas stations. Alcohol stoves have no output control, have low output, burn more fuel than hyrocarbon stoves, and do not work at altitude.

At what altitude do they stop working?

Less efficient, burn more fuel, yeah, but not working, doubtful.

That is just rhetoric and doesn't change the fact that alcohol is a poor fuel choice compared to the alternatives.

Alcohol stoves work well at altitude, and at all sorts of crazy temperatures, and on the whole are much more reliable. If you use a Super Cat or something of that nature, there really isn't anything to break. Most every gas station will also carry some fuel that works in an alcohol stove, be it rubbing alcohol, heet, or something else.

Everything else you said is true though, the 'simmer rings' are kludges at best, the fuel weighs enough to make up for the small weight of the stove in about a week, and the output is low enough to make anything but boiling water a bit of a chore.

If I'm doing a quick and light solo trip, alcohol stoves work fine, but if I'm going to be doing a lot of cooking, or taking along a partner who likes real food a canister stove is the better solution. I have a whisperlite, but I haven't used it, I can't imagine a circumstance where I'd be more than a week in between places to pick up a new canister. If I was doing an international tour, or maybe something where I had to melt snow for drinking water, I might break it out, but for the most part, the weight is excessive.

I've also found that all of my home made alcohol stoves of various designs seem to burn hotter and more efficiently than my Trangia burner.

I wasn't saying they were a better choice than the alternative, I was just dispelling your lie that they do not work at altitude.

Sure other stoves are more efficient, but I like the alcohol stove for quietness, ease of use, and the widely available fuel. For example, alcohol is supper easy to find anywhere in France, and cheaper than gasoline.

Anyway, this happens anytime there is a stove thread. People have their own preferences regardless of how available or efficient one fuel is over the other.

WOOO HOOO!!!!

I just cleaned an old desk off in my basement to move my truing stand to and found..... and old birthday card from my Dear Mom in it with a $50 bill!!! That up's the anti on the stove ;-)

I'm going to look at the Optimus Nova, MSR Whisper Lite mentioned above!!!

Thanks for all the help folks--ONCE AGAIN!

If you want the ultimate in flexibility, look at the Primus Omnifuel. It burns liquid fuels and canister fuels. It's a bit heavier and more expensive (>$100) but it's very nice for trips like yours. Use the canisters for convenience and switch to liquid out of necessity.

I personally own both canister and flex liquid fuel type stoves; both made by Coleman. I also like the MSR Pocket Rocket as well and had used it multiple times.
If you are afraid of running out of fuel, you need to figure out how long are you planning to tour and what will you be cooking? You also need a windscreen for your stove to conserve fuel when cooking, but most people I see on tours do not have one!
Do not use a big pot to cook as that too will waste fuel.

Before you go on this trip, develop a simple menu that you can cook and be ready to eat in less than half an hour and cook this at home using the pot you will be cooking with when you are on the trip! That's right. Most people waste fuel during the first week of the tour because they are so used to cooking in bigger pots and then waste time and fuel cooking with smaller pots. You also need to change the way you cook and prepare your meals on trips as well. Try this for a week before you go on the trip as this will become valuable predicting how much fuel you need to bring. On most of my 2 week camping trips, I use canister fuel as it is lighter, less messy and no need to clean and bring enough canisters to last me that long. For a week or less, I bring my alcohol stove. Anything longer than a month however, I use my Coleman flex fuel (white gas or unleaded gas) for the job.

I have several stoves include the Trangia... Other than some extreme climate conditions my preference is the Trangia. I can find the fuel just about anywhere and it will run for 20-30 minutes on one fill, which is enough to cook most things... It does need a good windscreen compared to some of the other stoves I have used. In short I would recommend one of the trangia cooksets.. I do suggest you practices cooking (and cleaning) at home to get a feel for the equipment before you try it in the field.