Evaluating what stoves to use for what lengths of trips

[Harald Hope]

Bob, do you have a rough feel for the efficiency re snow melting of the msr type stove?

ie, how many ounces fuel to create x cups water?

I'm working up the whisperlight chart now, and it's not nearly as bad as I thought. By the way, the old 32 oz aluminum fuel bottles weigh LESS than the new 20oz steel ones. Some sigg bottles fit, but you have to be certain it's the same threading. I am using 7oz aluminum, 20oz steel msr, and 32 oz aluminum msr for the fuel bottle weights. However, the 20oz bottle takes you to 17 nights.

If I spent the same time creating a custom fit and air gapped wind screen for the whisperlight I did for the ion, I have little doubt that I can hit 10gm efficiency with white gas fuel.

ie, a bit better than alcohol, but massively hotter.

Early results are in, the msr whisperlight is no more a 'dinosaur' than a remote canister stove, it's quite similar re starting weights for shorter trips, and for very long trips, or trips where you boil a lot of water (54 2 cup boil equivalent). When I add in the 60-100 extra grams or so for a remote canister stove, and subtract the heavier original msr windscreen, the weights are basically the same for those two systems if you start with a 220 gm canister, and not all that far off with a 100 gm. It's too bad msr is kind of conservative with this stuff, if they did a ti ul version of their stoves with aluminum fuel bottles, they are really not all that far off.

[Harald Hope]

I've added a second table (under the first one, day 1-14) for larger consumption numbers, while still using 4 cups per day, I break it to 14/16/18/20/22/24/26/28 days, which is the capacity of basically the 32 oz MSR white gas bottle or the 450gm canister.

Roger should probably re-evaluate his views on white gas, the numbers do not support them particularly well for large volume usage, if you are doing snow camping, and use a remote canister stove, between 146 and 200gm, there is in many cases virtually no difference in weight between the carrying weight of a white gas and canister stove, sad but true, that's because the canisters are just so heavy that they get rid of any actual edge you might gain. A 32 oz aluminum fuel bottle weighs 113 grams, if the numbers I got online are right, a 450gm canister container weighs about 250 grams.

Also, of course, you can use plastic bottles to carry more white gas fuel, and this is of course why Bob noted everyone at the alpine camp used white gas stoves. Plus white gas doesn't freeze or have other cold issues particularly, it's kind of a no brainer I'd say if you have the white gas setup already.

It's interesting however seeing the actual numbers as they roll off my calculator. Since the most likely time you'd be using very large cartridges or white gas is for either snow melting or very large volume water boiling/cooking, as you can see, it's basically a toss up which you bring, it could literally depend on if you have a partially empty canister or not to fill out the days. Seems like a big pain to me, liquid fuel is so much more convenient, but each to their own.

Here's what it would look like on a 10 day trip with 8 cup a day boils. IS is ion stove, PS is penny stove, 45C is a 450 gm canister top mount setup, W32 is whisperlight white gas with 32 oz bottle.

day/night 1 7 8 9 10
9 – IS 551 239 191 143 95
9 – PS 713 297 233 169 105
9 – 45C 810 602 570 538 506
9 – W32 944 632 584 536 488

slightly more starting weight for white gas, return weight is about the same. Hardly worth changing anything in your setup I'd say. And that's not a remote canister stove, if you add those 80 grams, there's essentially no difference at all. Live and learn.

Note also that if you do longer boils, the actual fuel required in white gas is less because you lose less to priming, so these numbers would actually be a bit better for W32 for 4 cup boils or snow melting, ie, you'd need less than the fuel amount per day I estimated, which might actually bring the numbers between a 450 gm canister and white gas basically to being equal, or even better for white gas. Keep your whisperlights, your xgk's, etc, these are good stoves and the canister stuff doesn't offer much improvement that I can see for more heavy duty use.

[Bob Gross]

"Bob, do you have a rough feel for the efficiency re snow melting of the msr type stove?
ie, how many ounces fuel to create x cups water? "

I have no current numbers.

This will sound strange, but I used to estimate the amount of white gas to carry on a trip by time. One liter of white gas made a minimum of four hours of full flame on my XGK. It would be longer for less than full flame. As was mentioned earlier, when you do a snow camping trip and have to melt snow for drinking water, you double the amount of white gas to carry as compared to no snow melting.

–B.G.–

[Harald Hope]

I just retested whisperlite white gas on a 4 cup boil to more closely emulate what you'd use it for, and the fuel consumed was only 18.2 grams, as opposed to the 24 I'd been using as my first guess, and the 11×2 that the bpl table would have suggested. And I also turned it off too late so that included an about 2 minute boil after the full boil was hit as the fuel in the lines burned. 6 minutes to boil plus 2 minutes of boiling. In other words, the gram efficiency of the white gas is the same as canister gas, and that's not using an optimized wind / heat screen.

So I'd say you could do a 4cup, 70F start temp, boil using about 16 grams white gas, or so. But I'll call it 18 for now.

That's an improvement of 25% over the two cup boil. This makes the canister basically lose once the starting fuel weights are large enough, particularly with the added weight of a remote canister stove, which weighs between 145 and 200 grams from what I have seen for the kinds you'd use in snow camping, ie, where you can turn the canister upside down.

Bob, it doesn't sound strange, that's how I always used mine too, for cooking fully meals, no cozy, I needed about 40 minutes a day burn, for 9 days that was about 360 minutes. or 6 hours, or a 32 oz bottle.

The more I look at canister stoves, the worse they look, but that's not really a surprise to me, liquid is just a better way to carry energy than gas, that's why we generally use it in our cars, that wasn't an accident, the weight required to carry compressed gases is significant.

I'm going to update the chart, because unless you are boiling more than 2 cups per meal, there's not a lot of reason to bring a white gas stove. I knew the test data I'd found online was bad for stoves in general, but this type of example shows just how bad.

If it's a simple doubling of quantity, that would mean that melting it takes the same rough energy as boiling it, which sounds about right to me.

[Bob Gross]

Harald, now you have to sell this whole concept to Roger Caffin. Good luck.

–B.G.–

[Harald Hope]

maybe the white gas stoves are too complicated for him to operate, no idea, but I approached this as Richard Feynman suggests in 'The pleasure of Finding things out", ie, do not assume you know, allow doubt, reject certainty, do not accept bad test results, do not attempt to prove things to confirm your existing bias. Allow the data to guide your inquiry. Having opinions is fine as long as you don't forget that they are an opinion, not a fact. I believe engineers in general are more prone to opinions than scientists, it's easier to just do stuff in engineering then see if it works, I can see the difference. Feynman also reminds us to never listen to 'experts', that's a direct quote from him, and this is why you don't, experts get lazy and stop testing, because they are experts. I'm not an expert so I tested this stuff, and the results are pretty clear.

I only did the whisperlight for old times sake, but the fact is, if you compare a reversible remote canister setup with a whisperlight, particularly where you will use it a long time per day, the whisperlight is equal at least, maybe superior, but definitely almost the same weight, except you are not bound to silly fuel canisters that you cannot fill out of other fuel containers, meaning you need that heavy metal shell for each and every gram of your gaseous fuel.

I did not expect the white gas to be even remotely in the ballpark of alcohol, and it's not, particularly if you use the pounds/mile metric for weight, ie, what you actually carry over the trip miles, beginning to end.

What surprised me here was just how good whisperlight is compared to gas, plus of course, this is liquid fuel and no worries about the cold etc. When you add remote canister, the small weight advantage of canister stoves vanishes for large boil/melt amounts, that's a fact, and you can discover this fact in about 3 test runs of your stove. And, as you noted, you do get a bit better efficiency with practice on the whisperlight type stove. For a 3 night/4 day trip to the snow melting and boiling 8 cups a day, the 15 night/16 day number I list should be close to the consumption.


day/night 1 14 16
15 – IS 455 143 95
15 – PS 560 169 105
15 – 45C 810 602 570
15 – WW32 848 536 488
15 – 4WW32 758 524 488


As you can see, the 4WW32 yields better start and end weight than the 450 gm canister setup, particularly since you'd be using a 100 gram heavier burner probably for the remote canister to melt snow in the snow. Dinosaur, lol, yeah, right, more like a bird that's very well evolved. Good designs are good designs. The svea 123 is I believe also still a good stove.

That's why it's fun to poke at these things now and then, I'd never done an actual efficiency/consumption test on my whisperlight, nor had I ever used alcohol stove type boil then turn off methods, so this is not bad at all. You do only get the really good white gas efficiency when you cook for more than one, or with snow melting from these initial tests however, I guess for 6 cups it would be a touch better still, probably I'd guess around 26 grams or so. Gas and alcohol should burn fairly consistently, ie, 1 gram fuel heats x gm water, as long as the stoves are made right. Certain alcohol stoves are prone to the 'warm then boil too fast and burn inefficiently then peter out' type performance, but the right design gets rid of that problem. Gas burners just turn the gas on and off, so I assume you can take their efficiency and just multiply or divide by 2 or whatever.

I'm actually impressed by the white gas, I was not expecting that, but it figures, some designs and ideas are just very good, and they don't really stop being good just because people want the next trinket to buy, even when it isn't even actually any better.

[Piney]

Harold, you should include esbit as it bests any other system in terms of carry weight, trumps alcohol in boil times and efficiency, and very nearly matches canister stoves in efficiency. To use my two systems as an example:

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=75650

The system weight is 42 grams (cone, esbit burner, foil ground shield, tyvek cup and ziplock.) There is no weight penalty for longer trips. It will boil two cups of cold tap water plus a dissolved ice cube using 9 grams of esbit. That's a conservative number, it has done better on occasion.

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=76137

System weight is 38 grams (windscreen, esbit burner, foil ground shield, rubber band, ziplock.) It will also boil 2 cups cold tap water plus a dissolved ice cube using 9 grams of esbit.

These systems can also be used to simmer with a very simple and very light change or addition to the burner.

[Harald Hope]

Re esbit, I still do not have enough information. What I need is real world consumption for 2×2 cups 70F water over days, ie, how many tabs used per day/2 cup boil, weight per tab, etc.

esbit strikes me as being a bit more awkward with varying water temps since you basically have to know how many tabs/parts of tabs to use for 70f, 60f, 50f, 40f water. With alcohol you just squirt in a little more for colder water, with gas you leave the burner on a little longer, as with white gas.

In other words, on a real multiday trip, how do you really do it? Ie, 1.5 tabs for 2 cups?

Steven Evans
(Steve_Evans) – MLife

Locale: Canada
Re: Coghlans "Esbit" Tabs — Weight? on 01/25/2011 16:09:22 MST Reply Report Post Print View

I use the Coghlan's tablets religiously. Each round tablet weighs 6.5 grams. I get 2 cups of water to just boil on 2 tablets. A box of 24 costs me about $5.99 at the local "Canadian Tire".

I used to use Esbit (the 14 gram tablets) but they were more expensive, harder to get, and I didn't notice a performance difference. Hope that helps.

John S
(jshann) – F
Re: Coghlans "Esbit" Tabs — Weight? on 01/25/2011 16:56:15 MST Reply Report Post Print View

Square esbit sold in US is about 14 grams per tablet. bpl solid fuel weights

Not all the data required, but if it's correct that 13-14 gm are required, that's not particularly different from SLX. I'll add esbit as soon as there's some agreement on realworld consumption for 70f 2 cup boils, has to be the same numbers as the other tests use. Personally I use 2.5 cups for morning and 2 or so for evening, though I don't boil the 2.5 completely before taking the tea water out. I've noted some people, particularly the canister users, have adapted to the shortcomings of their stoves / consumption by boiling less water.

The efficiency of gas stoves doesn't appear to be all that good to my eyes, ie, good alcohol stoves burn alcohol with about 55% efficiency, great ones, 60%, average ones, 50% or so. I haven't worked out the gas canister efficiencies, but I doubt it's better than that. I'd have to figure out the kjoules per gram for gas to really know. From what I read, the fuel in esbit is a touch more energy dense than ethanol, something like 13 vs 12 for ethanol and 9 for methanol, SLX is about 10.5. gas is about 20, I'm dumping the units, that's the proportions roughly. If the stoves had the same efficiencies, a good gas canister setup would require about 6 gm to boil 2 cups water, but it seems to take about 8, ie, the setup is not as efficient. Same goes for white gas, I believe it's a bit less efficient than gas from what I can see once you actually burn the stuff in the real world. Cars, by the way, with gasoline, are only about 30% efficient. Alcohol, and probably esbit, win these efficiency things because the stoves/screens can be highly optimized without requiring machine tools and a big shop. I'm sure you could likewise optimize the burner units/screens for white gas and canister gas.

[Bob Gross]

I take a completely different direction for Esbit usage.

Before I start my meal, I light one standard Esbit cube, boil the water, and then eat the food. If it is critical to have the water boil, then I light a second Esbit cube right over the black residue of the first one. When my water has boiled, and there is still a cube flaming away, I blow it out. That leaves some large fraction of a cube ready for the next boil, but that is OK.

Also, I've found that the partially burned fraction will relight very easily. When it was blown out, it is left with a furry/spikey texture over the surface, and this seems to make the relighting task much easier for my mini-BIC.

–B.G.–

[peter vacco]

(for Harold) a long time ago.. in a world far away.. i had a job where it was possible to make endless cups of coffee (w/Kahloahh), and get paid while doing it. so, being a good bpl'r, to that end i optimized my stove.
by installing the K jet in my whisperlite inter and removing one set of burner rings, i was able to consistently get 17 minutes out of a fluid oz of fuel.
output is diminished to some extent.

cheers,
v.

[Paul McLaughlin]

My experience with Esbit is limited but for what it's worth: when I used it on a Sierra summer trip, I used one Esbit brand tab each meal, basic Esbit folding stove (all I had ever seen at the time, 10+ years ago), homemade foil windscreen, 3/4 liter fairly wide stainless pot. The one tab boiled the 2 cups water and then simmered a few minutes while I stirred, every time, in roughly 50-60 degree air temperatures. No data on the water temperatures but straight out of a Sierra lake I expect 50-60 degrees at most.

White gas numbers: I have tracked my fuel usage on several spring snow camping trips. I keep track of total fuel usage for the trip, and the number of nights I find water and thus do not have to melt.
Averages, in ounces by weight:
if melting, for one person – 3
if not melting, for one person – 1.5
if melting, for two persons – 4.5
If not melting, for two – 2.25

The obvious points – if I have to melt I use double the fuel, and two persons use 1.5 times the fuel of one. However, my ski trip partner eats less than I do so he needs less water to reconstitute, partly explaining why the fuel usage for two is not double that for one. I realize priming fuel use plays a part here, but I believe a very small part, simply because my method is to light the stove once for each meal and once only. Also, when melting, I would melt some snow for cold water as well as for the meal, so one should not assume that melting enough snow for a liter and then bringing that to a boil would use double the fuel of just bringing a liter to a boil.

I have also tested my stoves at home to compare them. To do this I started with 12 cups of 50 degree water and brought it to a measured 210 degrees. Fule usage measured included priming. I have both a whisperlite and a simmerlite, and they came out the same, at 43 grams of fuel to do the job. Coincidentally, this is very close to my number for daily usage for one meal if I am solo and melting snow, so it's a reasonable simulation in that is is a single burn of about the same usage, thus having the same ratio of priming to running. I also have a remote canister stove, but it is a Bulin B5, which is notorious for fuel line problems, and when I ran the same 12 cup test, with canister inverted, I noticed it did not run as well as it had in previous testing with the canister upright. So I don't consider that an accurate test, and until I get another remote canister stove I can't compare accurately. I did run this test with my canister top stove – a Coleman F1 Ultralight (since deceased) and it used 34 grams of fuel to do the job. BPL testing in the past has shown that remote canister stoves seem to be less efficient than top-mounts – though why this is the case is not clear, and it may be differences in burner design. (Roger, can you please compare fuel usage of your remote canister stove to the the top-mount stove whose burner head you are using?) At any rate, even if we assume that a remote stove will be as efficient as the Coleman (noted for its efficiency in BPL testing) then the difference is only about 24%.

I should point out that one's kitchen style makes a difference here. If your backcountry culinary methods involve lighting the stove a number of times during a meal, you'll lose ground quickly via re-priming with a WG stove compared to a canister stove. And if you are not practiced, as has been noted by B.G. and others, you'll use more fuel to prime than those of us who have been using WG stoves for 35 years.

And another couple numbers, from other testing I ran:
Whisperlite, to prime and boil 4 cups water, avg. of 3 runs, 16.7 gms
Simmerlite, same test, avg of 3 runs, 17.7 gms
Note that here the Whisperlite beats the Simmerlite, while in the longer test I did that was not the case. I believe it takes more fuel to prime the simmerlite, but it burns slightly more efficiently and thus catches up in a longer burn.

[Bob Gross]

"And if you are not practiced, as has been noted by B.G. and others, you'll use more fuel to prime than those of us who have been using WG stoves for 35 years."

On one long trip, I got to the point where I was priming with about one drop of white gas fuel, and then it would run poorly through another drop of fuel until the burner began to go correctly. However, that took me most of a week to perfect the technique, and it would be completely different for any stove. It is mostly a matter of characterizing the fuel delay time.

Incidentally, you may assume that I did this to conserve fuel. No. I did it to control the amount of flare during priming. I was doing all of the snow melting and water boiling in the vestibule of a three-man tent, and I didn't want to burn the sucker down. For that matter, it was an expensive tent, so I didn't even want to toast the nylon anywhere. I had one huge piece of aluminum foil about two by two feet, and I put it against the vestibule wall where the flare would happen if it did. By cutting the priming fuel down to a drop, I got minimum flare, so minimum fuel wasted. The priming fuel that goes into heating the fuel tube is useful. The priming fuel that goes up in a flash of flame is wasted.

–B.G.–

[Paul McLaughlin]

Harald if youare computing system weight for WG stoves, use the smallest aluminum bottle you can. That's what I do – I take my 1/2 liter Sigg bottle and then plastic bottles for the rest, My 1/2 liter Sigg Bottle is 3 oz lighter than my liter sigg bottle, and the plastic bottles I use are 1.3 oz for 500ML, so I'm saving 1.7 oz that way.

[Bob Gross]

It is also important to know the volume of your Sigg bottle.

For one trip, we had calculated that three of us needed to carry exactly two quarts of white gas per person. So, we flew 5000 miles with empties and then went to a hardware store to purchase white gas. I got two quarts, the second guy got two quarts, and then the third guy pulled out his bottles. They were the 22-24 ounce size, and I don't think that he knew the difference. That just eliminated some of our fuel reserve. We did OK, but it was good that we were not pinned down by a storm for an extra four days.

–B.G.–

[Piney]

Harold,

I am not surprised by the reports of 13-14 gram consumption for a two cup boil. What should be noted is that an inefficient esbit setup can very nearly match an efficient alcohol stove.

An efficient esbit stove such as a Caldera Cone or Snow Leopard style windscreen will boil two cups of water on 9 grams of esbit. I linked my two setups already, also see these threads for tests by Dan Yeruski and Jon Fong:

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=79861

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=70489

Dan and Jon are using the 4 gram tabs. I use a different approach. I boil two cups with a 14 gram tab and then put the unburnt remainder in a small ziplock. After boiling two more cups I combine the two remainders to boil the final 2 cups. So I can boil 6 cups with two 14 gram tabs, leaving just a bit of esbit left over.

I've had extremely poor results with the Coughlans tabs. I don't know if I got a bad batch or what, but they fall far short of the 14 gram tabs in my tests.

I don't drink tea and eat at least one cold meal a day, so I calculate my fuel consumption at 18 grams per day and round up to the nearest full tablet. If I was worried about saving the last few grams I could incorporate a 4 gram tab instead of rounding up.

[Nick Gatel]

Harold,

Regarding gas versus liquid stoves: the BTU of each fuel is almost the same, so one would expect the boil times to be similar. The variable in my mind would be the efficiency of the stove being used. Maybe it would be best to test both using the same stove – say a MSR Whisperlite Universal.

Denatured alcohol and Esbit have almost the same BTU, so it would be best to test both fuels with the same stove – not really possible. However Trail Designs have cone systems that use both systems.

Here is a test for your calculations.

Caldera Cone GVP with Esbit Graham Cracker stove in a Cuben sack = 86 grams

Caldera Cone GVP with Trail Designs 12-10 stove in a Cuben sack = 92 grams
Trail Desgins 5.5 ounce fuel bottle = 19 grams
Caldera Cone complete alcohol set up = 111 grams

Test results (2 cups water at 70F). Time to bring to full boil (212F):

Esbit = 8 minutes 01 seconds (9 grams of Esbit consumed)
Sunnyside Denatured Alcohol = 8 minutes 44 seconds (11 grams used)

BTW I weighed the Esbit (my scale goes down to only full grams).
Esbit tab in package = 14 grams
Esbit tab removed from package = 14 grams
Empty package on scale = 0 grams

I am not willing to open a bunch of Esbit packages to calculate the actual weight.

Last but not least, we need to calculate the cost of fuel. White gas and alcohol are cheapest. Esbit and IsoPro most expensive. Probably doesn't matter to folks who backpack once or twice a year. If you hike a lot (as I do) it is a consideration unless you have plenty of disposable income. Then there is the cost of the stove. White gas normally the most expensive unless you get a remote canister.

[Harald Hope]

wow, really good stove information, I think I'm going to have to create a new posting on optimizing whisperlight burns, this stuff is too good to just let fade away.

It seems like there's a rough consensus then that for good esbit setups and usage, 9gm would be achievable, I'll include the links to all the stuff linked to here so people can figure it out for themselves if they are not reaching that efficiency. 9 gm is quite decent, 10 or 11 gm is I think about as good as you can get with alcohol, and then only with ethanol stuff, like sunnyside or kleanstrip green, so it's not surprising to see nick get that.

So I'll update the table, maybe I'll have two items, good esbit/average esbit. The table rows take a while to create, which is why I wanted to wait to see what people got as results.

Bob G, I know exactly what you mean about priming inside the tent or vestibule, many is the time I've done that in the rain with white gas, xgk or whisperlight, though I wasn't quite as clever in my solution, I did not however burn the tent, somehow, I think I used a pot over the flame, can't remember how I did it, but I do remember the problem.

The tip on optimizing the whisperlight int'l is really good, thanks peter v, again, these tips are too good to leave lying so I'll think of something to do with them.

The point of relative costs is worth noting too, obviously white gas and alcohol will be cheapest, since you can buy them by the gallon.

If I can get 17gm whisperlight 4 cup boil without modifying the stove, I'll update those rows, but it's also tempting to test the whisper intl to see if I can get the results peter v gets via mods. It's hardly fair, after all, to run highly optimized cone/screen/burner setups for esbit/alcohol and not see how good you can get the gas/white gas systems. already these numbers are far better than what the earlier bpl tables showed, so it's worth taking another look at the things. I see no real reason why a remote canister would not benefit from the same type of screen customization/optimization that I did for the alcohol stoves, the principles are similar.

[Harald Hope]

I decided to test 4 cup boils on a variety of alcohol stoves after the unexpected results from the whisperlight. The results here were also unexpected. Blame Feynman, he notes you need to question assumptions by testing, even if someone else has tested before, and to carefully control the variables, particularly the wind screen, as sgt rock learned too.

MB is not correct that the stove type does not matter, they matter quite a bit, however, the results are interesting. All tests were done with an ion stove type screen, 4" high, 1/4" gap between screen and pot, about 3.5 sq" of air inlet holes. 1.3 L evernew uncoated pot. The wide pot lets me use the cat stove, and the standard penny, which you cannot use efficiently if at all with a narrow pot. All tests use SLX denatured alcohol, normal type. All tests done at about 70F air temp, 70F water, sea level plus a few hundred feet.

[changed times/quantities after more testing with revised screen)

• jim wood style fancy feast stove, with jim wood style base: 6:15-7:00 to boil, 35 ml/28gm fuel, boils for 30-60 seconds. Clear choice if you want your food/beverage fast for not a huge penalty in fuel consumption. Easy to use, but requires priming before you put the pot on it. Not hard to do, but it loses about 30 seconds of burn that way.
• penny stove, 12 oz can size, 6 jets point out, 7:45-8:30, 1+ minute boil, 30 ml/24gm fuel. Requires priming, but you can put the pot on it as soon as it's lit since it has a stand. The penny does much better on a wide pot, and with a larger amount of alcohol to start than it does with a narrow pot and less alcohol. 35 ml boiled the water for a bit over 2:30, solid boil.
• ion stove, 17:30-18:30 min, about 1 minute weak boil, 25ml, 20gm (pot must have a real lid to get this boil, heavy enough to keep pressure in). No priming required, but this is probably longer than most people want to wait for 2 people.

I believe however that you can break alcohol stoves into types, by speed/efficiency, so you can find the simplest stove within each type, these three basically represent those types, very fast but not as efficient, reasonably fast and efficient, and very efficient but slow. As you can see, there's a roughly 10ml / 8gm range between most efficient and less efficient for 4 cup boils.

The wind/heat screen is very easy to use and carry, which makes to my mind the need for a cone questionable. High ethanol fuels like sunnyside or kleanstrip green should be about 10% better, methanol, pure, about 10% worse re fuel consumption.

Much to my surprise, all of these numbers except the ion are totally acceptable for 2 people in terms of both time and fuel consumption, in fact, I will have to update the page to note this for 4 cup boils. So you can very comfortably use an alcohol stove, if you have the right type/screen and get the same exact benefit as the ion solo 2 cup narrow pot, in other words, for 8 cup per day boils, the right standard alcohol stove/screen setup will also never be heavier than gas stoves, and will cook the food in a completely reasonable amount of time.

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

Harold

PM me your mail address and I will send you a sample stove to test. Jon

[James Marco]

Yeah, the older SVEA is a great little stove. Neither the Whisperlite nor the Simmerlite can come close to it for efficiency. On hissing (not puttering) low I get about 3quarts per ounce counting initial priming 3 times. I measured .23oz per quart (average for 5 runs) in the kitchen, but field use is more like .28-.30 per quart.
(Why quarts? Because the maximum fill on the pot is 1 quart, NOT one liter.) All started from 40F water, and I called a boil at 210F. I could typically get only about .75oz per liter with the older Whisperlight and slightly worse with the Simmerlite (I seem to remember about 7/8oz per liter.)

I normally use a tight fitting windscreen with a wider 4"+ sqin gap in the bottom. Note that 1qt is about it, it will overheat with more. I also use a light aluminum grease pot ( 4 cup filled to about 1/4" below the brim.) It has a series of rings pressed into the bottom to act as a heat exchanger, or maybe more to increase the surface area of the bottom by about 20%. It weighs about 94gm including the lid.

The only problem is the stove is heavy. I keep saying they need to make a ti version…

Anyway, at my usage, I need to get 5gm/liter out of a remote canister stove to be lighter. Neither the Windpro, nor Coleman F1 do that. I am hoping Rogers FM300T version will. Again, I will be using a tight fitting wind screen with wide air inlet's and the same pot.

[Harald Hope]

The backpacking stove fuel consumption / carry weight tables now include two esbit entries, one for consuming 9 gm per 2 cups, and one for 14 grams, ie, one tab.

I used Drew's 42 gram setup because it's solid, supports a standard full sized pot, and does nothing more than needed. People with Cones can just add the extra weight of the system, if present, to the daily/nightly totals to get the weight comparison.

I included in an appendix the good white gas tips, and cleaned up/rearranged the article to make it a bit more readable, though it's gotten pretty long with esbit and white gas added.

Esbit wins, but I also include a note / warning about the toxicity of the esbit fumes. I don't think I'd use esbit if I thought there was any chance of having to cook in a tent.

Also adding a rough cost too for each fuel type.

James M, I agree, I think msr and optimus/svea are really dropping the ball on this, if you look at for example roger caffin's work on his ultralight remote canister, it shows what can be done to lighten these setups fairly substantially, but they haven't touched their designs in years. I guess in that sense the term 'dinosaur' fits, it's odd how these corporations get all conservative when they were built on creating the best stuff out there.I see no reason they can't make a 6 oz white gas stove system, with aluminum fuel bottle, for example, built on the principle of efficiency over speed.

[James Marco]

Yeah, Primus/Optimus are really slow to make any sort of inovation. Especially when it seems like a loosing proposition.

But 4oz of fuel is way more than needed for cooking a typical breakfast for one or two people. Including about a quart and a half of cooked coffee (perked for 7 minutes,) boiled another quart of water for three kids and 2 adults, a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs for 9 people on 2oz of fuel. The valve/expansion chamber could easily be aluminum, with a smaller ti tank. I believe the whole set-up would hit your 6oz mark. This pretty much eliminates the need for the aluminum bottle and pump.

Anyway, propane and WG have nearly the same BTU quanta (about 5% more for the typical butane fuel.) It is too bad the canisters weigh so much and are so unreliable. Anyway, I agree there is a lot of things that can be done with higher BTU fuels. Butane/iso-butane is actually only slightly better than alcohol, after considering the canister. Stove weight is the big killer with WG stoves. Esbit is messy on the pots.

[Bob Shaver]

I was on a trip where we could compare a Caldera cone (alcohol) Canister (MSR Pocket Rocket) and a JetBoil. My conclusion was any difference was too close to call. Other considerations and personal preferences mattered more than just weight. The link to the comparison is here:

http://backpackingtechnology.com/food-and-cooking/a-stove-comparison-alcohol-caldera-cone-vs-canister-jet-boil-pocket-rocket-giga-power/

Some mesurements:

Caldera Cone weights:

Total weight, stove, pot and fuel, at start of trip: 36.1 oz
Total weight, stove pot and fuel, at end of trip: 18.1 oz
Note: we had 3 oz of fuel left over.

JetBoil:

Total weight, stove, pot and fuel (one 220 g canister) at start of trip: 28.2
total weight, stove, pot and empty fuel canister at end of trip: 20.2 oz (weight of empty fuel container = 5.6 oz)

Pocket Rocket:

Total weight, stove, pot and fuel (one large and one small canister), at start of trip: 33.1 oz
Total weight, stove pot and fuel, at end of trip: 22.2 oz

Considerations besides weight: Its hard to fry fish in a JetBoil. You can't bake with either JetBoil or PR. Wind can and did make the Pocket Rocket inoperable. You can lose a whole canister of fuel at one stroke if the valve is not shut off. Its easy to tip over a Pocket Rocket with a pot of boiling water on it and we did on this trip. You can't beat the JetBoil for speed to boil, but does anyone care? So if the difference is + or – 6 oz on a week long trip, I'm going for the reliability and versatility of the Caldera Cone.

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Harald (and Bob)

I am not sure how many white gas and kero stoves I own. 'A lot' would be a simple answer. Most of the expected ones for sure. Very bluntly, I get given many of the new ones for review: cost is not an issue. And I have tested them all.

I have used white gas for years, but did not like the unexpected whoomps which sometimes happened. They can be upsetting in the snow in a tent. So I moved to kero for many years. Various stoves, but I found the Coleman Peak Apex II was one of the best as it has 2 valves. I have a couple of these in various states of heavily used or nearly worn out. I was actually repairing one of them on and off as some of the frailer parts died in the field.

However, my wife was always a bit scared of the WG stoves – we have both seen many accidents. Burnt packs, sleeping bags tents, and bits of skin. Not, I will add, due to my efforts. She suffered the kero stoves but seriously disliked them because of the smell they made and the way the fumes upset her nose when I was cooking dinner in the vestibule.

Then I was asked to do a survey of various sorts of stoves – WG, kero, canister, alky & Esbit. I was a bit astonished to find that the modern canister stove can be more powerful than most any WG/kero stove. Most of the WG stoves are limited in power to under 2.8 kW for technical reasons which the vendors never explain – it's to do with the fuel/air mixing process. Some of the canister stoves can reach 3.3 kW. The myths of low power probably trace back to the days of the Bleuet stove, which was underpowered. Mind you, running any stove flat out is very wasteful.

Then I looked at the fuel consumption. Yes, if you take a running WG stove under test conditions it may have a similar fuel consumption per litre boiled to a canister stove. But in Real Life, looking at hard data on fuel consumption over many long trips, I found that WG needed about 50% more fuel. The rest goes in priming and leaving the stove running between cooking. That's not theory; that's carefully recorded data from field use.

In answer to Bob, I think I can get a WG or kero stove going with very little waste – I have had a lot of practice with both. But even so, I was using more WG or kero.

During the survey, in the field, my wife was taken by the lack of smell, the safety (lack of fireball priming) and the speed of cooking which we got from the canister stoves. I don't apologise for using the 'fireball' word: you will find it in the XGK instructions.

Then I looked at the weights. Yes, there are heavy stoves of all sorts. Yes, the metal gas canister has extra weight. But the tank and the pump for a WG stove also weigh a lot. The remote canister stoves are in general much lighter than the WG stoves: the one I have developed weighs under 90 grams. Add a 68 g Powermax canister for fuel. That's light. That's fast to get going. That's very convenient in use. That's powerful. That's seriously controllable down to an extremely low simmer too.

Yeah, I'm biased. Now you know why.

Cheers

[Nick Gatel]

I have read everything that Roger C has written… a lot of good stuff. I was not surprised with the results as gas and liquid (WG) have about the same BTU. Gas does not need priming. I can run a Svea 123 with very little fuel to prime it and usually perfectly time it to get the stove to light at exactly the time the priming flame burns out — but it is fuel not used for cooking.

In cold weather the Svea is not ideal, but it works. I hate the flare-up with the MSRs, and a Roger states, MSR says it is normal.

So a properly designed remote canister is going to work in cold. To me it just comes down to preference, although I am more comfortable with a WG in cold because of lots of experience and familiarity. But I am using my WindPro II more and more in winter. I know there are lighter options.

I still think the Svea is the best stove ever made… little maintenance and never failed me in decades of use.

My go to 3 season stove is a Caldera GVP with Esbit. But I still occasionally take the Svea, it is like a trusted old friend.

P.S. I never have had an accident with a WG stove or burned anything :)

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