Help with cook kit – trying to move to alcohol

I’m no stove wizard but I don’t think you are going to boil 2 cups of water on .5 to .75 ounces of alcohol in five minutes. Most people who go for alcohol are looking for maximum efficiency which is often gained by slowing down the burn. Two cups boiled on a half ounce of alcohol is possible but it’s probably going to take 7 or 10 minutes.

Sidenote: you mentioned Esbit is messy. I have a couple setups that leave just a tiny amount of dry soot on the bottom of my pot with no gummy tar.

I use a cat can stove made with a hole punch. Weighs .2 oz boils 2 cups water in about 6 minutes with 1 oz alcohol (yellow heet). Titan kettle pot. Aluminum flashing wind screen and ground heat shield.

I fully admit my ignorance on this. I’ve seen a lot of conflicting info from people and confusing YouTube videos concerning how much fuel and how fast to boil.

7 min boil time might be fine if I don’t have a hassle for setup and 3 min of bloom time.

Otherwise, I’d love 5 min boil even if it means using more fuel. I don’t know…am I thinking about this incorrectly?

Boil times using Esbit or alcohol are very close to the same for me.  About 8 to 8 1/2 minutes for two cups using a gramcracker or 12-10 stove, cone windscreen, 450 ml titanium pot.

My ti caldera cone with the evernew 600mL short/wide pot with the zelph modified starlyte burns just fine. I’ve not timed it because it was never long enough to make me wonder.

No blooming time, light it, put the pot of water on there – and boil. I stare at it, so there’s no way it takes 10 mins to boil.

Are there alcohol stoves with significantly better boil times than others, or can I just grab a metal can and put a wick in it and go?

And seeing as I already have a base, stand, windscreen and pot, can I just purchase a decent stove and be as good as any other system?

Otherwise, it looks like I’ll be shelling out to buy a new pot, and that cone windscreen setup.

Also, the people making the cone say that it’s way better to use a wide shallow pot rather than a tall narrow pot. Do you agree?

If I start rehydrating in my pot itself, then I’ll need to bring soap and a scrub pad and use water to clean and dispose of that water in a way that doesn’t attract bears…

An efficient alcohol stove (~1/2 oz. for two cups), will put out about 375 to 400 watts and boil in about 7-8 minutes. To speed up the time to boil, the wattage has to double to meet your specification. As the wattage goes up, efficiency drops: I believe that this is due to the combustion rate of alcohol (passive burning/ not pressurized). Additionally, the small diameter mug is going to fight against improved efficiencies. For what you are looking for, it sounds like the best option is a Cat Can stove with a 3 cup anti-gravity pot (discontinued). Your weight will be low and you fuel efficiency pretty poor: 1 oz plus to boil 2 cups. I highly doubt that you will fine a fuel efficient stove (1/2 Oz) that will boil 2 cups in 3-5 minutes with no warm up or bloom time. My 2 cents.

Jon: Thank you! I guess without my own testing, I just don’t know…and plenty of people make claims online…so it’s good to cut through the BS.

Flat Cat Mini boils just as fast as the regular? I may go with the 134-150mm, 900ml pot.

And the ideal is to put the bottom of the pot ~1″ above the top of the stove?

Google Jim Woods and super cat stove for instructions on how to make one. A forty cent can of cat food and a paper hole punch is all you need. No wick. No waiting for bloom time. Light it put your pot on. Simpliest stove out there.

If you already have the Toaks Light TI 650, consider FlatCat Gear’s Snow Leopard Jr.  I got this with the stainless steel upgrade and have been very happy.

Fancee Feest (w/ wick around an inner can/stand) or Fancy Feast or Cat Can stove (hole punch only)  both provide their own stand, and you could re-use your existing pot and Ti windscreen.  The first requires no bloom time and is a doable DIY project.  The second is about the cheapest and easiest to make, but does need to bloom.  Both of these stoves have cult followings of folks that started with them and never moved on.  I’ve been eyeing the Gram Weenie Pro to try – again built in stand and very compact, but does require bloom time and therefore some fiddle factor.

I’m not as expert as many here, but I’ve learned not all alcohol stoves are equal as far as efficiency and burn times.  All burn faster when they heat-up, and are often matched to the space they operate in.  If you want to simmer or dry bake it’s even trickier to get the right combo or you will burn up your fuel and the pot will be sooty.  If you want to start from scratch, there are lots of matched options, and Caldera Cone, Batchstovez, FlatCat Gear are just the few I’ve tried.

I use the Snow Leopard Jr with the Toaks Light 650 for myself.  The Ti Sidewinder Caldera Cone with an Evernew 1.3L pot and  is my favorite for more than 2.  The Batchstovez BS1.1 or Fancee Feest with the Batchstovez 12cm dry baking combo is probably my 2 person – especially for baking, but so far it’s only cooked in the backyard – I do like the carbon felt windscreen.  All of these have some features in common – good windscreen, light, and really no bloom time required.

I find alcohol stoves addictive – and I’m certainly not the worst off in this regard.  My caution is pick a stove that works with your pot and windscreen first, then decide if you really want a complete kit.  You might end up with a few more along the way.  -Slbear

I am a big fan of alcohol.  I just do other camp chores while the water is heating.  The food usually needs to sit in the cozy awhile after mixing with the hot water too – more camp work.

But I would think about staying with a simple pot and canister stove if I was going to be cooking at lunch too.  It is faster.  Also, if you are cooking lunch, you are probably cooking 3 meals a day, which makes the weight penalty less.  Take just the canister, a light stove like the BRS3000T, your Toaks pot, a lighter, and a spoon.

The fastest Alcohol burner I have tried is the Evernew Ti  burner (- I don’t use the dedicated stand) It’s  fast and furious (in alcohol terms) but guzzly on fuel.  Expensive, but durable.

I only use it on larger pots with a volumn of one liter or more. How fast it would be on a smaller pot I don’t know. If the volumn of space between burner/pot/windshield was too small you’d get thermal feedback  and the results might be  more than you’d bargained for.

Years ago I had too much spare time on my hands so I devoted about two weeks time to making various MYOG alcohol stoves.  Pepsi stove, penny stove, one that required blooming time (can’t remember the name), and others.  I could not get some of them to work well at all.  One that did work well was the Robinson Cat Stove.  It is not compact in size compared to most stoves but it is fairly easy to make and his website claims 5 minute boiling times for 2 cups of water; I don’t remember what boiling times were for the one I made.  Might be worth a look-see.

This guy has tried them all:

Zack,

Regardless if it’s Esbit or Alcohol, I think this is one of those “lightweight, fast, efficient… pick two” sort of things.  You’ll find an abundance of information here on the forums about when the benefit of alcohol/solid fuel starts to wear off but here’s an article and quote from Pmags to get you started.

http://www.pmags.com/stove-comparison-real-world-use

The major disadvantage of an alcohol stove is that after about 10 meals (10 oz of fuel), you lose the major advantage of the weight savings. My alcohol stove setup weighs 14 oz with 10 days of fuel. If I were to go longer, an MSR (see below) would be more efficient for longer use. For cold weather temps (below, the raw edge of three-season hiking IMO), a white gas stove would be much more efficient. Alcohol and canister stoves (rated to >15F by manufacturers), perform poorly for winter use. (edited to fix formatting errors ala BPL software)

Is it possible to get a five minute boil with a fully optimized alcohol stove system and warmish water?  Maybe but for me, I find alcohol stoves are great for trips where I’m only heating up water once or twice per day.  As others mention, this is where good technique and planning comes into play.  Set up your stove somewhere safe and where you can keep an eye on it, fire it up, and then start setting up your shelter.  It takes me longer to pitch my shelter, inflate my pad, remove debris from my sleeping area, and to loft my sleeping bag than it does to heat the water.  If I’m in a hurry where I value time over weight, then I bring a canister stove.

I totally get and appreciate that we all want the best of all worlds, but at some point we find ourselves in a position where we have to make a compromise.  For me, this is something I have to sort out on on a trip by trip basis.  In the summer of 2014 and 15, I didn’t use my canister stove once.  This summer, it’s all that I’ve used because I’ve found myself where I’ve needed to heat more water in less time.

Instead of worrying about saving a few minutes, I’d focus more on the ergonomics of the stove and what works best for your system.  Prefer a stove that tends to be safer from spilling alcohol and where you can save some fuel after you extinguish it?  Starlyte stove or building a stove that is comparable is a nice option.  Want a stove with a integrated pot stand?  Fancy Feast stove or homemade equivalent works great.

As far as integrated systems, you’re not going to go wrong with either Flat Cat Gear or Trail Designs.  Both are well made and perform fine.  If you think you’d like to try dry baking in the future or use a Kovea Spider stove with the system, I’d go with Flat Cat (although some have made the caldera cone work by flipping it upside down).  Do you prefer having an option to use natural fuel like pine cones and twigs?  TD may be the way to go.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with a coat hanger pot stand, MYOG penny stove, and aluminum foil windscreen either.

You say that you already have a pot stand, but depending on the stove, the bottom of the pot needs to be about 1 inch above the flame jets on the stove for best performance as a general rule.

I agree that if you want fast boils, stay with the canister. If you want lighter weight, a quieter stove and aren’t in a hurry, then go alcohol.

I have esbit stoves, but really haven’t found a place for them other than a day hike when I want coffee or tea.

But I would think about staying with a simple pot and canister stove if I was going to be cooking at lunch too.  It is faster.  Also, if you are cooking lunch, you are probably cooking 3 meals a day, which makes the weight penalty less.  Take just the canister, a light stove like the BRS3000T, your Toaks pot, a lighter, and a spoon.

Agreed. A BRS3000T is 25g, and a 100g (net) canister is around 200g. If you’re cooking multiple times a day, and especially if you’re hiking with others using faster food prep methods, a canister system may make more sense.

Thanks for all the advice. I’m still wading through what’s reasonable in terms of claims, and what the trade offs are.

To be honest, I’ve been typically only boiling water once per day. That means either a protein bar in the morning or a protein shake mix I made to put in my water bottle. I’m not huge on jumping out of bed full of energy, so I try to save time in the morning to make it up and out on the trail with the group.

Lunch is a toss-up for me. I’m not huge on stopping, because the getting going is always mentally challenging. (that is unless it’s to change gear, scramble, take photos, get water, etc.

However, there are those times I’m thinking I may prefer to snack less and just stop and cook a quick meal. And there are cold mornings that I might like a warm meal to start off the day.

I’m not big on making coffee or other hot drinks in general, but from time to time it’s nice.

Ian, I guess I was seeing so many different claims with regards to burn times, I was just trying to understand what it was about the design or optimization of the setup or windscreen that could be causing it. It sounds like some people are perhaps quoting faster boil times than are reasonable. I’m fine with that.

I’ll probably keep my canister stove around for some trips. My biggest issue is with the 6.6 oz fuel canister that I use over and over again. That’s why the Esbit appealed to me for short trips…but for whatever reason, the Esbit didn’t manage to fully boil my water. the 12 min cook time went quickly while I was doing other things this trip, but there are times when I want to minimize this process.

There is one guy in the group with a complicated alcohol stove setup and by the time he unpacks it and sets it up and it has bloomed, I’m about ready to eat my meal…

The obvious answer is to just try them all for myself…but I’d like to avoid buying and flipping several kits if possible. That’s why this feedback is so helpful.

I do think that for longer trips I may eventually get into the idea of baking or dry baking or frying…so I don’t want to limit myself.

Zack,

My experience has been that alcohol stove performance and efficiency will vary wildly depending on variables like wind, ambient temperature, water temperature, and fuel temperature.

One of the golden elephants of BPL is that wide pots are more efficient than mugs and a caldera cone will beat the pants off of lesser windscreens.  That really hasn’t been my experience, at least with Esbit as I tend to migrate towards that more so than alcohol or canister stoves.

At one time I owned both the TD Sidewinder paired with the Evernew 600ml with a gram cracker under it, and the Lite Trail 550ml mug with ti wing and a ti windscreen.  To compare the two based on appearance and quality of construction, the TD system was a superior build (BMW M3) compared to the Lite Trail system (Honda Civic with a Spoiler).  On paper, there should have been a noticeable performance advantage of the TD system over Lite Trail since it had a sexy looking windscreen/cone and wider pot.  Truth be told, they both boiled water about the same.  I ended up selling the TD kit simply because I prefer to drink coffee out of mugs.

I think the holy grail for me is to bring two cups of 40*f water up to a boil using .5 fluid ounces of alcohol.  People say they do it and I have no reason to doubt them although I’d love to see this in action on a cool breezy day and not on a patio.

This doesn’t have to be an expensive venture.  Most of these stoves are easy enough to make and will cost you little more than dumping a 12 pack of Walmart soda down the drain, less if you raid the recycling bin.

Good luck and happy hunting.

Ian, so you’re working towards efficiency over cook time? In other words, you prefer to limit fuel usage, but would be willing to have longer time to boil? Or are you saying there is some stove design that could either burn hotter or be more efficient, such that it could boil the water just as fast, but with less fuel?

My favorite alcohol stove is the Minibull Designs Elite. I can use a 1/2 ounce of heet and get a boil in around 7 minutes. I pair it with a Toaks 650ml mug and a Ti windscreen from QiWiz. The stove weighs in under .5oz. It’s a great UL set-up for an overnighter where I only need an ounce of fuel for two meals.

With that being said, on my thru this summer I discovered how much I really liked the simplicity and speed of my canister stove set-up. I went with a BRS stove and Evernew 750 pasta pot.

Zach, protein shake or bar for breakfast and a cold lunch with a warm dinner is what has driven me towards alcohol/Esbit. I hardly cook but I do like to cook some meals and I like the backup intervention of a hot drink/food in case it gets cold. My preferred kit is under 4 ounces including a lighter and spoon and that works really well for occasional cooking.

Between my son and I we have three 550 mug setups (Toaks, Zelph/TD/Toaks and Imusa 10cm). As Ian indicates above, all three perform similarly although the set Zelph puts together burns Esbit with very little residue and really has that m3 experience. That said I love the little Imusa kit I made for boy.

I’m using my Zelph kit exactly as Chad shows here. It’s fantastic and I’m 100% happy with it but the $25 Imusa setup performs almost as well.

“Ian, so you’re working towards efficiency over cook time?”

Within reason, yes.  If I’m going to choose an alcohol stove, first and foremost I’m concerned about its design features (integrated pot stand, ability to store fuel, etc).

Second to this is fuel economy.  Again, I test stoves to see how efficiently they can boil two cups of 40*f water as that’s pretty close to water temps I will encounter.  If I have a stove that can get the job done in 10 minutes but only uses .5 fluid ounces of fuel, vs a stove that boils water in five minutes but burns 1 fluid ounce of fuel, I’ll go with the slower/more fuel efficient stove because it doubles how many meals I can heat up.  During the extra five minutes, invariably there are other things I need to do like collect and treat water or set up camp so it’s not really wasted time for me.

Again, this is just personal preference and I’m certainly not saying that this is the right way to look at things.

For context.  My appetite does funny things at altitude. I find that I almost never have a problem eating a hot meal, but I have been known to vomit up a cold one (even as low as 5000′).  It really sucks carrying 4+ lbs of food that I can’t keep down so if I’m going to be in the mountains, I’ll usually have three hot meals per day.  I really don’t like having my hiking companions stare at me because I’m running several minutes slower than them because they brought their Jet Boil/Windburner.  If a fast boil is my priority, I just eat the weight penalty and bring a canister stove.

If I’m less concerned about time and am on a trip where I will only have one maybe two hot meals per day, then I’ll carry a solid fuel or alcohol stove to save weight.  On my six day Wonderland trip, my total kit including spoon, lighter, and fuel weighed in at eight ounces.

The only wrong way is when you burn down a forest.

Matthew,

This looks intriguing, but I don’t see on the Zelph website where they offer this:

“custom Toaks 550 pot with ridgeline and a titanium Caldera Cone”

Is that an out of production item now?

Honestly, where I’m at right now is this:

I have the Toaks 650 LIGHT pot with the CF lid, QiWiz Ti windscreen and Esbit setup with pot stand.

My windscreen doesn’t form to the sides of my pot or support it. And perhaps if I eventually do want to do more baking or simmering or cooking and eating in my pot, a shorter, wider pot may be preferable. Then again, rather than have one kit that can do it all, I may just need to have a few kits and decide before my trip (obviously I have to anyway based on what food I bring)

Ian,

This makes a lot of sense to me. I think this is a reasonable approach for longer trips. I haven’t been doing as many of those and haven’t been cooking as much. Then again, 3 minutes here or there really shouldn’t be a major concern.