How much butane fuel do I need?

I would feel confident taking a 220 gram canister with that description.

Like you I cook for all three meals and have a hot drink as well. One ounce per day has always worked out fine. This also jives exactly with the previous posters recommendation of a 220 g (8 ounce) cannister.

One large butane canister d@mn well better work B/C that's what I'm carrying on a 5 day PCT hike in the southern Sierra Nevada next Sunday.

Plus I have to take my monster Dana Designs Terraplane pack since my bear canister won't fit in or on my nice, light REI Cruise UL 60 L. pack.

Plus a can of bear spray. ARRrrgggghh!! Those pesky black bears.

Good thing everything else is UL.

Eric

Thanks for the reply, but this is for two people and not just me.

Be careful with the reply. An MSR canister has the following label:

net weight: 4 fl oz./ 113g
gross weight: 8 oz./ 231g

So, is it the gross weight, or the fluid weight that should be answer?

My experience (measurements) indicate that each cup of water brought to a boil in the backcountry demands approximately 4.5g of canister fuel. So, I understand that you intend to boil primate 30 cups (in aggregate, but not sure what "cup of coffee" exactly means to you). This means you will need more than a 110g canister, but should be fine with a 220g or 2 110g canisters.

Enjoy…

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:Vi7Og3ZrWDIJ:www.jetboil.com/faqs+how+much+gram+of+butane+canister+fuel+need+to+boil+1+cup+of+water&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

This site shows that 100g canister can boil 10 liters which equals to about 40 cups which is exactly what I need to boil.

So then why are you asking us? ;)

Tae Kim wrote:
"This site shows that 100g canister can boil 10 liters which equals to about 40 cups which is exactly what I need to boil."

But are you actually using a Jetboil? You didn't mention the brand of stove in your original post. A Jetboil is more efficient than than most other stoves, so unless that's what your using you could easily run short.

ah… i didn't know Jetboil was different than other butane canister.

Is Jetboil only efficient when using with Jetboil cooking stove, pots and etc… or are they just more efficiently made butane canister?

A Jetboil stove is an integrated system. The stove and pot are specifically made for each other and are coupled together with a proprietary windscreen/heat exchanger thinga-ma-bobber. They claim this greatly improves its fuel efficiency and testing here at BPL proved this a while back. It's especially effective in windy conditions. What they found, IIRC, was that the efficiency of conventional canister stoves, even when using a windscreen, drops significantly in windy conditions where as the Jetboil's performance was almost unaffected. The benefits were less stellar in calm conditions. On the page you linked to earlier Jetboil claims its stove is up to twice as efficient as other stoves. That's probably exaggerated but there's no question it is more efficient to some degree. However, weighing in at over 15ozs (not counting fuel), the Jetboil is a heavy beast and for that reason you will not see it on many ultralighter gear lists. I don't own one and can't imagine I ever will. As an aside, Jetboil is no longer alone in the integrated stove niche as they have competition now from MSR and I think one other company whose name escapes me at the moment.
G

for your detailed description of what I didn't know…. I remember looking at the weight before and found it to be very heavy.

The fuel canisters are all about the same. It's not the canister that matters; it's the stove that determines how much fuel you'll need.

I recently did a 5 day hike in Sequoia National Park. With a JetBoil stove, we (3 people) used less than half of a 220g canister. However, we did not have hot lunches, and two of our breakfasts were cold. Still, a 220g canister (or 200g or 230g or 250g, something in the 200g range in other words), should be plenty for 2 people for 5 days.