Help with cook kit – trying to move to alcohol

Those Nalgene bottles are HPDE.

The rectangular 4oz bottle is too thick to be a squeeze bottle and weighs 23g without the lid

The round 4oz bottle is squeezable, and weighs 17g without the lid

Both are a little too tall for my cook pot. :/  I need to keep it to ~3-3.5″ tall

I don’t know if you can get a flip top squeeze lid for these, and they don’t have level measurement lines on them, though you could easily add them yourself.

This flask is mildly tempting:

I had a 7.5oz opaque flask I often take with me. I tested it and the Heet flip top squeeze cap from Zelph fits perfectly. I can kind of squish it in there with about 4oz of liquid in it.

14g total: 10g bag + 4g flip top Heet cap

REI has these flip-top bottles in 2-, 4- and 8-oz (and maybe 6-oz) bottles. Add a cough syrup measuring cup and you’re all set.

More fuel than that for a longer trip and I’d consider a re-purposed soda bottle or a smaller Platy 16-oz bottle. Most plastics are compatible with denatured alcohol.

Sorry, Zack. I was hoping one of the Nalgene bottles would work. If it’ll fit, what about simply pouring fuel from the rectangular bottle?

Some pieces of the kit are HDPE, some are LDPE, and some are PP. For anyone else interested, if purchased with the kit, the 4 oz round bottle (LDPE & 17.2 g) comes with a regular screw-on cap (2.7 g) and a flip-spout cap (7.5 g). The flip-spout cap doesn’t fit any of the other containers.

I have the rest of the Medium Travel Kit and can provide weights, if requested. I bought the set after being underwhelmed with the quality of no-name containers, and Nalgene lives up to their name. Iirc, I have the Small Travel Kit, too.

It’s ok. It may be a real struggle to find an appropriate container that also fits in my pot.

I bought the Nalgene kit for a travel toiletries kit and found it to work well so far.

I would like to drastically reduce my weight while also keeping the boil times below 5 min. If I decide to cook lunch and everyone else is boiling quickly, I don’t want to be lagging behind. This lead me to alcohol stoves. I’m hoping for a stove that boils 2 cups of water in 3-5 min using 1/2-3/4 oz fuel.

BTUs rule. More BTUs translate into faster and greater efficiency; and more weight for the hardware. You cannot defy the laws of nature, nor have your cake and eat it too.

It’s ok. It may be a real struggle to find an appropriate container that also fits in my pot.

I bought the Nalgene kit for a travel toiletries kit and found it to work well so far.

With alcohol, attempting to make a cook kit where everything fits into a ~750ml pot with more than 4 oz of fuel is going to be tough. I stopped fighting it and just keep my alky squirt bottle in the outside mesh pocket of my pack.

Storing more fuel inside the pot is much easier with Esbit because the tabs can be separated to fill any available voids, such as inside a windscreen or cone, or in many other gaps. I can fit 5-6 days’ worth of Esbit tabs into my 3-cup (~750ml) pot setup, and that’s using 1.5 of the 14g tabs per burn.

Obviously isobutane is quicker, but only you can decide if the little bit of extra weight is worth it for getting a 3 minute faster boil. I know that if I’m busy with other things the water is often boiling before I know it.

I think it has become clear that the few isolated incidents of people reporting sub 5 min boil times is not realistic. I’ve adjusted my expectations and I’ll be happy with 8-10 min if that’s what it takes.

Heet, which I will be using, is Methanol or Methyl Alcohol. So these are the approved plastic materials for storage:

Unless there is some additive to Heet that would interact with some of these plastics?

Looks like LDPE/HDPE or PP are the most likely candidates.

I’m going to consider going with a 4 oz jar. If I need more, I can start with 1 oz in the stove, and 0.5 oz in a small squeeze bottle = 5.5 oz total, or 11 burns. I’ll always be bringing some Esbit with me as a backup or emergency firestarter in case of wet wood. For short weekend trips, I might get away with only 2 oz, which means I only need a 1 oz squeeze bottle which will be easy to fit in my pot.

Made of PP, dimensions are:
Diameter: 2.7″

Height: 2.3″

(the 6oz HDPE is 2.9″ dia x 2.4″ height)

This should easily fit in the base of my pot, even if I have the dry bake pot in there also.

Then I would most likely use the 0.5 oz LDPE squeeze bottle to draw the fuel out of this container and deliver to the stove:

Here’s my Reflectix cozy:

Reflectix fitted into the recess in the Ruta Locura CF lid:

What do you think about storing things like the stove and fuel inside the cookpot given that the Heet (methanol) is not safe for consumption?

I’m not down with storing toxic chemicals in my cook pot. When I use alcohol it’s in a bottle in the front pocket of my pack. Same with Esbit.

Matthew, of course I’d like to be able to store as much as possible in the pot, and when I used a canister, I did this. The last time out I did put the Esbit in the stove, but it was in its bubble pack and inside another ziplock bag.

What do you think about having it in there if it is in a ziplock or OP sak? Still better to just avoid it? Worst case scenario, you just wash the pot out before you use it, or is it more complicated than that? I’m not entirely opposed to putting these items elsewhere in my pack, it’s just nice to keep everything for cooking stored and ready to go in one place…

I know lots of people do it but it just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me so I don’t do it. I don’t have any science to back it up…

You WILL NOT be able to properly clean the nasty toxic chemicals that are added to denature ethanol with just water on the trail. Methanol (Heet) is also a toxin.

I look at it this way, really how much extra space does even an 8oz bottle of fuel take up in your pack?

Answer? Darn little.

Besides storing your fuel outside your cookpot frees up room inside for utensils,a drink cup, spoon, lighter, spice kit etc- all small stuff you DONT want floating around in your pack when it comes time to eat.

To further save space , I use the round fuel bottle as a mandrel to wrap my stove floor of Alu foil and my windscreen around. I wrap a rubber band around that and drop it in a ziplock qt freezer bag for extra peice of mind against leaks. Either way ,the fuel is stored in an outside pocket.

Just askiing, for clarification purposes, because I use Klean Strip DA (which says on the can “Marine Fuel”)…

So if I spill a few drops of it in the pot and wipe it away and let the tiny amount remaining evaporate, it is still not safe to use?

I have not heard this before.

Regarding Esbit, not that I believe it, but on the Esbit website they actually imply that it can be eaten, although they “strongly advise” against it:
<div class=”products-info-tabs-body-item-headline”>

The idea behind 001 020 00

</div>
<div class=”products-info-tabs-body-item-content”>

The history of Esbit solid fuel proves that great things are often created by accident. In the 1930s, a friend of Mr. Schumm, the inventor of our solid fuel, had accidentally swallowed a toxic fuel cube, thinking that it was candy. It made him feel ill and he had terrible stomach pains. Mr. Schumm, who was a real inventive genius in all sorts of areas, then wanted to develop a solid but nontoxic fuel. In 1936, the Esbit brand (Erich Schumm Brennstoff in Tablettenform / Erich Schumm Fuel in Tablet Form) was officially registered. This marked the start of a success story and a journey around the world that continues today.

PS. Naturally, we nonetheless strongly advise you not to eat Esbit solid fuel tablets.

Somehow I don’t think this would get past USA federal regulators, lol.

</div>

Nick Gatel, Ethanol has close to the same BTU’s as Esbit (within 100BTU/lb.) Especially when you consider toxicity and soot from Esbit tabs (hexamine.) There is really no reason to change to Esbits if you have a good alky system except to save the weight of a fuel bottle (usually around 1oz for up to 19.2oz by volume.) Just switch fuels to a good “Grain Alcohol” at around 95%. Methanol has only about 3/4 of the BTU’s as Esbit.

Zack, you can use EverClear 190 as fuel. Add 1oz for a fuel bottle and beat the weight of a canister stove by quite a bit for trips up to about 5 days (or 10-15 boils.) Still gonna take you about 7-10 minutes, though.

I may actually buy some 190 grain alcohol. Expensive, true, but it does have other purposes…

If I was running a liquid fuel stove, that’d be my preferred fuel, and I don’t drink. It’s a fire starter, disinfectant, and a heck of a solvent that cuts bug spray, adhesive, sweat, and general grime. Add in the lack of toxicity, and it’s hard to beat unless every single gram or second matters. Just make sure you get the good stuff, or something of similar strength:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everclear_(alcohol)

I’m going to pick up some Everclear 190 this weekend to try it out.

A couple new items came in:

Dry baking pan – 3″ (I’ll need to trim the lip to cut down on weight.

I found an LDPE 6 oz container and put an o-ring in the cap. It fits even inside the baking pan. I can fit the base plate, windscreen, pot stand, stove, fuel container, baking pan, firestarter kit, and simmer shield.

Alternatively, I can fit a flask with 4 oz of alcohol, maybe more…but it will be difficult to meter out as the graduated lines are only accurate when full and upright. Not sure if I can find a flip top cap for it. The flask is super light though. I can use this squeeze bottle to syphon the alcohol from the container and transfer to the stove. I’ve also been looking at plastic transfer pipettes.

With 6 oz in the container, 1 oz in the squeeze bottle and 1 oz in the stove, I can carry 8 oz of fuel in the tiny pot.

The 6oz fuel container and the squeeze bottle weigh a total of 1oz. The flask is 0.4 oz.

Zach – I’ll say this for you, you’re determined!  : )

Neat looking little kit. What kind of dry baking do you plan to do with the 3incher? I’m slowly moving away from freeze dried dinners, and I keep my eyes open for options.

I struggle against being a perfectionist at times… ha ha. I think if I use Everclear 190, I don’t care about contamination, and can put all cooking related items in one place.

I’ve only recently started getting into baking at home…but I’d love to make bread and maybe muffins or some kind of cake or dessert or something. Not sure yet. I’m looking at various recipes now to see what can be executed with dry ingredients. I’ve also started doing mostly gluten free baking, so I’ve got all the flour exchanges worked out.

Maybe I’ll make some cinnamon apple cake muffins or something. :)

I also saw recipes for lasagna and pizza pockets….so I might try that.

I don’t know if I like the idea of syphoning out of a wide mouth, shallow container. Too much risk of spillage or contamination. So, this might have been wasted effort. I like the idea of the flask, but I don’t think it’s easy to meter out…which means I may just use the lightweight measuring cup even though I wanted to get away from that.

Don’t you need a different kind of stove setup for baking? I think you need a really long, slow burn. Disclaimer: I have no experience in this area other than reading some recipes.

I have a Ti epicurean stove and esbit. Also a simmer ring for the Starlyte

I use imusa 12cm pot
Fancy Feast no prime stove
Can boil water fast enough for my needs. No oriminung is asesome! I also got the simmer ring for it so I can cook pasta next trip.

I struggled a bit with my cook kit this past weekend.

I was unable to successfully light the Zelph starlyte with my mini spark wheel starter, or my mini nice lighter.

It was very windy, so I think it was being blown out before it had a chance to warm up. I couldn’t reach down in to light it with the windscreen in place without burning my hand. So, I borrowed a match and that did the trick. I now think I need my backup firestarter to be matches.

What waterproof matches do you recommend?

Also, with the windscreen tight to the pot, the stove kept going out. I think it was starved for oxygen or potentially it was being blown out through the holes in the windscreen? After I had the windscreen bigger ( not tight to the pot) it worked to boil my water.

I had the same issue with the esbit. I could only get it to light with a match while the windscreen was in place. I even tried lighting a firestarter wad and placing it on top of the esbit to light it. That was insufficient.

I was able to bake a cinnamon spice muffin, and top it with chocolate hazelnut butter spread. It was good, but not cooked all the way through. I think I used too much water in my mix or under the pot. I also used too much dough, so it rose and lifted the lid off the pot.

More testing is necessary.

I don’t have sufficient space in my pot to add the food portion to the water and cook it together. I also hated having to clean it after. I need to look up how to properly clean food mess without risk of attracting bears.

Also, while I was waiting for my meal to rehydrate in the pot, I couldn’t start baking my muffin or make my hot chocolate.

I’m tempted to go back to putting the water into the boil bag in a cozy…

Also, since my aluminum baking pot is 3″×3″, there are certain baked goods that will be difficult to make: lasagna, pizza, others? I should be able to make bread or cake or muffins…unless it’s too dense and won’t cook all the way through.

Any thoughts?