I believe with less water, and a good windscreen, the Vargo Decagon stove will eventually bring the water to a boil. It won't be quick, and it will be temperature sensitive, and it is not easily regulated, but it will work, and it is quite portable.

Unlike the tip-easy trangia, the Decagon has a much wider base plate, so the stove itself is not easily tipped, but a pot sitting on top would still have the same problem if it's diameter is much more than two inches.

I have in mind a couple different designs for a more stable and hotter burning alcohol stove. I am thinking a donut shape about 4" diameter, with an indented ring around the middle of the top part, roughly 1/3" deep. Inside the indented ring is a row of perforations, and a small dent perpendicular to the indented ring intersecting at each hole. You should be able to double the fuel capacity and the btus/min enough to get a liter of water boiling in about 6 minutes. You could also build a windscreen around the outside, tangent to the outer diameter of the donut, going up vertically. Maybe I will do some autocad tomorrow at work.

It would also be nice to find a packable, portable rocket stove. I may have to work on that as well.

If you have a trangia and use it as it is design to (the 25 and 27 models), not the useless ultralight version. Than the setup is almost as stable as a big rock on flat ground. Not the 25 and 27 are not super light, but very efficient, stable and reliable.

You can take your pick of 3oz burner heads for canister stove - MSR's Pocket Rocket and Micro Rocket.as well as Snow Peak's model, the Giga Power. All tuck away nicely and are blazing hot, except when it gets really cold.

I love my GigaPower stove; pair it with something like the GSI Soloist (my choice) or Minimalist and you get your stove, fuel & pot all in one compact package.

I like my Jetboil stove. Boils fast and it is not too heavy.

(Except when it gets really cold. Then I go back to my good old Wisperlite burning white gas.)

A Vango Powerex Kettle may help with the fuel efficiency with the decagon stove.

http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/vango-powerex-kettle.html

I have put a spare Mil spec Trangia burner in with a Ghillie Adventurer Kettle + Cook Kit. A 500ml Trangia bottle fits into the Chimney along with some fat wood stick + tinder + firesteel.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trangia-0-5L-Bottle-Safety-Valve/dp/B000AR7966/ref=pd_sim_sg_20

Benjamin .. quick hint. I have fooled around with homemade stoves (fueled by alcohol) for urban survival ... i mostly used them to boil a small amount of water for tea or soup. the vapors from the alcohol can condense on cooler stuff above the stove. I dunno if that will happen with a professional alcohol stove. maybe not. it does with homemade stoves made out of Coke cans. so if your pot containing the water (to be boiled) is open, you can wind up with some alcohol in your water. the moral is - make sure you cover up the container you are heating ... add a lid :-)

Pete2

I could the potential for that happening. The Stanley pot I used has a lid, and you have to use it to get the temp up, so pretty safe there, but a sierra cup might could have such an issue in the right circumstances. Methanol would be bad news.

Any time you attempt to boil water without a lid, you are wasting time and fuel. Foil works as well as anything.

I began looking at home-made alcohol stoves when I read on another forum of the long distance hiker (name escapes me) who took a pole of hikers on the Appalachian trail a dozen years or so ago. He just asked them what kind of cooking system they used and whether they had problems with their choice of stove. He reported the hikers using homemade alcohol stoves experienced zero failures, all the other systems; gas, butane, wood etc. had some degree of difficulty or failure. And as pointed out, a homemade stove is essentially free.