Alcohol Stove

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.

Have you considered an Esbit stove? Not alcohol although I have heard of people making an insert, it works great for the application you mention (hunters pack). Keep a couple of fuel cubes with you and augment with twigs. I have been playing with the stove frame and small chunks of Fastfire cubes to start a fire and add twigs on.

Here is a blog post I did on the Esbit:

http://austereprovisions.blogspot.com/2009/12/esbit-stove-on-shelves-now.html

At first I carried my alcohol fuel in a smaller aluminum MSR type fuel bottle with a special cap made to be used as a fuel spigot. (from rei.com) When reaching in my bag i could feel the fuel bottle by the top of the cap. By comparison I also carried my field brandy in a 1L aluminum flask with a normal cap.

However i found I don't use crinkly plastic bottles in the field. So a 16oz water bottle will be used for nothing else but Denatured alcohol. Unless someone is reaching into my ruck for water and bypassing the drink tube or Nalgene bottle both on the outside and somehow missing the giant warning signs and 1 oz dash marks on the modified water bottle, no one will mistake it for potable water.

Here is a previous thread on alcohol stoves for alcohol stove cold weather use.

http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=192706&page=1

with a field test review of the Vargo Triad stove

http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=187706

Ah, I meant to add to that thread. I usually do what I say I will do, however, after offering to test the Trangia in -11 degrees C weather I'm afraid the weather warmed up. It hovered around -4 degrees C for a while and now it's spring. Sorry chaps.

A

One of the virtues of the mini-Trangia is that it can contain its own somewhat limited fuel supply, about enough to boil two nice cups of tea. Just unscrew the cap and ignite. Just be sure that the O-ring is not cracked and allowing fuel to leak into your pot. Learned that the hard way....

Don't EVER put out the flame by putting the lid on. The heat destroys the O-rings (or so I'm told, I haven't used brass burners for years - the alternatives gives so much more pyromanic fun... ).

Luckily, alcohol is not poisonous the same way as paraffin or white gas, or fuel tabs. I would never drink from a pot that just had some paraffin sloshing inside it (the effect is immediate, highly embarrasing and inconvenient). But I would just rinse and use a pot after alcohol spill.

Tell me - does the additives in de-naturated alcohol (supposed to make you NOT wanna drink it) flavor the food and water made from that pot?

I've never had an issue with denatured alcohol tinting the taste of the water I boil.

The only major trade off I will concede is that you cannot turn (at least) a WhiteBox stove off. Once the waters boiled you take the container off and it has to flame out. Makes for a interesting few seconds for that fuel to cook off.

I used alcohol stoves fairly regularly for a few years, and no go between that & canister stoves. The fuel has never tainted food-it vaporizes before touching anything you would put in your mouth, and I ALWAYS cook with a lid on, due to the relatively low heat output, as mentioned. So, to set your mind at ease-it only smells bad before you burn it

As to using the brass lid on a trangia stove to put the flame out-remove the oring. Simple enough. I do this all the time with my trangia. Just make sure you put it in a pocket or something, so you dont lose it.

Actually it was a question for Hikermor or anybody else who has spilled trangia alcohol inside his pot. Is a simple rinse & repeat of the pot enough to get rid of of any taste issues? I certainly would not want the taste of our local alcohol de-naturalization chemicals in my tea.


I am not at all concerned about food in a pot tasting weird or being dangerous because of the fuels in use, being alcohol or any other fuel. I will not roast my hot dog on any flame, though...

So, does anyone have a good, affordable source for a trangia stove?

Blake
www.outdoorquest.biz

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.

The Denatured Alcohol Regulations 2005
Denatured or industrial alcohol: a treatise on the history, manufacture
DENATURED ALCOHOL (TOXIC) | CAMEO Chemicals | NOAA
The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition. - By Deborah Blum
PART 21--FORMULAS FOR DENATURED ALCOHOL AND RUM
The Straight Dope: Can you get drunk on Listerine? How about vanilla extract?

I bought an Trangia (Austrian mess kit) and I have used it on many different occasions. I personally dont like the thought of using any petrolium type of fuel. I have used Everclear with pretty good results. It probably doesnt burn as hot as some of the different fuels out there, but, I am not ingesting anything that will make me sick. Not only that but if I take a swig of my fuel, it makes others think I am the baddest Son of a #^& on the trail. Like I said there are probably better fuels, but I can attest to the everclear. just my .02