Our Lightest Cozy Yet

[Sarah Kirkconnell]

I made this as a joke this week for my friend/hiking partner/trail husband/gear addict Hoosierdaddy. He was complaining that one of our cozies was "too heavy" at 1.5 ounces. He felt that the pint cozies at 1.2 to 1.3 ounces was too heavy. Yes, I do roll my eyes at him ;-)

So I got playing around with the bolts of fabric stashed in the bins and came up with a minimalist cozy, in pint size (though it can hold a quart freezer bag, up to 1 1/2 cups water being added.). It is designed for a solo hiker.

The cozy weighs 0.8 of an ounce and the beauty of it? It retains between 5 and 10* degrees more heat than a standard version of our cozy, after 15 minutes time. Average was 7* degrees. (The regular version of the FBC cozy has a comparable heat retention to a Reflectix cozy for reference.)

I have taken them into production and will be making what I can till I run out of fabric.

I do believe this will be my cozy come this summer.

Or as I said to HD…if we can get lost we can use them to flash the SAR team with our sweet shiny silver cozies….

[Rand Lindsly]

Yea…I see a lot of talk here and on your FBook page….but don't see any on your website! Wanna trade a few for a Caldera setup? Pro-deal swap? I'll even buy it straight up if I could figure out how!!!!

Rand :-)

[Sarah Kirkconnell]

I am going to add them to the site hopefully tomorrow! :-)

Sure, email me! Lets talk swap. I like new gear ;-)

[Steve Cain]

Heh, heh, heh….see what a little motivational whining will get ya? Thinking outside the envelope is what UL is all about!

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Sarah

This cozy business puzzles me a bit.

I bring the water for our dinner for two to the boil, mix in the ingredients, simmer for 15 seconds to make sure, then put turn the stove off and leave the titanium pot sitting on the stove with a lid on it (of course) and a good windshield wrapped around it (of course) – in the vestibule of my tent. About 10 minutes later the dinner is fully rehydrated and ready to eat. But even after serving it out into two bowls for my wife and I, it is still too hot to eat immediately.

How would a cozy help?

Cheers

[Greg Mihalik]

Roger,
Perhaps it the volume/mass of the meal in the pot that helps maintain the heat.

When I "cook" for my wife and I, I pour hot water into Reflectix wrapped bowls (with lid) containing our dehydrated food and then let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes to rehydrate. The Reflectix cozy is absolutely necessary to maintain the heat.

By doing the boiling water into cozy or cup routine we can do hot drinks, soup, dinner, and desert sequentially without having to wash the pot in between. Just keep heating water. Insulated containers (cozys) make it work.

[Sarah Kirkconnell]

Why? Not everyone cooks in a pot. Cooking in the pot, then leaving a windscreen wrapped around the pot acts as a cozy in a sense – anything that blocks wind and loss of heat. That would be doing it one pot style.

If though one does FBC style meals or uses commercial meal packets a cozy is an essential. Whether one uses a dedicated cozy, a hat or a jacket is up to them.

I happen to like dedicated ones that I can toss in my Ursack at night.

[Greg Mihalik]

Sarah,
Will this new cozy material be available somewhere? It looks to have less volume than Reflectix, and if it is a better insulator I am interested in purchasing a few square feet.

Keep us posted.

Thanks.

[Sharon Bingham]

OOOH! Yes! Please do keep us posted – just went to try to order one, and couldn't find it… :)

[Jamie Shortt]

Roger, I too am a bit puzzled, but maybe for different reasons. Sometimes I get good rehydration and sometime I do not. As Greg points out volume might make up some of the difference. I'm making meals that require 1.5 cups (solo) and use dehydrated items mixed with ramen or instant rice usually. One other item that might make a difference is I'm using an alcohol stove and pouring into a freezer bag. I also suspect that your water is hotter as mine has stopped boiling or mine only approached the boiling point when it contacts the ingredients.

I have found that I get good rehydration when the water reached rapid boil, I immediately pour into the zip lock, and then I let stand wrapped in my Montbell Down UL jacket or wrapped in my fleece cap. If I dont touch for 15 minutes I get good dehydration. Of course this leaves a slight concerns for bears as I often sleep in this clothing.

If I dont wrap in something many times only get a mediocre rehydrate. So maybe a cozie is the answer for me I just dont want to add another item to my cook set.

Jamie

[scott burgeson]

I might be missing the question but the idea of a cozy is for cooking in the bag.

You heat your water, pour it in your bag and then wrap in a cozy. The food cooks in the bag and you eat it straight from there.

You don't have to clean a pot or bowl, just lick your spoon.

It takes longer for the food to cook because there is no simmering.

–scott

[Dan Cunningham]

Roger… a cozy wouldn't make much difference for you. :)

I did some tests in my kitchen today that relate to your question. I like hot coffee (not warm) and I use a GSI Cascadian cup, which doesn't have a lid and is single wall. I have a few of the Cascadian cups, so I lined up a test with them to see if it was worth it to make some sort of lid and cozy for it. I made a snug fitting relfectix cozy that ran around the outside wall, and I made a lid from a sour cream container that fit perfect (I even cut a drinking hole).

I boiled water and used an instant read thermometer every 5 minutes to see which offered the best bang for the buck at keeping my coffee hot over a 20 minute period. Conditions: starting temp 195°F, ambient temp 65°F with very light to non-existent breeze.

As you can see from my graph below, a lid+cozy on the mug worked best, but even just a lid makes a huge difference. In fact, after 10 minutes the cozy only added 7°F compared to the lid alone. After my test, I'm going to figure out how to make a good lid for it, but I won't bother with the neoprene cozy I was planning. Unfortunately the perfect fitting lid from the sour cream container is too flimsy and warps quickly when covering the hot water.

Bottom line, if you are rehydrating in a pot vs. dumping in to a bag, I don't think you probably need more than a lid. As it gets colder and windier, a cozy would start to make a bigger difference though.

This graph doesn't relate much to food in a freezer bag with no cozy vs. in a freezer bag with a cozy. I think in that situation, a cozy like the ones Sarah sells make a much bigger difference.

[Sarah Kirkconnell]

I will have the new cozy up on the website tonight – need to wait for the husband to shoot final photos.

Btw, on the size of the cozy, one of the reasons I make them of fabric rather than Relectix is the ability to roll them or scrunch them down. They take up a lot less pack space than the bubble ones do.

I am also waiting for a new shipment of fabric to get here as well! As soon as I get them on the site I will post an update :-)

Thank you for looking!!

[Mary D]

Roger, this type of cozy is for those of us to whom the idea of having to scrub a pot is anathema. I HATE washing dishes!

Sarah, this new cozy is definitely lighter and takes less space than my current homemade cozy constructed with pieces of old blue foam pad and duct tape! I'll be waiting for it to appear on your web site.

[Brad Groves]

Dan, that's what I'm talking about! Nicely done, thanks. I had come to similar conclusions, but never sat down to find out… gotta love BPL. I've been looking at the Evernew 400 mug that comes with a lid; the combo I have here weighs 70 grams, IIRC. The lid would also help prevent lip burn from the mug rim…

[Roger B]

Well done Dan

Your results certainly highlight the importance of a lid as well as a lid cozy. I will continue to use a cozy, but will ensure that the lid has a cozy as well.

Thanks

[Dan Cunningham]

Roger – I didn't use a lid cozy, just a lid and cozy. The lid was just the lid off a sour cream container – very thin plastic and nothing else. It's amazing how much of a difference even that made.

[Roger B]

Thanks Dan for the clarification. So then I wonder, can a cozy on the lid help even further?

[Robert Perkins]

I find that just using an empty, resealable Mountain House package makes a great cozy. The quart size freezer bags fit in it perfectly, they don't weigh much, and once you eat the contents…it's free!

[Jeff Jeff]

A padded mailer works nicely too. Doubles as a butt pad if you get a big one.

I've always used my hat for dehydated food in a bag (Enertia trail foods…freeze dried maybe?) or a blue foam one for my cook pot.

Shedding weight isn't always about carrying lots of UL branded gear. Sometimes it's about doing without. But that doesn't mean use your hat in aggressive bear country!

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Mary

> this type of cozy is for those of us to whom the idea of having to scrub a pot is anathema.

Scrub? Scrub????
With dried food meals of most any sort, all I have to do is rinse my Ti pot with warm water. No scrubbing EVER required.

In practice, because we like to watch our hygiene and because cheese, sausage etc does leave fats/oils on plates and knives, I warm up a little water, add maybe 5 drops of bio-degradable detergent, and rinse everything each night. Takes just a moment. Sue has a mini-teatowel to dry.

This may not work in bear country, I know.

Cheers

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Dan

My compliments: measurements! Far better than hand-waving.

Yes, I know (and knew), a lid beats anything else hollow. And as Sarah and others have said, if I am cooking in a pot with a lid and a windshield, I don't need a cozy.

But CYOM … :-)

Cheers

[Chris Chastain]

> In practice, because we like to watch our hygiene and because cheese, sausage etc does leave fats/oils on plates and knives, I warm up a little water, add maybe 5 drops of bio-degradable detergent, and rinse everything each night. Takes just a moment. Sue has a mini-teatowel to dry.

Sounds suspiciously similar to "doing dishes" to me.

Of course you know that cozys are used by those of us that package, rehydrate, and enjoy our meals in ziplock bags, using our very minimal (beer can?) cook systems for boiling water only. This allows a longer "cook time" required for the complete rehydration of meals that would normally require simmering or boiling to prepare properly (for instance meals containing beans) while still being hot when eaten, using minimal fuel. This also allows us to use our beer can pots to enjoy a hot drink from at the same time.

We don't need no stinkin' bio-degradable detergent (or a titanium pot) not to mention a second burn for wash water!

[Joe Geib]

I don't mean to sound like I jerk, or make any enemies, but I just wanted to say something about questioning/trivializing another user's technique.

To me, it sounds like Roger is poo-pooing Sarah's product/technique because it it not a technique that he employs in his own repertoire.

There, I said it… And this isn't the first time I've made this observation either.

Sarah, I love the FBC book and the cozies. It certainly works for me.

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