Pot Question. Short wide, tall skinny.

[P. Larson]

I need a new pot. I'm looking at titanium pots. From your experience, which size pot do you feel works better? A tall skinny pot or a short, wide pot?

As to what pots I am looking at, the MLD 850ml pot or a .9L pot from Evernew.

I use a Pocket Rocket as a stove.

[Bruce Tolley]

Are you cooking in the pot or just heating water?

If the former, the short, wide pot works better for me. If just heating water, you are better off with the lightest pot you can afford.

Titanium of course does not distribute the heat all that well.

I sometimes also use my 0.9 liter Evernew as my bowel.

[Eugene Smith]

"I sometimes also use my 0.9 liter Evernew as my bowel."

Very multipurpose of you.

@Paul,

Short and wide pairs well with a canister stove, there is usually a better flame distribution across more surface area than narrow upright pots paired with a canister stove. I think the .9L evernew UL wide pot is a good size and shape; it packs in higher volume boils (double serving dehydrated meals w/o overboils) and can handle light "cooking" inside the pot when you want to do more than boil water.

Guess it comes down to your cooking style and preference.

[P. Larson]

Thanks.

Eugene, off the subject, but after some tweaking and changing laces, I have a newfound love for my Brooks Cascadia 7's.

You still wearing the Pure Grit's?

[kevin smith]

+1 on the short and wide especially with the pocket rocket it works great with that setup also consider hard anodized or non stick as the pr produces a lot of heat
at the center of the burner

my favorite pot for the pocket rocket is the gsi hard anodized from the 5 piece mess kit works great and handles the heat well

i have mostly gone to alcohol stoves now but do use this setup on occasion and it works great

kevin

[Chris S]

I've wondered the same thing and it seems like everyone always favors the short wide pot. I'm not sure what the advantage of the tall, skinny pots are, but they seem to be widely available so there must be something I'm not thinking of.

[Bob Gross]

"I sometimes also use my 0.9 liter Evernew as my bowel."

That sounds painful.

–B.G.–

[John Donewar]

Bob,

Give the man a break!

It was only a passing remark. ;-)

Party On,

Newton

[Bob Gross]

Newton, you are becoming a PITA.

–B.G.–

[John Donewar]

Hey Bob,

Party On,

Newton

[Hikin’ Jim]

Short and wide is more stable on a PR, and you'll get better heating efficiency. With tall, skinny pots, a lot of the flame goes up the sides and is wasted.

Chris S wrote: > I've wondered the same thing and it seems like everyone always favors the short wide pot. I'm not sure what the advantage of the tall, skinny pots are, but they seem to be widely available so there must be something I'm not thinking of.

Taller pots pack a little easier, and for canister stoves it's nice to lay the stove down flat, put a canister on top, and then close it up with the lid. But you pay for it with lost efficiency, and taller pots are a bit tippy.

Evernew is making some really nice UL stuff these days. Their short, wide 0.9L and 1.3L pots are sort of my gold standard in that class of pots. I think Evernew far outshines Snow Peak in this area. And Snow Peak wants to put those dumb frying pan lids on everything which adds unnecessary weight and the frying pan's handle just gets in the way.

HJ
Adventures In Stoving

[Andy F]

"Evernew is making some really nice UL stuff these days. Their short, wide 0.9L and 1.3L pots are sort of my gold standard in that class of pots."

Definitely. I have the 0.6 L, and I really like it.

[Chris S]

Good point that they pack a little easier. My 700ml backcountry.com pot does pack into a nice tidy package with the canister stove, fuel canister and spoon.

[Hikin’ Jim]

Yeah, I think that's the main advantage: stacking and packing. You stack the stove and the canister inside the pot and then the tall, skinny pot slides along a sidewall of your pack fairly easily.

You pay for that packability in lost efficiency — unless you have something like a Caldera Cone from Trail Designs, a Snow Leopard from Flat Cat Gear, or a Jetboil. Those systems are integrated in such a fashion as to still be efficient even though they use tall pots. Absent an integrated system though, you're better off with short and wide.

HJ
Adventures In Stoving

[David Thomas]

There's also the amount of material you need in differently sized pots of the same volume. With all pots, more surface area is more weight, and with Ti, it's more expensive material, so that becomes a factor.

For an open-top container (no lid): surface area is minimized when height is about 50% of diameter. But who buys a pot without a lid? If you are doing more than melting snow, you want to reduce evaporative losses.

For an closed-top container (with lid): surface area is minimized when height is about 100% of diameter.

Wider than tall: better stove efficiency.
About as wide as tall: minimized surface area (i.e. minimized weight per volume).
Tall than wide: more packable. Probably more marketable (consider the 9:5, height:diameter of the universal soda can).

Caveat: these are the first-order effects. As you you go to extreme height or widths, you'd want to increase wall thickness to avoid dimpling and "oil canning" – something that is easy to observe in the sidewalls of a 12 ounce / 335cc soda-pop can. Hienekein cans are so popular in part because their ridges minimize wall flex without the weight penalty of thicker walls.

The SULer's wet dream: a ridged, shallow, wide, Ti pot with flux-ring-style HX on the bottom and foam-core, vacuum-bagged, high-temp composite lid.

And remember: blindly pursuing reductions in base weight can leave you will a fuel-inefficient scheme. Maybe you don't count fuel in your base weight, but you do carry it on your back.

Editted for a typo.

[Mike W]

I'm a fan of tall skinny pots. I find packing wide pots to be a real pain. I've done the research and real life testing and definitely, you lose fuel efficiency however there are "space saving pros" with the tall pots.

I really like to save on pack space and my tall pot makes for very efficient use of the available space (even fits in my bottle pocket on my pack). My Snowpeak Ti Mini Solo will carry 2 small gas cans inside the pot (with the lid on) or one can with my stove wrapped in a small pack towel. The set comes with a Ti cup that nests on the bottom of the pot so my cup basically takes up no extra pack room (I really like that!). I also simmer my meals with my Ti cup on the bottom of the pot to prevent burning (as mentioned above, titanium distributes heat rather badly). This does a great job of distributing the heat however, it also impacts fuel efficiency (but a good trade-off IMO).

I also like the tall pot if I'm just taking the pot (without the cup) because the tall thin pot makes a great cup. The tall thin shape keeps hot drinks warmer for a longer time than a wider pot.

[Stuart R]

HJ wrote: "Short and wide is more stable on a PR "

I would say that short and wide is LESS stable on a Pocket Rocket.

Reason: the PR pot supports have a narrow diameter, put a wide pot on top and if the pot is not centred on the pot supports, the pot will tip over. A wide pot obscures the pot supports from view, making it harder to centre the pot.

For a wide pot to be stable, you need a stove with pot supports that have a diameter similar (or larger) to that of the pot. The limit for a PR is a pot diameter of ~5"

[Michael Schwartz]

I know from experience that a tall skinny pot is slower/less efficient than a short wide pot, but has anyone done a comparison in terms of boil time differences and/or fuel consumption. Roughly are we talking about a 10%, 20%, 30% .. difference? How much extra fuel must be carried to achieve the same amount of boiled water? Anyone know where this info may be available?

[David Thomas]

Micheal: I tested several different aspect ratios in the same thickness SS pots two months ago. It was ballpark 15% better in the wide pot. So you can subtract 15% (1/7) from your fuel weight.

For a weekend trip: width doesn't matter enough, HX fins don't matter enough, pots color gives you payback but is minor – just bring a bit more fuel.

But for a week+, or multiple people using the same pot: go wider, HX fins, a tight lid, paint the bottom, have a good wind screen.

[Inaki Diaz de Etura]

did you take into account flame power? A wide vs. narrow burner, medium/low vs. full throttle, all those would influence differently fuel consumption regarding pot diameter.

To narrow things down, I'd set a small burner and medium/low fire as most typical conditions for the solo backpacker.

[Hikin’ Jim]

David Thomas wrote: > I tested several different aspect ratios in the same thickness SS pots two months ago. It was ballpark 15% better in the wide pot. So you can subtract 15% (1/7) from your fuel weight.

Interesting. I knew from experience that wider was generally better, but it's nice to put some numbers to that.

David Thomas wrote: > …go wider, HX fins, a tight lid, paint the bottom, have a good wind screen.

I might add, "use a moderate flame" to that list.

Do you think painting the bottom is even worth it? It seems the return on you effort would be so low, yes? Maybe over time, but would it even matter on, say, a two week trip with two people?

Of all the recommendations, I think perhaps the windscreen and sizing the pot appropriately to the burner are the most critical.

HJ
Adventures In Stoving

[David Thomas]

Inaki: I didn't vary burner output in my tests – I kept it constant for all pot sizes. I don't have data to back it up, but a pretty good gut-level engineering sense that just as medium flame is better than high flame for any pot, low-medium is better for a more narrow pot.

Hikin' Jim: The painted bottom is the one immediate payback. A few grams extra weight and you save that much fuel on a 2-day trip. There was a modest but definite benefit when I tested 6 stoves and 6 pots (rotating them around) some unpainted and others painted various colors. Colors didn't matter – all paint seems black in IR, but paint helped take 10-20 seconds off of 7-minute boil times (1000 grams water, no HX fins).

[Robert Kelly]

"Evernew is making some really nice UL stuff these days. Their short, wide 0.9L and 1.3L pots are sort of my gold standard in that class of pots. I think Evernew far outshines Snow Peak in this area. And Snow Peak wants to put those dumb frying pan lids on everything which adds unnecessary weight and the frying pan's handle just gets in the way."

+1 for ti pots. If you want a pot you'll probably like as well, much cheaper, and aluminum (actually heats better than ti, I believe), get a Stanco greasepot, AKA a "K-Mart" greasepot. It's just a little bigger than the the 900 cc Evernew. Perfect for big meals for one or 4 cups of water.

[Stuart R]

James did some testing of wide vs narrow pots here.

He found a 5.5" dia. pot used ~20% less fuel than a 3.6" dia. pot.

[Hikin’ Jim]

He found a 5.5" dia. pot used ~20% less fuel than a 3.6" dia. pot.

Interesting. That number is in line with David Thomas' finding of ~17%.

HJ
Adventures In Stoving

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