Comms comment about fuel use is bang on.
You need to gauge how much fuel you need before filling and lighting the stove.
If you don't put enough in you might not have enough burn time to cook what you have in the pot.
Refilling a hot stove is not fun.

If you overfill the stove you usually end up wasting fuel.
Either you let it burn off or (if you can extinguish the stove) you spill it trying to put it back in the fuel bottle.

edit.
I have seen the Trangia stove with the basic windscreen advertised for under 20 dollars.
You might want to ask at REI or a similar outfitter near you.
For example the Trangia Westwind is between $13.29 and $24.85 depending on the seller.
(Westwind is the basic trangia stove with a windscreen/potstand that is made up of three flat pieces of sheet metal.)

MH, sorry, misread that. I have had some leakage from one Trangia into the stove carrier-it evaporates pretty quick though, and I never noticed a different taste. There is always the option of burning it away too, I suppose

Why would you try to put it back in the fuel bottle? The stove itself should be water-tight. That's why there's an o-ring in the lid. I thought one of the virtues of a Trangia is that for short excursions you can fill it with fuel and then not carry a separate fuel bottle at all.

(Of course, this isn't true of the home-made alcohol stoves.)

This is quite true, but there are cautions. Be sure the O-ring is not cracked, and it is best not to place the stove in your cookpot.

I once had arranged a climbing date with a gorgeous lady. We were going on a two day excursion on a local technical peak with some friends. We made camp that evening after the approach hike, and made dinner in my cook kit. It tasted a bit odd, but it was all the food we had. In the morning my lady friend felt a bit under the weather, and remained in base camp,unable to witnes my stunning performance on the final crux pitch...

Oh, what might have been! All because of a cracked Trangia O-ring.....

Now, if you do keep the stove out of your pots and pans, leaking alcohol is not nearly as nasty as other liquid fuels. I would still keep it away from climbing ropes, harnesses, and slings.

Sounds like food grade ethanol would have saved the trip.

Very true. And there is a lesson here. I am pretty sure the reason we didn't carry ethanol was because of the initial cost. In view of the consequences of leakage and the even worse potential results of ingesting methanol, food grade alcohol would have been ultimately more satisfactory and cheaper in the long run. To say nothing of being more versatile.

I am pretty sure you would have to drink a decent amount of methanol to achieve a health risk. The tiny amount smeared on you cook pot after fuel leakage would not be in any way dangerous, even with methanol.

The additives, though... any methanol for sale should - in my opinion, that is - have additives to make sure no one in their right minds would ever want to drink it. As nasty tasting as you can make it. Possibly something to make you throw up as well.


Where I live, all alcohol sold over the counter for burning and cleaning purposes is treated the same way. Food proof (96%) alcohol is tightly regulated on a "need" basis - there are certain processes and purposes where the additives can foul up an experiment. Of course, any chemist will know that you need lots and lots of the food grade stuff to clean Kalman Filters....

"Denatured Alcohol" is non less poisonous ethanol with about 10 percent methanol added to make it un less drinkable. That way it can be sold as a solvent without being subject to the excise taxes that apply to liquor. Ironically, ethanol is an antidote for methanol poisoning.

No idea if you can tell the a difference by taste. I do know that you don't want to get a lungful of hot methanol fumes.

What you write makes me shiver...

Around here, the really though and desperate alcoholics will drink denatured alcohol, despite the nasty tasting denaturization chemicals. One particular chain store had a supplier which put methanol in their batch of denatured alcohol. Result: Several miserable deaths and even more poor fellows blinded.


Don't EVER consider drinking methanol. Methanol is deadly poison that will kill you or make your blind - it is NOT a "less drinkable" alcohol substitute. As far as I know, there is no taste difference or other way of telling the two apart than looking at the label.

The irony for the outdoors community... that denatured alcohol from that particular vendor had earned a reputation among backpackers for producing less sooth than other kinds of denatured alcohol. Now we know why...

Sorry, I wasn't being clear.

What I originally wrote was:

But then it occoured to me that ethanol is not exactly inert either. Thus the irony. (and the confusion)

I didn't know that it was denatured with alternate substances also. I would agree that it would be better to make it unpalatable rather than deadly. With methanol you get a death sentence for tax evasion.