Which alcohol stove?

Weird, I have almost the exact same question. Just need a stove that can boil a couple cups of water. I'll be interested to read the responses.

-Dave

I'm a fan of the Zelph's Starlyte.

I just went through the same thing. Ended up with a Gram Weenie Pro and love it. Here are some pics of the set up. Works perfect for boiling 2 cups of water.

My goal was to put together a little cooking kit that could boil 2 cups of water but be under 8oz. As for the mug I settled on a Tibetan Titanium 450ml Ti mug. It has no lid and folding handles. I made wind screens out of .009 Ti foil from Ti Goat. I used tin foil for a lid and added a folding Ti spork to round it out. Fuel bottle was the 2oz that comes with the kit. I have since replaced it with a shorter bottle so it would all fit in cup better. Weight also included 2 strike anywhere matches and the prime pan.

Conditions: Temp 28F Wind 5Kts Water Temp 35 Degrees Alt 4500ft

Gram Weenie Pro burned 1oz Denatured Alcohol, 2 min prime, 7 minute boil for 2 cups of water, held boil for 11 minutes before running out of fuel. Total burn time 20 minutes on 1 oz of fuel.

I haven’t messed with it much since the weather has improved but I was impressed with the little stove. The only other stove I have experience with is the Vargo Triad which I wasn’t impressed with.

The Starlyte seems to be what i'm looking for.

I looked at the Gram Weenie Pro, but thought most of the flame from a side burner would be wasted on a narrow pot. I think the Pro is 2.25" dia? It looks from the photo as if a lot of heat has went into the windscreen, going by the scorch mark?

I really like the White Box stove for our family. Bill has come out with a solo version too.

I made my own from a small can of V8. It looks like heck but it works perfectly. Give making your own a try. The satisfaction of being crafty with your trash is worth it.

Actually all the flames hit the bottom of the mug. The windscreen got scorched from the Vargo Triad I had compared to the gram weenie pro. The vargo needed a much larger windscreen to keep it from over priming and becoming a flame thrower.

the GW is 1.75 inches in diameter.

I can post some pics if you like later today.

Anyone have a trusted source for instructions on making your own? I'd like to give it a try but have a propensity towards injury even if I'm just blowing up a balloon.

http://zenstoves.net/

It has probably the best info online on how build your own stoves.

Jim Wood's SuperCat Alcohol stoves are easy to make w/ online directions and work well…..
I do like the look of the Zelph though….

I got my instructions from zenstoves. I made one of the low pressure side burners since it seemed to require the least amount of finesse. And instead of cutting a perfect hole in the bottom of a second can and pressing that into the top of my stove, I just used the top of the can with the drinking hole. Looks silly but it works.

Thanks for the replies folks. I know about 'Zen stoves', great site.
I've got the one that came with my Caldera Cone, and i've made a simple open burner.
The gear freak in me likes to own a few more professional looking stoves as well though! :)

IMHO, these throw too big of a flame pattern for a 3" mug. But I do like the White box stove for my .9L pot…..simple, rugged, light and fuel efficient for 2.

Brian J.

I have just finished doing some tests on Zelphs Starlyte stove and I have found it to be a nice little easy to use efficient stove, I hope to be posting a review of the Starlyte soon. I really liked the fact that I could not make the fuel spill from it, this is a great safety feature.

Tony

Caution do not try doing this with any other alcohol stove

I'm also a naughty boy who cooks in his tent Tony. :)

I had to buy a Brasslite the other day when they were on sale. A little heavier, but what a solid stove.

I really like MBD BIOS side burner stove (comparable to Zelph’s Cobalt), but its flame pattern is too big for a 3” mug. Plus, I think top burners usually work better for small diameter mugs. I made a regular size penny stove from a large Heine can and one made from a Mini Bull can, which would be appropriate for smaller size mugs. They were real easy to make top burners. Some people find them fickle and don’t like the penny regulator, but I didn’t have any problems. MBD Choke Hazard, Gnome and Voodoo (all top burners) are interesting stoves that look like they would work for that size mug though I can’t testify about their performance.

Just out of curiosity – if you are talking about a 3in dia. mug then you are talking small quantities of water. So, why an alcohol stove? Why not switch over to Esbit for a small capacity mug with a 3” dia.? Designed for 2 cups of water. Simple. Reliable. Lightweight. Some don’t like them because of the residue or the have environmental constraints like excess wind, low temperatures or altitude that can really reduce Esbit performance. Eh?

The Super Gram Weenie is narrower than the Gram Weenie Pro. There is another thread a couple of weeks old about this new stove now being sold by End2End and is the first successful solution I have experienced for efficiently heating water with narrow pots such as the Firelite 550 and the Heineken can.

Eric: if you tie a piece of wick around the stove just below the jets, the prime time will be reduced to immediate. This tip came from Jason Klass’s web site and works great for these little stoves.

Notice how narrow the stove is in relation to this small 550 pot. It holds at least 3/4 of an ounce and throws good flame pattern in proportion to the size of the pot.

Thread, please don't die.

I would really like to hear more about what the best performing stoves are, from other user's experiences. I recently purchased 2 from minibull designs and look forward to testing them out. One is designed to work in the beercan stove kit, the other has a feeder tube kit for 'unlimited' run-time I suppose. I would like to find one that would work well for group cooking, if possible. Has anyone cooked for a group using alcohol?

Also, has anyone here (or do you know anyone who has) distilled their own alcohol at home yet for fuel purposes?

FWIW: I recently picked up an MBD Atomic. I had been using just a catfood can with two rows of hole puncher holes along the rim. The cat stove is faster, simpler to fill, doesn't require a pot stand, and is a breeze to light, but the MBD Atomic is a miser on alcohol.

To me, the "miserly" stove is the one to go with even though it takes some fiddling to fill it and get it to light. The cat stove, being less efficient, means I have to carry more fuel than I do with my Atomic. The weight of the additional fuel required for the less efficient stove far outweighs the slight weight disadvantage of the Atomic + pot stand. Whether or not the add'l hassle is worth it is a matter of individual taste.

For a group, though, it's hard for me to imagine using an alcohol stove. I normally just bring a propane/isobutane canister stove. A canister stove can heat a lot of water quickly for freeze dried meals, tea, etc. The amount of time to boil water with an alcohol stove for a group would be a hassle, and the amount of fuel required would generally wind up being heavier than just carrying a canister stove with its far more eneregetic (in terms of BTU's per gram) fuel.

Just some thoughts.

Thanks for the heads up. What kind of material is that wick?

https://www.firemecca.com/c-40-rope-wick.aspx

Sweet thanks!

I'm with Jim on using a stove that is miserly with the fuel. I've used Tinny's stoves from minibull design, the gramweenie, and zelph's starlyte. I've made cat, super cat, tealight, penny stoves and designed my own. I finally bought a Caldera Cone System and found what I was looking for.

15ml (1/2oz) of denatured ethanol to heat 500ml (2 cups) of 15.5 C (60 F) water to rolling boil in under 5 minutes for my 1.3 liter pot (takes 6.5 minutes for the Caldera Keg).

Top loader stove, non pressurized so no screws to mess with, easy fill. The cone is the pot support and wind screen. No fiddle factor. Add alcohol, light stove. set the pot in the cone and place it over the stove and forget about it. Stable, nearly windproof, consistent, works at altitude. Each cone is tuned to a particular pot.

Rand of TrailDesigns says their engineers did literally 100s of test of different stove designs to get the best one for their system. They tested them at sea level and at 3000 m (10,000 ft).

See this recent thread:

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=20807

Their 12-10 stove is specially designed to work in the low oxygen and increased heat of the cone. I would guess there is a lot more engineering in the Caldera systems than in any other alcohol stove. It is definitely higher tech than anyone else is offering including Tinny's new line.

That said, I would still suggest you try several types of stoves, make some yourself, too. And then get a Caldera Cone System.

-Mark

(I have no affiliation with TrailDesigns other than satisfied customer)