East German Esbit Type Stove

http://ilbob.blogspot.com/2012/11/original-german-esbit-style-alcohol.html

LOVE my esbit stove! It goes on every trip and has saved the day many times during fire bans and saved the night many times when I just wanted a hot cup of cocoa without too much fuss.


In this pic, 2 fuel pucks heated a mug of water to perfect drinking temp in about 10 minutes. Next time I use it this way, I'm going to try using a smaller mug and then close the wings of the stove under the rim of the mug, holding it closer to the flame. This mug was just too tall for that.

the other good things about those is that you can use anything that burns for fuel.a dry clean place to put the fuel and a pot stand and your ready to heat/eat

For a couple of years the Esbit was my primary camping/backpacking stove. Very convenient and burns hotter than people think. If the tabs weren't so expensive I'd probably use it more.

What I love about it for prepping is ease of use and shelf-life.

I like the fuel tabs - tough, versatile, and hot, but I don't care for the "stove" - rather clunky and needlessly heavy. You can make far better units from discarded aluminum cans. This is just one more way of paring down the weight of EDC kits.

This my first time trying a stove like this. On the bright side, I have several boxes of various kinds of fuel tablets I managed to acquire somewhere.

I suspect 3 rocks arranged appropriately would work almost as well. Maybe even 3 small piles of dirt.

I did not like that I was unable to light the tablets with a ferro rod.

I read somewhere, maybe here, that you can light the tabs with a ferro rod if you scrape them to make shavings/powder. I've never tried it, but fatwood and shoe fungus work the same way so it makes sense to me.

You can also use the fuel tabs without the stove. They make great fire starters in wet conditions.

Esbit will light pretty easily if you scrape a pile of shavings as you would with a magnesium bar. In my tests the hexamine tablets from Coghlan's also could be lit in this manner. However, the "hexamine" tablets from Bluette were a no-go. I nearly wore my Ranger firesteel in two trying to light it with no luck. It lit with a naked flame from a match pretty readily though.

ESBIT is awesome stuff! It lasts nearly forever (I was told 50+ years...there's WWII stuff that's still usable) and burns hot. I always have some hexamine on me while camping. The smaller 4 gram sticks are also great.

Thanks for the pointer. I went to ebay and purchased the stove (albeit at a bit higher price than you were able to buy yours). I was always a bit dismayed at the price of the esbit and fuel at REI/EMS.

Thanks
Conway Yee

Hexamine can sometimes be difficult to buy at brick store outlets, but I have found an unusual supermarket source called Aldi's in th UK.

Bought 2 Kg of Hexamine for about $15 i.e. about 8 packets each containing 8 Tablets each about twice the size of a conventional Esbit Tab. The packaging fits quite nicely into the British Tommy cooker just like bacpacjac's photo.

I have vacuum sealed the packets as a last ditch fuel source.

I too am a fan of the Esbit cubes. I have had no problems lighting them with a spark if they are crumbled or scraped.

Esbit does a wee stove with cup designed for esbit tablets

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Esbit-CS585HA-585ml-Cookset-Stove/dp/B001UERXOQ/ref=pd_sim_sg_1

They also do a little larger hybrid alcohol stove as well with, which I think has a heat exchanger base on the pot!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Esbit-CS985HA-985ml-Cookset-Stove/dp/B001UEL76Q

Thanks Am_Fear_Liath_Mor! I'll check it out!

If you watch Amazon you can usually pick it up at a decent price. REI actually has a great price on ESBIT, especially if you buy enough to get free shipping.

No luck with that for me. I could not get it to light with a butane lighter until I broke it in half. It lit readily then.

Are you talking about the actual ESBIT stuff, ILBob? That would really surprise me as I've lit it with a ferro rod for years.

I'm pretty sure he is referring to East German mil-surplus hexamine.

Conway Yee

I like it, but one tablet wouldn't bring 3/4 a canteen cup to coffee drinking temp (just lukewarm) in 38-40 degree weather with no wind

So what would it take to boil 16oz of water with this setup?

I checked out a local Aldi's in Connecticut, USA this afternoon. It looks like a surplus store for food. I suspect there is no SET inventory that can be relied upon. Likely, it has whatever foodstuffs that is available in the over-stock type wholesale market.

Conway Yee

Not sure, when it gets chilly again I'll have to do some more testing. While you have a flame there you could supplement the fuel tab with some tinder or kindling.

As it stands, you can store four of the esbit cubes inside a closed stove. There isn't enough room for more cubes, but there is enough room that each of the cubes could have been maybe 10-20% larger and fit inside snugly. I'd imagine that would have at least gotten it simmering in those conditions which is better.

My cubes are several years old though, maybe that made a difference

Did you have a good windscreen? That usually improves efficiency considerably, as does some sort of a lid on the container. I don't think I have ever seen a lid for a GI canteen cup, but one can be easily made from aluminum flashing or even heavy duty foil....

I know of at least TWO lids for a GI canteen cup.

A plastic lid:
http://www.bestglide.com/canteen_cup_lid.html

A stainless steel lid : http://www.thekeytosurvival.com/storetitles/stovescookware/heavyboilcover.html

Neither lid is USGI.

It would appear neither lid will fit in a USGI canteen cover along with the canteen, canteen cup and stove. I am sticking with aluminum flashing for this exact reason.

Thanks.
Conway Yee

There wasn't any breeze that I could feel, but the best I had windscreen wise was my legs on either side of it lol. I agree having a lid probably would have helped, and they do make them for the GI canteen cup as Yee pointed out.

I wonder if I should invest instead in a simple alcohol stove, or maybe see what I can do with sterno.

Maybe I am missing something, and for that I apologize, but if this stove cannot be counted on to reliably boil 16 oz. of water, then I'm not going to carry it no matter how small and convenient it is. My primary go to is a Jetboil which is incredibly reliable, but the fuel is expensive and bulkly. A backup stove would also be nice, but I'm having trouble understanding the draw of the Esbit.

I do not use the esbit as a stove, only as tinder to start a fire. I will either cook on a canister fuel stove or a fire.

Military canteen cups are not particularly efficient. Use a Primus Tea Kettle (wide hard anodised aluminium base) and use 2x14 gram Esbit Tabs. Use a wind screen as well such as a titanium foil or the heavier Aluminuim type.

You might just be able to boil enough water (800ml) for a Mountain House and a cup of tea with 2x14 gram Esbit tabs.

From my experience Esbit is more bulky and expensive compared with the Butane/propane cartridges if being used for more than a couple of days.

And Esbit is more reliable than certain gas stoves especially over a wider range of temperatures.

Problems with Esbit or Hexamine stoves are that they are messy and smelly and for the stove to work efficiently they have to be protected from the wind as with the case of alcohol stoves. They are also slow and inefficient compared to something like the Jetboil and they cannot be used inside a tent for example.

Esbit (hexamine) will work reasonably well in sub freezing temperatures compared to other gas stoves (without a liquid feed) and can be useful for the very lightest day hikes where an Esbit stove can weigh as little as around 12 grams and the fuel required around 60-80 grams for a days use. But when you include the windscreen and pot i.e. say a Primus Kettle @150 grams and a Ti windscreen @50 grams - Total Weight would be around 300 grams. A $149 Jetboil SOL ti with a 100gm gas cartridge would weigh around 90 grams heavier.

If you run out of fuel, you could break up the last Esbit tab to use a fire starter and still continue to use the Primus Kettle.

Hexamine stoves are very cheap as well i.e.

http://www.strikeforcesupplies.co.uk/index.php?method=stock&id=2002&from=63

The British Army Tommy Cooker for £3 will boil a Gallon of Water (even with the less efficient Hexamine/wax mixture used). They were usually supplied with a 24hr UK Army Operational Ration Pack which was equivalent to 3 MREs and you could actually boil water for a hot cup of tea. Try doing that with a Chemical heater bag.

It is time in invoke Hikermor's Law - "The more varied outdoors circumstances you experience, the more stoves you will acquire." Eventually you will possess the entire spectrum, ranging from Esbit and alcohol (for balmy summer afternoons) to canisters to roaring liquid fueled apparatii (actually blast furnaces in disguise) - great for Antarctic blizzards and melting glaciers. Each type has its optimum zone where it works quite well and dependably.

Most of the time I use my faithful canister Pocket Rocket, but I don't do extreme conditions anymore. I usually throw in some Esbit cubes or alcohol, even on simple warm day hikes. If I had just one stove, it would be a liquid fueled model, probably something akin to the classic Svea or Primus, rigs which have kept me fed, warm, and happy in fairly tough circumstances. They are a bit heavier than necessary in mild conditions, but they are convenient, with minor environmental impact.

I like th esbit because it's an inexpensive, simple, lightweight, versatile and pretty durable piece of kit that heats things up pretty well. I can use it per directions, use the fuels tabs without the stove, or I skip the tabs and use the esbit stove like a hobob stove for a small wood fire.

That said, hikermor's law comes into play. I'm thinking about getting a Jet Boil as my back-up (to the campfire) for the colder months of the year, when I really want to eat something hot and substantial. My main cooking method other than flame roasted, is boiling, so while the esbit is good, the Jet Boil sounds better. (That is except for the weight, size and cost, of course.)

Of course, the reality for me is that I've so very rarely needed anything more a campfire or my esbit, that I'm having a hard time justfying the cost. I've owned a micro stove for 10 or 11 years, and I've only used it three or four times. I having a hard time justifying purchasing another one.

Another way the esbit shines through is that I can store it in my pack in my vehicle and not worry about it being affected by temperture fluxuations. I've never felt comfortable leaving liquid or gas fuel in the vehicle. Not sure if that's a justified concern or not, but it is another factor in my decision to carry an esbit.

I used to use Esbit stoves years ago, but I was just never really happy with their performance. They're basically the same as putting your cup/pot/pan over a fire. You don't really get much adjustment to the flame.

After using them for a while I bought an MSR PocketRocket, which I was a lot happier with. It's just as convenient to use, but has a much more adjustable flame. Because of that, I find I use less fuel overall and get better performance when I'm cooking something beyond just needing to heat up some water.

The only downside to them is they start to struggle a bit once the temperature gets down to about 15*F or so, but if I warm it up in my coat pocket before hand it will work well enough to heat up a quick meal for myself.

Thanks IL Bob! My kids and nephew are planning a survival weekend this summer. As a Christmas gift, I want to make them each a simple kit with some basics for that adventure. I was re-reading this thread last night and decided that esbit stoves will make a great addition.

Thanks all!

Whew, that's a relief. I thought it was just me.

Now, when I "need" another stove (or better, an antique stove that requires extensive fettling), I have hard references to back me up. "Honey, I'm not a magpie. It's important to optmize my gear. It's Hikermor's Law, and he's a SAR guy who's done hundreds of searches in some crazy terrain. It has nothing to do with bright shiny coolness."

(I'm rehearsing, can't you tell?)

I tried it out again today. About 8 ounces of water in the same steel cup. This time it was about 15 degrees warmer outside, less wind, and I made a lid for the cup with some heavy foil.

I broke one of the fuel tablets in half and lit it. The water was warming up but not close to hot enough when the first tablet started to be used up so I put a second one in.

It came close to boiling, I could see bubbles and steam when Wilma (my hiking buddy and favorite beagle girl) jumped up on the picnic table. You can imagine what happened.

i think sometimes we expect to much out of these sort of folding gizmos.the Esbit is not the only one.made to provide a GI,of sorts,some sort of means to heat a cup of water they are not going to be a real stove.warm water is better than nothing in a pinch.

One of the things I have noticed about virtually all backpacking and "survival" type cook sets is that they designed around boiling water. If you want to actually cook anything, they are not all that much help.

Actual cooking is a lot harder than boiling water.

because cooking is hard you don't want to waste the time and energy in real survival,just a warm/hot pot of filling something that full of carbs is what you want.
fancy stuff like rat on a stick with cattail roots is hobo cooking.

My wife said the sexiest thing to me today: " Mikey, wouldn't it be fun to buy a couple of new handguns?"

She is the best thing that ever happened to me, and by far my greatest survival asset.

Some kinds of cooking are not that hard if you have a campfire. But the fact that so many people seem to focus on stoves rather than fires suggests to me that they have abandoned cooking over campfires. Maybe because campfires are banned in many places and often discouraged where not banned.

Personally, I do not eat carbs at all. I have been low carb for 3 and a half years.

I am pretty much convinced that the primary reason for carb loading by hikers and such is that it is the only practical way to make food on the trail by boiling water (pasta, rice, oatmeal, etc.). The ultralight hiking fad is also part of it. Frying pans are heavy.

You're one lucky (insert expletive here). And there's gun show at the Fairgrounds next weekend.

I hate you.

Mine wants a pink handgun, saw one in a gun store counter.

==============================
Sounds like mine,she wants everything from .22 to .45,and if the state didnt make it so tough she would have got it,instead got her a lot more archery stuff,scope for her crossbow,etc etc etc (whistles,fenix lights,eton radio,emergency battery powered plug in lights that come on when power goes out,batteries,charger.... on and on,some for the both of us,she loves this stuff.)

Our power went out last night,had like a bazillion light/power options,radio...she was smiling.

Point being,I ordered a LOT of stuff from advice from users here,thank you,youve opened new horizons for things I hadnt considered before.