Trangia on eBothy Blog

thoughts on meths stoves

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been wanting to get back to a meths stove for ages. Gas is of course the ultimate in user friendliness but I always end up with a load of almost empty or could actually be empty little cannisters so end up carrying two. I used a Trangia for years and even lugged it up the hills as a youf as I liked a brew on the summits. I’ve even used it inside the tent in winter with the simmer ring on and the door open a little to let fresh air in. The pans eventually started to have a sort of ‘bloom’ grow on them and after the Pyrenees I moved to a remote cannister gas stove. These are pretty much essential in winter as you can invert the cannister to get at the denser liquid plus being very careful, I could pop the cannister on top of the pan for a bit to get it going. But I’ve been hankering for the simplicity of meths and the market has expanded exponentially in the last few years, so a heavy Trangia isn’t the only option these days.

the versatile honey stove

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Now I’m not one to be overly much interested in gear reviews but the blogging world is alight, quite literally, with the new Honey Stove from Backpackinglight. Darren is the current stove king and has been doing a lot of quirky stove videos lately (part one, part two) which you should have a look at if that’s your thing, while Duncan has been going stove crazy on his kitchen table with the thing. Bob@Backpackinglight has also brought out a good video on The Outdoors Station on iTunes. But it suddenly occured to me that this could actually be a great idea as I’m doing the GR221 next year with Penguin, an old friend and we’re planning to bivvy out a couple of nights in the mountains. The Honey, with a Triad stove or Trangia burner and a titanium pot would make a perfect lightweight cooking system at an all in price of 70 quid for the trangia option or just over 80 quid for the triad one. The Jetboil is a superb stove and retails at around 55 quid and a Coleman 250g cannister is about 2.50. So you’re talking about an initial outlay of 60 quid for a Jetboil system. That’s 10 quid cheaper than the Honey + trangia system and 20 quid cheaper than the triad version. But the Jetboil + gas weighs 675g and the Honey + triad + meths would weigh around 550g maybe. So it’s around 100g lighter than the Jetboil and 20 quid dearer. Even if you use the Trangia burner it’s still prolly about 100g lighter than the Jetboil and only 10 quid dearer.

thoughts on stoves

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been using a low profile gas stove for years now. It’s the kind with the legs as opposed to the ultralight ones that screw into the top of the canister as I’m not a fan of those at all at all. The ground is always too rough and my pan too full of food for it to be safe in the tent door. Lately though I’ve started using freeze dried meals from Turmat (which are superb) and Expedition Foods which are just as good. They do a superb porridge and strawberries which I used on my ML assessment. The upshot of this is I just end up boiling water instead of cooking which is great on a cold morning camp high in the mountains where I boil enough for the porridge bag and a cuppa. So I thought I’d change my stove system to make it lighter as I’ve no need to simmer any more.