Of course you know what this is; it’s a very silly empty fuel container which you can see weighs 5.1 oz or 147 grams. Lots of unwise hikers lug these stupid things around!
Let’s look at it another way. A lightweight bottle to carry alcohol (meths) in might weigh 10-20 grams. My lightest burner weighs 7 grams. (but I usually use one of Tinny’s Gnomes) Perhaps I need a windscreen? That might add 7 grams too – but you will use twice as much fuel whatever you use if you don’t have a windscreen, so let’s ignore it for the sake of the exercise:
17 grams from 147 leaves 130 grams of fuel. A ml of alcohol weighs 0.7893 grams so this 130 grams represents 164 ml. I use about 7 ml to boil a cup of water, (4-5 with a cosy -but that would add weight too) so that 164 ml represents 23 cups of coffee. A meal represents 2-3 cups of coffee.
I take about 500 ml of alcohol for all my cooking for a ten day trip, so this 164 mls is more enough for a normal long weekend’s cooking. If you consider the gas stove that I am not carrying (another 85 grams of fuel or 107 ml) you can see that switching to alcohol would equate to this one empty container representing cooked meals for about five days! If you consider the 227 grams (287 ml) of gas you would have had enough fuel (with alcohol (164 + 107 + 287 = 558) for a ten day trip!
The silliest thing about gas is carrying all that gas you are not going to use on the trip. This is just energy wasted. You should read this post: A Lazy Man’s Guide to Hiking and Hunting
Now do you see why I do not use a gas stove? There is also this to consider: it has happened to me (car camping): What if the jet on the gas stove should block up? Unless you are carrying a spare jet and a small spanner for replacing it (are you?) then you will be doing no cooking at all!
There is just no similar problem with an alcohol stove. And have you thought about how explosive a gas canister is? You could easily blow up a truck with one. Just an exploding Bic lighter will pretty much blow your hand off! I know I think of replacing mine with flint and spirit lighters (such as the Peanut).
Gas just makes no sense – and when you consider its environmental impact: the fact that it is normally extracted from undersea wells miles offshore, fracking, transport, the risks of environmental disaster etc, it surprises me that all the ‘leave no trace’ brigade (of which I am not one) pretty much all use it!
Of course I am getting lazier and lazier (as well as older and older) so I have decided just to carry this 20 gram stove and no fuel at all (most trips).
See Also:
DIY 20 Gram Roll Up Hobo Stove
PS: You can make your own alcohol stove too. I have several posts about this. Try a search in the bottom left hand corner for ‘stove’
