UKC

What's the current thoughts on really lightweight stoves? Years ago when I was doing mountain marathons, people were using solid fuel things. For a 2 day trip, with a need to boil a bit of water for dehydrated food, where weight is really important, what would you take? 

Speedster stove

https://www.speedsterstoves.co.uk/

and a Vesuvius windshield

https://valleyandpeak.co.uk/collections/stoves/products/vesuv-outdoor-titan...

pretty good set up

Is he still using my Caldera Clone script to make his stoves...?

https://zenstoves.net/PotStands-Conical.htm#ConeTemplates

7g red bull conic inner wall burner. 37g windshield/pan support (for Alpkit MyTiMug)

I assume not - the stoves are just wee aluminium cans with something inside to hold the meths. His windshields are hex shaped rather than cones.

Ah; on reflection, I maybe mistaking him for one of the other 'cottage industry' types; it's a long time since I was playing with stoves...

I really ought to find something to do with the hundreds of burners I made, other than recycling them... I'd give them away, but postage, etc. would be tedious.

Make your own Coke can meths burner stove. Plenty suggestions in this thread for a windshield/pot stand. 

And how light is this sort of setup compared to a tiny gas canister, titanium pot, and pocket rocket type thing? I've no experience of liquid stoves like this. How much would you carry for boiling say 6 pots of water? 

Big fan of speedster here. Small burner, foldable pot stand/wind guard thing, little bottle of 95% cleaning alcohol or medical cleaning alcohol (75ish%). It just works, and you don't have to play the guessing game of is my cannister too empty, etc. Pot stand is effective in wind but if it's really cold it really helps to have alcy and stove thing in your pocket. Stove has a wick and screw on lid so no alcohol slop wastage or spillage as with the home made tinny version/design. I also love that alcohol stoves are silent, personally. 

Having fired up the spreadsheet:

stove 16g

windshield 26g

foil for ground 2g

pan (evernew) 130g

total weight 174g

Fuel wise, depending on how much you are actually boiling, I usually budget for 30ml of meths for a brew and a meal combined, so between 90 and 180ml for your criteria, always have some left at the end of a trip so maybe need to work on my calculations here.

meths has a density of 0.8g/ml, so weight of meths 72-144g, container about 30g

so total weight for this setup about 348g with lots of fuel, 276 at a minimum.

vs

small gas canister 213g, pan 130g = 343g, good luck with finding a 5g gas stove! My primus one is 103g, I can see on Ultralightoutdoor gear one down at 26g, but most 45-75g. 

all that said, I prefer meths most of the year as it’s quiet, and the difference in boil times is negligible, it seems less wasteful and cheaper fuel wise.

If you're just boiling water, a meths stove will be the lightest. Been a while since I used one, and it was always in a cone setup for maximum efficiency, but I'd imagine ~250ml would cover you. For a couple of days solo, I'd usually just take a 50ml squeezy bottle.

I always enjoyed the aesthetic and setting up of the meths stove as well. There is something about the caldera cone which makes cooking more enjoyable than a gas rocket.

Edit: forgot to add that I always used a reflectix caddy (would be a pouch with dehydrated packets), which basically meant I didn't have to do any cooking/simmering. Just get it to boiling and then leave it in the caddy for 10 mins. 

For a mountain marathon, don't take a pan. Have a takeaway on the Friday night and use the foil container instead. Don't wash it out so your pan is pre seasoned.

Good point. I have a 44g one from Fire Maple, but the flame pattern is terrible and it has no wind protection whatsoever, so I prefer to carry a 20g heavier Soto Windmaster.

And you're missing another advantage of your meths setup: it includes a windshield. Whereas using a canister top stove with a wrap around windshield is dangerous, so they're really only usable under shelter. (I do have a windshield from Primus that clips on top of a gas canister and works well, but it's heavy and not all stoves fit inside it)

The lightest possible for a single or two overnight in summer is to use:

Titanium trivet 12 grams (example https://ultralightoutdoorgear.co.uk/eby258-titanium-trivet-2)

Titanium cup 51 grams (example: https://ultralightoutdoorgear.co.uk/eca530-ti-400fd-cup)

2 small hexamine tablets per cup boil should be enough  or more than enough (if no draught and a lid) - Tablets are 4 gram each if you get small ones (example https://esbit.de/en/products/solid-fuel-tablets?variant=49199929360713)

Disposable lighter, approx 20 grams (or matches and striker)

This works in summer to heat water to rehydrate a pouch of dried food or make a hot drink. But... It's not serious cooking!!  if you depend on it like winter you might die, and you need absolutely no draught, so inside a tent awning or in a bothy away from draughts. Also it's hard to drink anything actually hot from a metal cup without burning your lips (maybe take a paper cup also) and making a little lid for it (I made one with 2 layer gaffer tape) is needed to get a boil with minimal hexamine. If you can take the "correct" number of hex tablets that saves weight, but you might find you're one short if you can't avoid draughts

The lightest gas stove I've found is the BRS 50000 at 26g. It's not the most robust looking stove I've seen. I wouldn't want to put a very large pan on it either. 

Yes, I missed the windshield on purpose to make the gas set up as light as possible - my home made one weighs 20g for the primus, so not a lot more, but handy in wind. 

The canister is dead weight in a gas system. And a relatively high dead weight, compared to a lightweight plastic bottle for meths.

With liquid fuels, you can take just the amount of fuel you need, since it is easy to measure out.

All sorts of stove making info disappeared in a puff when the Outdoors Magic forums got taken down by the new owner.

Backpackinglight.com MYOG section has a lot of this sort of stuff.

There's always the Squeezebox Stove, my CoLab09 winning design...

But about 50% of the weight in alcohol fuels is "dead weight" due to it's terrible energy density and it doesn't take long for gas to be the easy winner. Especially if there is even the slightest wind where it may never be possible to ever boil the water unless you want to carry a bulky cook system.

I tested boiling 1l of water (split into three batches) using an Esbit cook system, a Trangia burner on a wire stand and a Camping Gaz cooker in complete windstill (my workshop) and for a 2 day trip the Esbit was the best weight, the third day the Trangia overtook and after that it was gas all the way. Outdoors with no discernable wind the Trangia (with a foil windbreak) was unable to boil the water, the pot dissapating heat faster than it was produced.

my speedster stove in it's bag with windshield, stand and snuffer + a plastic bottle of 8 oz bioethanol (no idea what that is in Ml)  = 372g 

My BRS gas stone, home made windshield and a small gas canister with 195g of gas in it = 252g 

Enough gas for a two night trip. Probably a bit more meths than you'd need for the same trip. 

Re bulky cook system - the vesuv windshield I mentioned upthread weighs 26g and lives inside the pan - it’s a combined pot stand and windshield - which I agree is critical to a meths system.

Chris Townsend seems to have shifted to gas with heat exchanger pots and seems to think they work out very efficient for long trips

As I said in a completely windstill environment the alcohol burner only outperformed the other two on a weight/boil criteria on the third day, no other (and that was using a commercial Esbit cooker). Simple physics tells us that alcohol is a loser almost the moment you light it.

I've done the maths, a long time ago. I concluded gas is never lighter.

It's up to you what you wish to believe, and what works for you.

I'm also fuel agnostic; I've got petrol, gas and meths stoves. I use meths and gas. I use gas for controllability when car camping. I've done plenty of experimentation whilst making meths burners and pan supports.

You are wrong, the gas cylinders I usually use , including the cylinder weight contains more energy than the equal weight of alcohol without a container.

You are wrong, the gas cylinders I usually use , including the cylinder weight contains more energy than the equal weight of alcohol without a container. To say nothing of the burner efficiency.

Few fire dragon tablets (in cling film), aluminium 'tray' for the pot (Chinese takeaway style) and a little (good quality) tin foil. Tin foil goes under the tablet, pan supports and windbreaker with rocks, turf, peat or whatever is around. Once food/water is ready gently fold the tinfoil to smother the tablet and once cold can be put away and reused. Bonus advantage is that towards the end of it, all you are carrying is a foil tray, some tin foil and some scrap clingfilm

Or just take a little gas and stove. Faster and more convenient than meths for barely 30/50g difference.

That's doubly interesting. What canisters do you use?

Going back to the original question - if it’s only 2 days and weight is really important, then the lightest stove is no stove. Dehydrated food reconstitutes just fine with cold water, albeit it takes a bit longer (45 mins or so?)

Either Camping Gaz CV470 or 300, even looking at my large bottles for domestic cooking the relationship between fuel weight/container weight is roughly the same i.e for my usual CV 470 it is 222g for empty and a nominal 450g of gas (they are usually around 460g). At very nearly double the energy for mixed gas compared with alcohol you have to be talking about miniscule quantities before alcohol takes the lead, as I said, for me this is three days use. Weekend camping with minimal fuel use (basically just coffee) then I go to Esbit, otherwise straight to gas.

That at my age every minute waiting for my Trangia to actually make my coffee in the morning is something I value is another factor!

I dug out the analysis from 15 years ago.

I looked at the system weights of a Pocket Rocket and windshield with 230g PowerGas canister, vs one of my Caldera Clones and a standard 500ml bottle of meths, and used the burn weights I had measured for each system (24g/l and 16g/l for meths and gas systems), in identical conditions. I wasn't trying to prove a case either way; that would be fooling myself.

I had expected gas to 'win' quite quickly, but was surprised when it only broke even after about three weeks. I am not lucky enough to have trips of that length. The ability to take a small bottle of meths for a weekend trip, rather than the mass and bulk of a gas canister, plus the weight of the burner, compared to one of my red bull 'inverted conic' burners, is the clincher for me when doing dehydrated food cooking.

While we have drifted off the OP's requirements (where undoubtedly a few hex tablets and a pot would suffice I guess for what you do alcohol would suffice. My camping is somewhat different since it usually calls for three mugs of coffee in the mornings then actually cooking (or at least heating some pre-cooked food and cooking some rice or dumplings, bacon and eggs or similar. Since I don't actually carry it all on my back some of your considerations aren't so important either!

There is probably a reason that most people on the long trails in the US are using alcohol stoves. 

It's certainly more accessible (you can get gas line cleaner at every shop) but enough people are saying it's lightest without much argument.

Now given the re-supply periods are usually 3-5 days, maybe that needs to be factored in.

The only downside usually brought out is the lack of variability in cooking (cannot really simmer) but if you're just blasting water then it's not applicable. 

Or not! In a 2023 survey of Appalachian Trail through-hikers of 409 respondents 370 used gas canister stoves, 21 no stove, 10 alcohol, 4 liquid fuel and one wood. The earlier surveys show roughly the same.

Another 7g or lighter simmer burner solves that one.

I like my various mini meths burners for short, lightweight trips. They're satisfyingly low tech and feel less wasteful than gas. Gas is quicker but what's a minute or two in a day?

I've done the maths too, and there are actually plenty of conditions where gas is actually lighter, given its higher energy per g et cetera. It's mostly a see-saw curve and it really depends on the length of your trip. That's even before going into the inherent efficiency of different burners, as obviously something like a MSR Reactor with gas will be much better in winter than any meth burner...

See my graph above.

That's a 432g stove, though...

We always need to consider the system weight, and other system conditions.

Meths isn't great in winter; the slow burn means time to lose heat to the environment. Butane on its own isn't great, either, so butane/propane and liquid feed gas is my choice fro winter; propane provides the pressure, and prevents the issue of fractionation (preferential release of propane) of the mix when using a gas-only feed.

I don’t know if 100 g canisters were available 15 years ago, but if you recalculate with that amount, I think it will turn out in favour of gas. 

Unlikely, since the smaller the can, the greater the ratio of surface area (and therefore weight) to volume (square vs cube law). So bigger canisters are more weight efficient.

They've been around for ages, used the small gas canisters with a horrific flamethrower of a stove bodged inside a Markill Stormy back in the day.. that was more like >30 years ago than 15 🤣. Thank goodness for the commercially made things these days (jetboil, primus etc)

I walked the TMB last year and I got quite nerdy about weight. Here's a screenshot of my lighterpack.com section regarding food and cooking. I hope it helps. 

Even the 100g canisters slightly edge alcohol on energy/weight, you have gain elsewhere.

Surprised by that because I did it in 2016 and barely saw a gas stove. It was virtually impossible to get gas canisters in a lot of places. 

Maybe section hikers who arrive with their one canister? Certainly most of the thru hikers were on alcohol stoves. And that figure barely makes 10% of the hikers anyway.

And as for simmer rings, I have one and it stays at home. Never got the hang of making it worthwhile, and it's hard to chuck onto a red hot stove!

Hexamine tabs are illegal now in UK

I use toaks siphon stove and toaks 750 wide pot and vesuv titanium windshield https://valleyandpeak.co.uk/collections/vesuv-outdoors/products/vesuv-outdo... which is clearly a capt paranoia rip off, (you are a legend mate and I'd make my own but effort)

As I said; you need to consider the entire system (fuel, container, stove, windshield, heat exchanger if one is used). The only gas stove lighter than a red bull burner I know of is a terrifying 6g thing made by Roger Caffin on backpackinglight.com, which wasn't really practical. My use of the 85g Pocket Rocket seemed fair to me at the time; light, compact & simple, and I owned one).

As for the 2x energy density thing, comparing the LHV figures of propane/butane vs 90/10 ethanol/methanol, they are 48.8 and 48.0 kJ/g, and 26.3kJ/g. So, not quite 2x, but close (which I've never disputed: again, I wasn't trying to prove anything).

The 230g PowerGas canister I used weighed 367g, so 137g for the canister. A 500ml (~400g) meths bottle, as purchased, weighed 41g.

So, 100g gross propane (being generous) & canister contains 3.06MJ

100g of gross meths & canister contains 2.39MJ

So the weight disparity (for those fuels & containers) is only a factor of 1.28

[edit: d'oh! correcting my gross/net...]

The 2023 PCT survey is even clearer, 98.1% of respondents used gas.

Ethanol sold to the public is only 94/96% alcohol, the rest is the agent used to make it undrinkable.

You think I don't know this stuff...? In my 'combustion' folder, I've got a copy of 'The Denatured Alcohol Regulations 2005', a 16-page, rivetting read... I've calculated the LHV and HHV of fuels from the bond enthalpies...

But the denaturants are flammable, and have LHVs. That's why I used a 90/10 ethanol/methanol mix as an example. All the denaturants (barring the bittering agent and methylene blue of old spec British Standard meths) are flammable.

ps. you may also be confusing the fact that you cannot distill ethanol higher than 96%, due to physical chemistry. And it absorbs water from the atmosphere. If you want 'purer' ethanol than that, you have to dry it chemically. But that's a separate issue from denaturing to avoid Excise Duty.

Really????? Oh no! Is that right?

Edit: you sure, I still see it for sale

https://www.camping-online.co.uk/camping-stoves-and-gas-cookers/solid-fuel-...

I suspect those are not the original 'hexistove' tabs; they were like expanded polystyrene, were carcinogenic, and covered everything in soot. Disgusting things. I lived near an army training ground, and we regularly picked up the debris left behind.

Right, that's enough stove nerding. Time to close the folder again and seal it for another 15 years...

Sure, but for a few days hike, starting out with a small canister for would save 150 g.

Likely because a lot of the western parks have very tight restrictions on stoves (i.e they must be on/off and not risk spilling combustible material), which virtually rules out alcohol stoves. Whether that has since been wheeled out further east and is having an influence, I don't know.

I did a lot of research for my hike and generally went with the kit everyone else was using and recommending on the whiteblaze forum at the time. I also know what I saw while I was out there for 5 months. But hey, your survey says otherwise.  

The problem is when they put in a fire restriction the authorities ban alcohol stoves (and hexamine etc), for example a quick search tells us that for 965 miles of the Appalachian trail they were prohibited in Nov 2016. So either you go when there is no chance of fires or you go to plan B.

I think there was a big fire in the Smokies that year (ages after I'd passed through), so I can see them putting restrictions in. I think they had a temporary ban on open fires after that year also. If legislation has changed, it may go some way to explaining why the current surveys and my experience are at odds.