esbit vs. alcohol?

[Roland]

I’m sure this was already mentioned somewhere before and I apologize for not finding it…but here’s my question
how much longer does it take to boil a 20fl oz of water with esbit compared alcohol? Of course with windshield, foil and at “normal” conditions meaning below treeline, 3 seasons….
(sorry not a native english speaker)
Thank you very much

[David Lewis]

It depends on the alcohol stove you are comparing it to… but in my experience (with a mogo firefly), Esbit is faster and burns longer and hotter… I also find it significantly easier to deal with… no fussing with alcohol, priming, spills, etc.

My firefly always took close to 10 mins. to boil 2 cups… and it only burns for 11 mins… so really no room for error. I would say that about 80% of the time, the stove would flame out before reaching a boil. To be fair, it is a tiny stove and it was designed with one thing in mind… lightweight. Other stoves boil much faster.

Regardless though, I’m 100% sold on Esbit. I just find alcohol to be a pain… messy (i.e. spills), slow and unreliable. By the way, Esbit apparently has almost the same BTU’s as propane.

[D G]

for 16oz of water the boil times I get are typically about 6 minutes. I don’t generally boil 20 oz but if I recall the Ultralight Outfitter Beercan pot/stove system sold on this site took about 8 minutes to boil 20 oz.

Alcohol stoves really vary. Some are quicker and some slower than ESBIT.

[Vick Hines]

This discussion points up the need to have a useful decision matrix – not just for stoves, but for all our gear decisions.

Unless I can figure out how to download a working Excell spreadsheet to this site, you are on your own. It isn’t hard; the matrix is just a 2 dimensional grid. Say, columns for the different types of stoves and rows for the various measures you think are important in considering a stove: stove weight, fuel weight, power, reliability/durability, aesthetics, simmer capability, cost…. whatever. Give each factor a ranking from 1 to 5, from least important TO YOU to most important. Multiply that rank by your closest estimate of the stove’s objective performance for each criterion. For example, if you think stove failure is unacceptable, reliability/durability would rank 5. Objectively, solid hexamine (Esbit) is absolutely reliable. It can’t break. So it gets a 5, and 5×5 = 25, so hex ranks 25. White gas stoves can fail in lots of ways, so they get a 2 (just my guess; use what YOU think is right). 5×2 = 10, white gas’s rank. And so on. Add up the rankings to get a total comparison.

Decision matrices work for groups, too. You can get weighted average rankings from a group of users and come up with pretty accurate comparisons. It would be fun if we could do that on this site.

Ideas, anyone?

[Joshua Mitchell]

Vick,
Familiar with that two-column setup. It was part of a project management class I just took. We used it when we got to Risk Management.
Great tool, for Risk Management nice insight on usign it for gear selection.

If you want to email me (j d m i t c h A T g m a i l D O T c o m) that xls, I can get it posted.

Or, to post, you need to have the spreadsheet ‘hosted’ on a different site, then you have to use hyperlinks to link to it.

[John Chan]

I have a similar question. I’m trying out (for the first time) an Esbit cook system for the winter months when I expect to have potable water in the LIQUID phase (bottle parka on 1 L nalgene) on short excursions from a winter base-camp. What attracted me to the Esbit fuel was the potential of 0 priming times (as opposed to liquid or gaseous fuels) that would rob the system of fuel efficiency. My only concern is the sensitivity to wind but hopefully that will be rectified with a properly designed windscreen.

So winter campers who have tried Esbit… am I completely off?

TIA.

[Richard Matthews]

John,

I often use an Esbit stove while nordic skiing. In deep snow you can dig a very good wind screen. Makes a good hot cuppa, but not adequate to melt snow.

[John Chan]

I found this link off of Sgt. Rock’s site.

http://66.39.74.171/cgi-bin/archives/2000/geartalk-20/config.pl?read=8233

Seems like a thorough dissertation on the pros & cons of Esbit (hexamine).

Cheers,

[Steven Miller]

My Esbit stove uses 1/2 oz of Esbit to boil a pint of water compared to my alcohol stove using 3/4 of an ounce of alcohol . A clear weight advantage for Esbit; until I remembered that an ounce of alcohol (by volume) weighs about .8 ounce. Just a reminder for other folks who may have forgoten the distinction.

Steve

[Author]

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