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.