Jim! How could you discuss this subject and not mention the good old Trangia? I have used it for years whenever I wanted a simple, dependable, reasonably lightweight stove.
The Trangia 25 and Trangia 27 are indeed fabulous,
highly reliable cooking systems. I wouldn't exactly call them light weight though, and they are bulky.
I have some reservations about cold weather performance...
Exactly. The question posed to me was "What's the Best Stove for *
all* Conditions?" I personally can't feel comfortable recommending an alcohol stove for cold weather. For snow melting, alcohol takes an absurdly long time. It's not really practical. In really cold conditions alcohol is slow to vaporize. Remember, you're not burning liquid alcohol; you're burning vapor.
...although if it's good enough for the Swedish Army, it ought to be good enough for me.
Hmmm. Well, first recall the KAP Arctic stove, the "Holy Grail" of extreme conditions/extreme cold weather stoves, was developed for the Swedish military precisely because alcohol stoves were inadequate.
Second, recall that for cold weather cooking in conditions less extreme than those calling for a KAP Arctic, the Swedish military often used the Optimus 111.
Yes, the primary issue for the Swedish military was a larger-than-civilian Trangia burner with a distinctive Swedish military mess kit, but even the Swedes themselves didn't try to use them in the dead of winter, particularly in the far north.
HJ