Chris Townsend

by The Backpacker's Handbook - 3rd Ed

  Alcohol is the only liquid fuel not derived from petroleum, which makes it more environmentally friendly than other fuels. It’s also the only liquid fuel that burns unpressurized, which makes it safer, and thus appealing to those who find most stoves a little scary. It’s clean, too, evaporating quickly when spilled. For these reasons, it’s a good fuel for cooking in a tent vestibule. It’s not a hot fuel, however—it produces roughly half as much heat per fluid ounce as gasoline or kerosene. I use 4 to 5 fluid ounces a day, so a quart lasts about a week, which makes it heavier than other fuels to carry on long trips. Trangia says that a quart of alcohol will boil twenty quarts of water, which fits with my experience, since I boil 2 to 4 quarts a day. As alcohol stoves heat up the output increases, so the first pot boiled will take longer than the second, and that one will take longer than the third. That’s as long as you protect the stove from the wind, of course. Strong gusts can blow out an alcohol stove.

  Alcohol blackens pans, which many people don’t like. This doesn’t bother me; in theory, blackened pans should absorb heat faster than shiny silver ones, so I make no attempt to clean off the black. Once pans have cooled, the soot rarely comes off on your hands, unlike the soot from campfires.

  One joy of alcohol stoves is that they are absolutely silent—you can hear water coming to a boil and also the wind in the trees, birdsong, the hum of insects, and other sounds that are drowned out by the roar of most stoves. Care is needed when using alcohol in daylight because the pale blue flame is invisible in bright light. Most stoves burn for only half an hour at most on one filling (depending on the wind and the use of any simmer device), so refilling while the stove is in use is sometimes necessary. However, inadvertently refilling a still-burning stove from a fuel bottle because you think it’s empty could cause the fuel bottle to ignite. Sometimes there can be a small flame left even if there doesn’t appear to be any heat given off. If a stove goes out during use, I refill it by pouring fuel into the burner cover or other small container, then into the burner. If this item catches fire, I simply drop it onto the stove. It is of course important to be sure there are no flammable items near any stove.

  When packing an alcohol stove, I pour any unused fuel back into the fuel bottle after the burner has cooled; fuel tends to leak if carried in the burner, though Trangias come with a sealed lid that is effective as long as you don’t melt the rubber O-ring by putting it on a hot burner. I also pack the burner in a plastic bag and carry it separately from the pans so that it doesn’t dirty them and leave a lingering smell of fuel. Alcohol can be carried in light plastic bottles. Heavy metal ones aren’t necessary, which saves a little of the extra weight of fuel needed.

  TRANGIA ALCOHOL STOVES Alcohol is very popular in Scandinavia, and the Swedish-made Trangia Storm-Cookers are well made, simple, and almost indestructible.

  Trangia alcohol stove with windscreen.

  Trangias come in several versions. Most are complete units, including burner, windscreen/pan support, pans, lid, and pot grab, that nest together for carrying. The excellent little burner itself weighs 2.5 ounces and consists of a short double-walled open brass cylinder with jets around the top, into which you pour fuel—2 fluid ounces fills it. To light it, you simply touch a match to the alcohol. In Trangia 25 and 27 units the burner rests inside a rigid aluminum windscreen, which contains foldout pan supports. With a lid over the top you have virtually a sealed unit, so heat loss is minimal. There are small holes in one side of the windscreen base, which can be turned into the wind to create a draft and make a stronger flame—these are the only stoves I know that boil water more quickly when it’s windy. The flame can be controlled somewhat by dropping a simmer ring (0.75 ounce) over the jets so that only the surface of the reservoir is burning, then partially covering this with a flat metal disk, which you knock into place with a spoon or knife until you achieve the required degree of heat. It’s a crude system and awkward to operate, but it does work. One filling burns for 20 to 30 minutes and will boil a couple of quarts.

  Trangia alcohol stove with windscreen, pans, and pot grab.

  Trangia 25 and 27 units come in two sizes, each with two pans, a frypan/lid, and an optional kettle. The cook kit comes in plain aluminum, nonstick aluminum, and Duossal (a laminate of stainless steel and aluminum) versions. For solo use, the Trangia 27 is ideal; including two 1-quart pans, lid, and pot grab, it weighs 30 ounces with aluminum or nonstick pans and 32 ounces with Duossal pans (without the pans and pot grab, the unit weighs 15 ounces). Substituting the pint-size kettle for one of the pans brings the weight up by an ounce. The larger Trangia 25 models have 1.5-and 1.75-quart pans and an optional quart kettle. The 25 weighs 38, 45, or 49 ounces, depending on the pan material—too heavy for one backpacker but fine for two or three. There is also a Mini-Trangia (Trangia 28) consisting of the burner, a simplified windscreen, and a quart pan with frypan/lid that weighs 11.5 ounces, plus the Trangia Westwind, which is just the burner plus pot supports and weighs 6.6 ounces. All the Trangia parts are sold separately, so you could just buy the burner, and perhaps the simmer ring and cover, and construct your own lightweight pot supports and windscreen.

  A Trangia 27 was my first backpacking stove. I’ve had one for about thirty years. For a decade it was my regular stove and has been all over Scotland, Norway in summer and winter, Iceland, and on my 1,250-mile walk from one end of Britain to the other. Although dented, it still works perfectly. There is so little to go wrong that it’s just about indestructible. Indeed, I’ve heard of a Trangia that was run over by a truck; the windscreen was simply beaten back into shape before being returned to use. I haven’t taken mine on long trips for many years, though, because of the weight both of the unit itself and of the fuel. Despite what many people believe, the Trangia works well in cold weather, though it can be hard to get the fuel to light. I find the best method is to drop a lighted match into the burner.

  HOMEMADE ALCOHOL STOVES Making your own stove might seem a rather difficult and even risky business, but with alcohol stoves it isn’t, since they’re so simple. The ultralight hiking movement, which seems to harbor a surprising number of innovative and inventive people, has spawned a mass of designs for homemade alcohol stoves. Wings Homemade Stoves Archive lists twenty-eight, most of them alcohol stoves, the others wood and solid-fuel stoves. Many of the alcohol stove designs are similar to a Trangia burner but much lighter because they’re made from thin aluminum cans. Some weigh as little as 0.35 ounce. I have one of these stoves, though I didn’t make it myself; my friend Jake Schas made it for me. It weighs 1.5 ounces including a wire pot stand. The boil time is surprisingly good. It’s not silent like the Trangia; you can hear the alcohol boiling inside once it’s very hot. Obviously it’s nowhere near as durable as a Trangia burner, but it’s incredibly light and inexpensive and would do for simple boiling. If you do make your own stove, I advise testing it thoroughly (outside of course) to check that it’s safe and durable before taking it into the backcountry.

  BRASSLITE Brasslite stoves (brasslite.com) emerged from the homemade alcohol stove scene. These stoves attracted me as soon as I saw one. They look rather like a miniature Optimus Svea 123R (see below), both because they’re made of brass and because of the shape. I found that they not only look good, they work well too. There are two Brasslite models—the 0.8-ounce Turbo F and the 2.5-ounce Turbo II-D. The Turbo F is designed for solo use with pans up to 1 quart. The fuel capacity is just 1 fluid ounce, and on full flame it burns for nine and a half minutes. It won’t boil more than a quart without refueling. The Turbo II-D, the model I have, will handle pots up to 2 quarts capacity with a minimum base size of 5 inches to prevent flames from spilling around the sides, which wastes fuel. Capacity is 2 fluid ounces, and burn time is twenty minutes on full flame. Both burners have fuel chambers with a hole in the top, air ports with a simmer ring that can be closed for simmering, and wire pot supports. The difference is that the II-D has a double-walled chamber, which Brasslite says makes flame control and sim
mering much easier. The simmer sleeve is closed by moving a lever, which needs to be done with a metal utensil, since it gets hot.

  Homemade soda-can alcohol stove with wire pot support, made by Jake Schas. While inexpensive and very light, this stove lacks any flame control.

  Brasslite recommends use of a foil heat reflector under the stove and a foil windscreen. I used ones from a multifuel stove. I also used Brasslite’s 1.5 ounce, 8-ounce capacity plastic custom fuel bottle, which makes filling the stove easy and precise. The bottle has a reservoir that takes up to half an ounce of fuel. Measurement marks on it make it easy to see how much fuel you’re using. I first used the stove on a two-day trip in temperatures below freezing (the lowest was 26°F [−3°C]). Once I learned to squeeze fuel on the priming pan at the base of the stove and light that, the stove lit quickly. It then boiled a pint of water in about eight minutes, about half the time of a Trangia. The simmer sleeve worked well, and by moving it carefully I could control the flame surprisingly well, certainly better than with a Trangia, though not as well as with a canister stove. I like the Brasslite and will be using it on future trips where I don’t have to carry more than a few days’ fuel at a time. It’s not as sturdy as the Trangia, but it’s much tougher than soda-can stoves.

  The Brasslite Turbo II-D is an ultralight, hot alcohol stove with a controllable flame.

  OTHER ALCOHOL STOVES Unsurprisingly, some other makers of homemade stoves started offering them for sale for those who don’t want to make their own. Antigravitygear.com sells a 0.4-ounce Beverage Can Alcohol Stove, and Hike N’ Light (hikenlight.com) offers a 2-ounce stove. Mo-Go-Gear’s (mogogear.com) Go-Torch stove weighs 1.25 ounces including pot stand. Vargo Outdoors (var gooutdoors.com) has a neat little stove, the Triad Titanium, with fold-out pot supports and legs, which weighs just 1.06 ounces. Since it’s titanium, it should be much tougher than soda-can stoves. Slightly more sophisticated though still ultralight at 2.5 ounces is the ThermoJet MicroLite Stove (ther mojetstove.com), which claims a very fast boiling time of 3 minutes, 45 seconds for a pint of water. This stove has a combustion chamber that doubles as a windscreen plus a simmer control. These stoves look interesting, but I haven’t tried any of them.

  White-Gas and Multifuel Stoves

  White gas is probably the most efficient stove fuel, lighting easily and burning very hot. Automotive gasoline is a substitute; you can get it everywhere, and for stove use it’s very cheap. But it’s dirty and smoky, clogs fuel lines and jets, which need frequent cleaning when run on it, and gives off fumes you really don’t want to breathe. Stoves run best and cleanest on refined white gas such as Coleman fuel, the most common one. White gas is sold in outdoor, sporting, and hardware stores and often, especially in towns near popular national parks or wilderness areas, in supermarkets. White gas is volatile fuel and ignites very easily. It requires a lot of care but it is very efficient. I use 2 to 3 fluid ounces a day, so a quart lasts at least ten days.

  Kerosene is easy to get, reasonably cheap, and burns at least as hot as gasoline. MSR says its stoves boil slightly more water per amount of kerosene than of white gas. Kerosene doesn’t ignite easily, so it’s relatively safe—far safer than white gas. That means it’s harder to light, of course. It won’t burn just as a liquid as white gas will, so a wick is needed. Multifuel stoves have a pad or wick for this purpose. I find kerosene messy and hard to work with, so I use it only as a last resort. It also stains badly and takes a long time to evaporate, leaving a strong odor unless you use a deodorized version. Refined kerosene (heater or lamp fuel) is much cleaner than crude versions, which can produce dirty, smoky fumes. I became very familiar with kerosene on an eighty-six-day walk up the length of the mountains of Norway and Sweden when I used it in an MSR XGK Expedition. I’ve also used it on several ski tours in places like Greenland and Spitsbergen, where it has worked fine at −15°F (−26°C). Kerosene is efficient—I use 2 to 3 fluid ounces a day—but the difficulties with lighting and handling mean it’s not my favorite fuel.

  White-gas and multifuel stoves burn vaporized fuel, not liquid. The fuel has to be pressurized (these are sometimes called pressure stoves) to get it to flow to the burner. Once a stove is lit, the heat from the flames keeps the burner hot so that the fuel vaporizes as it leaves the jet. On many stoves the fuel line runs in a loop next to the burner. This preheat tube heats the fuel before it reaches the jet, speeding vaporization, which is particularly useful when using kerosene. In the simplest stoves, the fuel is transmitted from the tank to the burner by a wick that draws it up to the jet.

  Originally white-gas stoves had integral fuel tanks sitting under or next to the burner. This design is still around, but most stoves now connect to a fuel bottle with a long fuel line, giving them a low profile that makes them more stable than taller models. Both types operate best when the tanks are at least half full—they should never be totally filled, because then the fuel can’t expand, and you won’t be able to pressurize the stove properly. Built-in fuel tanks are usually small, ⅓ to ¾-pint capacity, so they may need refilling every day or two. I find it best to top up the fuel tank last thing before packing away the stove in the morning. That way I’m unlikely to run out while cooking the evening meal. If you run out of fuel while cooking, you must wait for the stove to cool down before you can refill it.

  Stoves have either roarer or ported burners. In the first a stream of vaporized fuel is pushed out of the jet, ignites, and hits a burner plate that spreads it out into a ring of flame. Roarer burners, as you might guess, are noisy. In ported burners the flames come out of a ring of jets, just like a kitchen gas range. Ported burners are much quieter than roarer burners, though still pretty loud. Neither type seems more efficient than the other.

  The main makers of white-gas and multifuel stoves are Primus, Optimus, MSR, Snow Peak, and Coleman.

  PRIMING For fuel to flow to the burner and then vaporize, it has to be preheated, known as priming. Priming liquid-fuel stoves is quite easy, but it does require a little practice and should always be done with care outside, since the fuel can flare up. It’s the trickiest part of using a pressure stove. Pump stoves are all primed in much the same way, though you should always follow the specific instructions. First the fuel is pressurized by pumping, usually for about twenty strokes when the bottle or tank is full. Then you open the valve a little and allow a tiny amount of fuel to dribble out into the priming cup or onto the priming pad or burner, depending on the model. Alternatively, you can use priming paste (such as Optimus Burning Paste, which comes in a plastic bottle), alcohol, solid-fuel tablets, or even bits of paper. These are all less likely to flare than fuel from the stove, but they’re something extra to carry. Next you close the valve and light the priming fuel. If you’ve used too much fuel the stove can flare, so don’t have your face over it. As the last flames die away, slowly open the valve again until the burner lights—have a match or lighter handy so you can light the stove if the priming fuel goes out before you open the valve. If you’ve primed correctly, the flame will be blue. If the flame is yellow you need to turn the stove off and prime it again, after it has cooled down. With stoves that have a control valve on the pump and a flame adjuster at the burner, use the adjuster to control the flow of fuel, leaving the control valve open.

  Lighting a white-gas stove. Pump the fuel bottle until you can feel firm resistance when you push the pump in—usually after about twenty strokes when the bottle is full (1). The emptier the bottle, the more pumping is required. It’s easiest to do this before you attach the fuel bottle to the stove. When the fuel bottle has been pressurized, open the valve a little until a teaspoon or so of fuel has squirted out and run down into the priming cup or onto the priming wick or pad (2). With stoves without a pump, dribble fuel into the priming cup from a fuel bottle with a pouring spout or an eyedropper filled from the fuel bottle. Light the priming fuel and wait until it has almost burned out (3). Just before it does so open the valve; the stove should roar into life, burning with a
blue flame. If the priming flame goes out before you’ve opened the valve, use a lighter or a match; do this quickly, before the stove cools down. If the stove spurts yellow flames, turn it off; you haven’t primed it enough. Wait for the yellow flames to die down, then turn it on again. If it still doesn’t light properly, turn it off, wait for it to cool, and then prime it again. Once the stove is lit, let it burn for a minute or so at a low flame and then turn it on full (4). Don’t turn the valve more times than recommended in the stove’s instructions or you could damage the connection with the bottle. To maintain full power, pump a few strokes every so often (5). If you want a simmering flame, use the stove’s simmer control (it it has one), leaving the main valve on full. If there’s only one control, turn it down to simmer and don’t pump the stove again as it will simmer better with low pressure in the fuel bottle. There will be a short delay between turning a valve on the pump housing and the flame changing. Controls on the burner affect the flame immediately.

  OPTIMUS SVEA 123R The Optimus Svea 123R has been around for over a century and is the classic white-gas stove. (The first Svea stoves were produced by a company called Nyberg and ran on kerosene. Production was three thousand stoves a week in the 1890s.) In the 1960s and 1970s it was one of the most popular white-gas stoves. My first white-gas stove was a Svea that I used on through-hikes of the Pacific Crest and Continental Divide Trails. It performed faultlessly.

  The Svea looks like a brass can with perforations; though it doesn’t sound attractive, it’s aesthetically much more appealing than most stoves. It’s made up of a simple roarer burner screwed into a ⅓-pint brass fuel tank and a circular wind-screen/pan-support unit that fits around the burner. A small aluminum drinking cup fits over the top to protect the burner when it’s in the pack (though I usually leave this at home—it burns your lips). The tank has a screw-on cap with a built-in safety valve designed to release pressure if the tank overheats. (If this happens, the jet of fuel that spurts out will almost certainly become a flame, so it’s wise to point the tank cap away from you and anything flammable—like your tent.) The Svea’s burner is operated by a key on a chain that fits onto an arm jutting out from the burner and doubles as a maintenance tool. The key is inserted through the windscreen. That and folding out the pan supports are the only setup procedure required, so this stove can be ready to use in seconds.