I haven't forgotten about performing a test. It's just that the weather is still hovering around a rather pleasant -2 degrees C (28.4 degrees F) so it's not really cold enough. When I first mentioned it it was -6 degrees C, which actually feels quite cold.

For those of you watching in black and white I shall be using a Trangia burner, a Trianga triangular pot stand and a Snow Peak titanium pot with lid. I shall be attempting to boil 500ml (about one pint) of water. This week's guest fuel is methanol. A wind shield shall be employed. Good day.

A

Black and white?? Geez. I was told this was a Hi-Def channel.

IMO, alcohol is among the most volatile substances you'll ever set fire to. I don't consider alcohol stoves safe at all.

That being said, I'm a pyromaniac and will happily set fire to most substances and stoves. Given ample ventilation and meticuously attention to procedures I have no worries about doing that inside a tent or vehicle either. But I will only do that with a stove I'm intimately familiar with.

Sorry if this sounds harsh, and it is certainly not targeted at any individuals in this forum, but I think alcohol stoves are misjudged as "safe" because they are so easy and simple to use. With most other stoves you have to pay attention to procedures to get them working. With alcohol stoves, it is so easy the most obvious hazards are easily ignored. Filling an almost, but not quite empty and still burning (invisible flame) stove with liquid alcohol is my favourite example...


Personally, I'll never rely on alcohol stoves in subzero weather - too slow and too feeble heat effect. That doesn't mean they don't work - they do, I'm just not happy with what they do and the ratio of meals produced per weight or volume unit of fuel.

Backpackers who really watch the weight of their equipment generally find that after a trip reaches about five or six days, the weight of a gas canister stove is less than the weight of the alcohol stove required to perform equivalent cooking.

Mostlyharmless, I think that by "safe" they mean storage wise, and ease of use. If you are simply putting fuel into a cup, and buring it, that is safer than dealing with a gas under pressure (in theory). If a lit alcohol stove spills, well, you have buring fuel now. But, it will go out relatively quick. And, you wont have flame ups, as you do with most other stoves. Fuel storage is also a little better-although not sure if that would count as safer or not.
When it comes down to it, alcohol stoves are safer than most others, IMHO-the only thing you need to be careful of is knocking the stove over. Almost all others there are numerous issues that can crop up.

I think that this weekend I am going to take all the stoves I own out, and do some field tests. Not sure what the weather will be, but I want to do a comprehesive test. I will try the following:
minibull designs alcohol stove.
homemade CAT stove
canister stove (forget the maker)
wood burning mini paint can stove.
Brass alcohol stove

Will get boil times on all of them, using the same amount of liquid each time. Besides, I need an excuse to get outside

I did another test of my alcohol stove this weekend. If you recall, earlier tests in my garage and outdoors with no wind at around 15-18*F were excellent, bringing about 14oz of 33*F water to a rapid boil in 6 minutes using less than 1 oz of Everclear.

This time it was 11*F with a constant 5-10MPH wind and gusts to 40MPH. Also, instead of starting with nearly freezing water I started with chunks of frozen snow that I mashed down as much as possible in the cup, and added a piece of HD aluminum foil as a lid. I made a 3-sided wind screen from a HD aluminum foil and also wrapped a scrap of cardboard in foil to insulate the stove from the frozen ground.

I started the stove using 1 oz Everclear and held the cup over the flame until the alcohol was heated. Then I put the cup directly on the stove. The stove burned low and unevenly, I think because of the wind. As the gusts increased the stove must have cooled down and lost pressurization, as I had to lift the cup off the stove repeatedly to get it burning properly again.

After 6 minutes I had less than 8 oz of warm water, so I added enough snow to yield 14oz of liquid. After 15min the stove ran out of fuel and the water was only warm. I added another 1 oz of alcohol and resumed. This lasted another 10 minutes and the water was bubbling but still not boiling.

Result: Fail. While I could have got the water to boil if I used another oz of alcohol, the amount of fuel and time just don't make sense. I will work on a better wind screen and try again.

Ice (snow) versus water (at freezing point, but still liquid water) makes a HUGE difference. Melting that ice/snow requires the same energy as raising the temperature from 0 to 60 deg C (140F).

And yes, in anything but totally still air the performance of the windscreen has a huge impact on the result. That goes with all stoves, but the effect of wind screen design is so much more apparent with low effect alcohol stoves. Which is why I love the trangia cookset design... (Use a different burner in that design and then you can talk about performance... but let's not distract, shall we?)

Also, I want to apologize for clogging the debate with safety of alcohol versus other stove types. That discussion is worthy of another thread, but here it is only a distraction. I'm a big fan of informed users making rational risk assessments. I don't have anything against alcohol burners themselves - they're fine for what they are and what they do. But I do think a large number of people use them with only a faint idea of what they're dealing with. But this forum does not fit that description, so let's move on...

I'm anxious to see more results!

MH, nothing meant by it. I do concur that "safe" can be subjective sometimes . But, yes, lets stay OT.


I need to find a thermometer...I need to get ambient temps for this weekend. We are expecting a storm too, so this could be fun

A Swedish Trangia Burner and a German Tatonka burner stand arrived today - time to test this alcohol stove and compare it with my previous Triad Titanium alcohol stove test attempt. Both the Trangia burner and Tatonka burner cost around £14.10 or about $22.50 from Amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tatonka-Stainles...mp;sr=8-2-fkmr1

Time for another test.

The Trangia Burner is well known and construction is from brass whilst the Tatonka burner stand is manufactured from Stainless Steel. Both the Trangia burner and Tatonka burner stand weighed in aroun 205 grams, so the combination is no lightweight. A homemade Titanium sheet wind shield adds around another 40 grams for a total approaching around 250 grams without including the fuel weight, so this combination is no where near a lightweight stove for an alcohol burning stove when compared to the Triad Titanium stove for example. The main other difference between the Triad and the Trangia/Tatonka setup is that the Trangia/Tatonka actually works to what I consider an acceptable stove solution.

The Kettle I used in the test was an MSR Stainless Steel Kettle (also known as the MSR teapot), which is pretty robust and has a reasonable capacity of around 1 litre.



Trangia burner, Tatonka Burner Stand, MSR Teapot & Titanium Windshield.

Preparing the Trangia stove was very simple, first assemble the Tatonka Burner Stand, then pour 45ml into the centre of the Trangia burner (this was much much easier than the previous Triad Stove and could even accomplished in low light moonlight conditions, something that is almost impossible with the extremely fiddly Triad burner) then drop the Trangia into the Tatonka stand. Lighting the Trangia burner was simplicity itself compared to the Triad as there was no priming required using Hexamine or Gel fuel. Even with the Trangia burner effectly sitting in some snow the Trangia took hold without any further intervention. The Trangia jets then began to come alive after around 2-3 minutes in the colder conditions than the last attempt with the Triad Stove. The temperature was around -5 to -6 C with slight wind gusting to around 5-10 mph.

The Trangia/Tatonka combo was then able to boil around 500 ml of cold water in around 14 minutes (from first lighting the Trangia burner). Around 300ml was used to make a cup of Coffee Latte and the rest of the 500 ml from the 1 litre water bottle was added to the MSR Tea pot. The 700ml boiled around the 23-24 minute mark or about 10 minutes later from the first 500 ml being boiled.



Here is a another little video showing the Trangia well alight.

http://www.amfearliathmor.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CIMG0189.avi

The Trangia went out about the 26 minute mark and was able to boil a litre of water in around 22-23 minutes in reasonably difficult sub zero conditions.

Overall the differences between the Trangia/Tatonka setup and the Triad Titanium were light and day.

The Trangia/Tatonka setup was much more stable than the Triad Titanium and can take a wider range of pots, pans and kettles.

The Trangia burner is also much easier to light and much more difficult to extinguish in windy conditions. i.e. the gust of wind at the end of the little video would have surely blown out the Triad stove.

The Trangia has very little fuel wastage compared to the Triad as virtually all the fuel is usable, with the triad having excessive fuel spillage and the difficulty of getting the stove to light and remain alight in windy conditions. The Trangia also comes with a fuel cap to store the reminder of unused fuel in the burner together with a simmer ring.

Overall this was much more impressive demonstration of an alcohol stove setup, but again in really difficult conditions I still would have to go with a gas stove as the weight differences are now very slight but the Gas stove (with the appropriate low temperature isobutane/propane mixture) will still have the advantage in boil time and a gas stove can be used inside a tent without much worry as to the safety issues when compared to any alcohol stove.

Excellent. Thanks for the test. I wonder if a few minutes might be shaved off if the burner was warmed up a little first.