After 10 years of camping I finally ditched my heavy coleman stove for a tiny alcohol burner

I was boiling water for coffee last weekend in the Smokies and watched a guy pack up a whole meal setup while my stove was still heating up, and it hit me that I had been lugging around a heavy tank and regulator for no reason when a $12 bottle of denatured alcohol could do the same job in half the time - has anyone else made the switch to alcohol stoves and found a specific brand that doesn't soot up your pots?

2 comments

2 Comments

michael88027d ago

Wait, is an alcohol stove really faster than a white gas one? I've been using a Trangia for a few years now and it takes forever to boil water compared to my old MSR WhisperLite. Maybe your coleman just had really bad output. But you're right about the weight savings, that part is huge. For soot, the key is running it with the right fuel and keeping the flame blue. My Trangia still leaves some black marks on my titanium pot, but it wipes off easy with a little soapy water.

olivias8827d agoProlific Poster

Yeah I totally get what you're saying about the speed difference, alcohol stoves are definitely slower on the boil. But here's the thing I've noticed with a lot of gear these days, it's like people pick one feature that's REALLY good and then just ignore the trade-offs everywhere else. Like my buddy swears by his jetboil for speed but he's carrying a heavy cannister and making trash every trip. Meanwhile I see people with white gas stoves who spend forever pumping and priming just to save a minute on boil time. It's the same pattern with tent weight versus durability or backpack waterproof vs breathable, everyone hyper-focuses on one number and forgets the whole picture. So yeah the alcohol stove is slower but for my style of hiking where I'm not in a rush anyway, it fits Perfectly fine.