I need a new pot. I'm looking at titanium pots. From your experience, which size pot do you feel works better? A tall skinny pot or a short, wide pot?

As to what pots I am looking at, the MLD 850ml pot or a .9L pot from Evernew.

I use a Pocket Rocket as a stove.

Edited by reacttocontact on 03/18/2012 09:39:21 MDT.

Are you cooking in the pot or just heating water?

If the former, the short, wide pot works better for me. If just heating water, you are better off with the lightest pot you can afford.

Titanium of course does not distribute the heat all that well.

I sometimes also use my 0.9 liter Evernew as my bowel.

"I sometimes also use my 0.9 liter Evernew as my bowel."

Very multipurpose of you.



@Paul,

Short and wide pairs well with a canister stove, there is usually a better flame distribution across more surface area than narrow upright pots paired with a canister stove. I think the .9L evernew UL wide pot is a good size and shape; it packs in higher volume boils (double serving dehydrated meals w/o overboils) and can handle light "cooking" inside the pot when you want to do more than boil water.

Guess it comes down to your cooking style and preference.

Thanks.

Eugene, off the subject, but after some tweaking and changing laces, I have a newfound love for my Brooks Cascadia 7's.

You still wearing the Pure Grit's?

+1 on the short and wide especially with the pocket rocket it works great with that setup also consider hard anodized or non stick as the pr produces a lot of heat
at the center of the burner

my favorite pot for the pocket rocket is the gsi hard anodized from the 5 piece mess kit works great and handles the heat well

i have mostly gone to alcohol stoves now but do use this setup on occasion and it works great

kevin

I've wondered the same thing and it seems like everyone always favors the short wide pot. I'm not sure what the advantage of the tall, skinny pots are, but they seem to be widely available so there must be something I'm not thinking of.

"I sometimes also use my 0.9 liter Evernew as my bowel."

That sounds painful.

--B.G.--

Bob,

Give the man a break!

It was only a passing remark. ;-)

Party On,

Newton

Newton, you are becoming a PITA.

--B.G.--

Hey Bob,





Party On,

Newton

Short and wide is more stable on a PR, and you'll get better heating efficiency. With tall, skinny pots, a lot of the flame goes up the sides and is wasted.

Chris S wrote: > I've wondered the same thing and it seems like everyone always favors the short wide pot. I'm not sure what the advantage of the tall, skinny pots are, but they seem to be widely available so there must be something I'm not thinking of.

"Evernew is making some really nice UL stuff these days. Their short, wide 0.9L and 1.3L pots are sort of my gold standard in that class of pots."

Definitely. I have the 0.6 L, and I really like it.

Good point that they pack a little easier. My 700ml backcountry.com pot does pack into a nice tidy package with the canister stove, fuel canister and spoon.

Yeah, I think that's the main advantage: stacking and packing. You stack the stove and the canister inside the pot and then the tall, skinny pot slides along a sidewall of your pack fairly easily.

You pay for that packability in lost efficiency -- unless you have something like a Caldera Cone from Trail Designs, a Snow Leopard from Flat Cat Gear, or a Jetboil. Those systems are integrated in such a fashion as to still be efficient even though they use tall pots. Absent an integrated system though, you're better off with short and wide.

HJ
Adventures In Stoving

Edited by hikin_jim on 03/20/2012 18:44:11 MDT.

There's also the amount of material you need in differently sized pots of the same volume. With all pots, more surface area is more weight, and with Ti, it's more expensive material, so that becomes a factor.

For an open-top container (no lid): surface area is minimized when height is about 50% of diameter. But who buys a pot without a lid? If you are doing more than melting snow, you want to reduce evaporative losses.

For an closed-top container (with lid): surface area is minimized when height is about 100% of diameter.

Wider than tall: better stove efficiency.
About as wide as tall: minimized surface area (i.e. minimized weight per volume).
Tall than wide: more packable. Probably more marketable (consider the 9:5, height:diameter of the universal soda can).

Caveat: these are the first-order effects. As you you go to extreme height or widths, you'd want to increase wall thickness to avoid dimpling and "oil canning" - something that is easy to observe in the sidewalls of a 12 ounce / 335cc soda-pop can. Hienekein cans are so popular in part because their ridges minimize wall flex without the weight penalty of thicker walls.

The SULer's wet dream: a ridged, shallow, wide, Ti pot with flux-ring-style HX on the bottom and foam-core, vacuum-bagged, high-temp composite lid.

And remember: blindly pursuing reductions in base weight can leave you will a fuel-inefficient scheme. Maybe you don't count fuel in your base weight, but you do carry it on your back.

Editted for a typo.

Edited by DavidinKenai on 03/20/2012 17:34:35 MDT.

I'm a fan of tall skinny pots. I find packing wide pots to be a real pain. I've done the research and real life testing and definitely, you lose fuel efficiency however there are "space saving pros" with the tall pots.

I really like to save on pack space and my tall pot makes for very efficient use of the available space (even fits in my bottle pocket on my pack). My Snowpeak Ti Mini Solo will carry 2 small gas cans inside the pot (with the lid on) or one can with my stove wrapped in a small pack towel. The set comes with a Ti cup that nests on the bottom of the pot so my cup basically takes up no extra pack room (I really like that!). I also simmer my meals with my Ti cup on the bottom of the pot to prevent burning (as mentioned above, titanium distributes heat rather badly). This does a great job of distributing the heat however, it also impacts fuel efficiency (but a good trade-off IMO).

I also like the tall pot if I'm just taking the pot (without the cup) because the tall thin pot makes a great cup. The tall thin shape keeps hot drinks warmer for a longer time than a wider pot.

HJ wrote: "Short and wide is more stable on a PR "

I would say that short and wide is LESS stable on a Pocket Rocket.

Reason: the PR pot supports have a narrow diameter, put a wide pot on top and if the pot is not centred on the pot supports, the pot will tip over. A wide pot obscures the pot supports from view, making it harder to centre the pot.

For a wide pot to be stable, you need a stove with pot supports that have a diameter similar (or larger) to that of the pot. The limit for a PR is a pot diameter of ~5"

I know from experience that a tall skinny pot is slower/less efficient than a short wide pot, but has anyone done a comparison in terms of boil time differences and/or fuel consumption. Roughly are we talking about a 10%, 20%, 30% .. difference? How much extra fuel must be carried to achieve the same amount of boiled water? Anyone know where this info may be available?

Micheal: I tested several different aspect ratios in the same thickness SS pots two months ago. It was ballpark 15% better in the wide pot. So you can subtract 15% (1/7) from your fuel weight.

For a weekend trip: width doesn't matter enough, HX fins don't matter enough, pots color gives you payback but is minor - just bring a bit more fuel.

But for a week+, or multiple people using the same pot: go wider, HX fins, a tight lid, paint the bottom, have a good wind screen.

did you take into account flame power? A wide vs. narrow burner, medium/low vs. full throttle, all those would influence differently fuel consumption regarding pot diameter.

To narrow things down, I'd set a small burner and medium/low fire as most typical conditions for the solo backpacker.