I'd like to get some feedback on alcohol stoves. They seem like a good idea to have in a hunter's day pack. I have no experience with them.

So, could you give me your thoughts and if possible where to buy one or how to make one.

Thanks in advance for your comments.

Blake
www.outdoorquest.biz

a good primer zen stoves ZEN

more stoves stove info and construction

wiki Alcohol stoves on wikipedia

I carried a Trangia (available from REI and others) for years in my SAR pack. Its virtues are utter simplicity and reliability, reasonably light weight, sturdy, and its ability to carry its own fuel supply.

The zen page is a good resource giving you the skinny on the amazing variety of alcohol stoves that can easily be fabricated or purchased today.

I use a WhiteBox Alcohol Stove and it rocks. I did modify it by wrapping some kevlar cordage around it which will start the stove in about 1/2 the time. Denatured alcohol is super cheap and I carry it in a used water bottle with hash marks on it per ounce. So the fuel bottle collapses as it gets used up.

Another resource worth looking at.
http://www.bplite.com/index.php
Also see Tinny's stuff at Minibulldesign
http://www.minibulldesign.com/


Now some personal observations.
Alcohol is good for light heating/cooking in reasonable weather.
You start to get problems when it is cold and windy.
You certainly need a windscreen.

Alcohol does not produce the same kind of heat that a pressurized white gas (Coleman fuel naptha) or kerosene stove will. This means you have to carry a bit more of it to heat up as much water or food.

On the plus side fuel alcohol (methanol, wood alcohol, methylated spirits, denatured alcohol) is usually easy to find and often fairly cheap.
The container for it can be very cheap. A lot of people use plastic bottles.

It does not stink up your stuff either.

You can find fuel alcohol as fondue fuel in grocery stores or as wood alcohol in hardware stores. One variety of gas line antifreeze is wood alcohol too.
Fuel alcohol should have less than 10% water in it.

Don't use rubbing alcohol (isopropyl). Rubbing alcohol normally has too much water in it and burns too cold. Isopropyl burns dirty with a lot of soot too.
If you can find Isopropanol pure enough to burn well, then it will be too expensive to use for fuel.

Next is that alcohol usually burns very clear. Most of the time you can't even see the flame, so some caution is required around it.

I like the penny and atom style stoves but the cat stoves worked well to.
When I was younger I used to just grab fondue burners when I saw them in thrift stores. They worked better than expected.

I want to really nail home the point that a wind screen is crucial for an alcohol stove to work. The feeble heat output (800 watt I think?) is is so small that you really, really need the wind screen to make sure as much heat as possible goes where you need it.

The trangia design - where the pot rests snugly inside the circular wind screen - is the best one. Take a good look on that one and see how the air flow works.

The trangia is a really nice camping kit about the size, shape and weight of a football (that would be soccer ball for your Americans!). Although nice, that is perhaps a bit large for your needs. There are lots of different designs for smaller kits, though. I would scrutinize the "mini trangia" and the Swedish mess kit adapted for trangia burner. I haven't tested any of the mini kits, but you'll find lots of reviews online.


My advice is get a dedicated pot+wind screen combination where the wind screen encapsulates the pot almost all the way to the top, with about half an inch of opening, that is stable enough for you to leave it alone while you prepare the rest of the camp. That's the trangia design, and that works.


Myself I'm a big fan of either wood or more technical advanced burners (canned gas or paraffin). But alcohol burners have a lot going for them: Cheap and extremely reliable. Most of the time, the small heat output just means you can enjoy the scenery for a bit longer.

And a lid on the pot. Keeps the heat in. With a lid and a screen you can boil water, without you probably can't.

Personally I prefer solid fuel tabs, because I have a fear of spilling liquid fuels.

+1 on the windscreen. I don't think my White Box would work w/o it. I use a 3 Cup aluminum kettle so I have the lid thing covered.

+1 on on the mini-Trangia. Nested inside my Snowpeak solo cookset, it works fine for occasional or emergency use. The pot, lid and windscreen it comes with work fine, too. But the windscreen is a bit wide for the Snowpeak, so you need to either bend in the top a little or use a different stand. However, a good windscreen of some sort is required.

I like it because it is dead simple, with no moving parts and nothing to clog or break, alcohol is safer to store and transport, and it is cheap, light and small.

+2 on the windscreen. I had one given to me that was custom made out of an aluminum beer bottle. Worked very well. I took it winter camping, and that was a pain. This design had a fiberglass braid around the bottom so you could 1) handle it when it was lit and 2) you put more alcohol on the outside to heat it up quicker.

The steps to light it was:
1) Put alcohol in the center
2) Put alcohol on the braid
3) Light the center
4) Light the braid

Worked very nicely. The only "difficulty" I've had with them is finding something to store the fuel in that doesn't scream "DRINK ME". I've been told that stuff will blind you faster than... I dunno, just don't ever drink the stuff. Finally found some shampoo bottles at Wal-Mart that worked. They had a screw top for filling, and a flip-top for pouring.