Hi Yall,

Here's an idea I have for a 3 season cook kit incorporating a bunch of different stuff from different suppliers. Goal: to have a fast quiet cook-system that packs up small and is easy to use. Goal #2: Have a alot of fun :)

So here it is,

The cookpot is the jetboil sol "companion cup" without the plastic bowl. Why the jetboil? I'm hoping the flux ring will aid cooking efficiency and boil time. Why the Sol and not the SolTi. I'm hoping that the aluminum will boil faster than the ti version. Here it is all packed up:



inside we have: jetboil collapsable spoon; stormproof matches in metal case; dryer lint + extra striker in plastic case; cohligans fire steel and striker, 2 bent tent stakes used with caldera sidewinder, caldera sidewinder windscreen, esbit folding stove, 4 esbit fuel cubes in packaging. Here's a picture unpacked:



The plan is to unfold the esbit stove, place the tent stakes across the esbit stove and place the jetboil on the stakes. Then the caldera sidewinder is used as a windscreen. Here's a picture of the jetboil on the esbt stove to show what I mean.



I did a quick boil time test with a "loose" windscreen ( aka there was an inch gap surrounding the windscreen. The windscreen was not touching the jetboil. ) I boiled 2.5 cups of water + 2 ice cubes in approx 6 minutes. This was using an esbit fuel tab. The weather was quite warm ( 63 deg ). I plan to do more testing tonight trying to determine if a tighter windscreem setup to hug the jetboil cook cup would speed up or slow down the boil time.

Note: the way I plan for meals using esbit: 1. I plan not to reuse any partially used fuel. That's .5 oz fuel per meal. No more no less. 2. Each meal will consist of 2.5 cups of boiling water. 3. No snow melting needed.

Questions, comments, criticisms are welcome.

sincerely,

-daniel-

The total weight of the cook kit including 4 fuel cubes ( aka 4 meals ) is 1 lb on the nose.

Whoah! Good outside the box thinking.

Now to get Four Dogs to make one of his little stoves with the fan-like air intake in the bottoms for even more efficiency. You might be able to use wood as well.

I wonder how the Jetboil would work with one of the Ikea utensil holders? If it nests, you could use the tent stake trick and height adjustment would be dead simple.

What's the outside diameter on a Jetboil pot?

Edited by dwambaugh on 03/13/2013 20:04:04 MDT.

FYI, the doctor is (Victor) Frankenstein, the monster is just called the "daemon," "hideous progeny," "the creature," or some other fun Gothic epithets. It's also quite lithe and powerful, not lumbering at all like in the movies. So----you are an innovative, overly enthusiastic scientist who damns nature by joining that which should not be joined. Pretty cool, in my opinion.

Also, you get to call your stove system daemonic.

Edited by GlacierRambler on 03/13/2013 16:21:01 MDT.

...

Edited by daniel@fishfamilypdx.com on 06/11/2013 12:57:26 MDT.

I was thinking more like the pot stand shown below. Imagine a stand made to fit the Jetboil with good airflow from the bottom.



Search on "ikea woodstove" and you'll see lots of examples. The unaltered Ikea holder is 114mm/4.5" ID at the top and there is a rolled lip that could be removed to add a bit more. In fact the Ikea holder should be cut down to save weight, leaving enough for the optimum burning height for Esbit fuel and holder. I think it would work sweet with an alcohol burner too.

Interesting, Daniel. I also have a AL Sol pot, which I was going to pair with a Monatauk Gnat stove/canister (not my idea, modeled after another BPL's tinkering). I just haven't gotten around to it.

2 ideas:

(1) you might want to remove the neoprene sleeve. I'm speculating here, but the potential for it to catch fire seems greater in with any stove other than one is it designed for. It will also be lighter. However, you then need to come up another way to grab the pot. Silicone bands on the pot, silicone sewing fingers covers, wool gloves, etc.

(2) There are several clear plain plastic lids that fit the Sol pot well; Trader Joe's Oatmeal can lids work well. I have a few if you want one. I won't cook with it, but it drops a little weight.

I don't think you need to remove the whole sleeve, you could probably just cut off the lower inch or so (2.5 cm) and cover the edge with aluminum tape for good measure. to take it even further, you could make a small cozy cup that would cover the bottom part up to where you cut the neoprene.
I like the simplicity of the "system" in the video link where the guy tested directly on the ground over an esbit. You should do some boil tests to see if a tab will boil your 2.5 cups on a single cube, since you don't plan on using the left over cubes anyway.
takeC@re,
Tim

I probably don't need to say this (because I expect that the people on this forum already know it) but while it is simple to light an estbit puck directly on the ground, its a pretty major violation of leave no trace ethics. The heat from an estbit tab is signifigant. The scar on the rock from the burning the tab will last for many years. If this is done on bare soil the heat from the tab will sterilize the soil.

There is a "right" way to do this. Many have documented it but Clelland's 153 tips book has the best illustrations.

IMHO, the behaviour in the video is not consistant with the proper backcountry ethics and is shameful.

Cool. A Philadelphia cream cheese lid is durable and way lighter too.

Finally got to experiment with different configs of the esbit+jetboil+cone combo.

First: The outside diameter of the heat exchanger ring on the bottom of the Jetboil cup is 3 5/8 ".

Test setup: 2.5 cups cold tap water + 1 ice cube added to Jetboil cup immediately before lighting the esbit. Windscreen used is a TrailDesigns sidewinder titanium cone sized for the Open Country 3 Cup Hard Anodized Pot. The cone has been trimmed to make it short enough to fit inside the Jetboil cup. The esbit it ignited by adding a few drops of zippo lighter fluid to the top of the fuel cube. Then it gets a spark from a firesteel held at slant so that the tip of the firesteel is in the puddle of zippo fuel. One long steady push of the striker against the firesteel will get it going. Temp: 45 deg, light wind.

Important note: No matter how I setup the rig, I never got 2.5 cups water + 1 ice cube to a rolling boil. It was definitely hot, and there were plenty of little bubbles collecting on bottom. But I'm not sure I could actually cook pasta in it which is one my staples on the trail.

First I experimented with the "no pot stand" method. I cut a small circle of aluminium ( I think ) from a spare windscreen I had laying around. This was used as bottom reflector tray. The circle was the same size as the bottom of the cup. I didn't want it to be too big because then rain water would collect and pool under the fuel cube. Then I placed the fuel cube on the reflector, lit it, and right away put the Jetboil cup right over top of it.

It was pretty cool, kind of like a reese peanut-butter + chocolate moment. "Hey?! You put your esbit under my Jetboil!" "Hey?! You put your Jetboil over my esbit!" The heat exchanger ring is just the right size to allow the fuel cube to rest in the middle. The fuel gets plenty of air and remained lit no problem. Here's a picture of an early test showing that the esbit would remain lit under the Jetboil Cup even in the rain.



My test with a "tight windscreen" was a failure. The tight windscreen config is the traildesigns sidewinder cone where the two ends of the cone are not connected together. After the jetboil is placed on the esbit, the cone is allowed to wrap tightly around the top of the jetboil cup. This simulates how a traildesigns cone "hugs" the cookpot where it touches at the top. In this config the esbit fuel cube extinguished immediately.

The no windscreen test was only partly successful. I aborted my test because ( as several have expected ) the flames would occasionally flare up with a gust of wind and the neoprene sleeve was in jeopardy. I could remove the sleeve but I really like how I can pickup the cookpot with my bare hands and such. So I decided it made more sense to use a loose windscreen to prevent the flare-ups. ( A loose windscreen is where the traildesigns cone is connected at both ends to form a ring. And there's approx. 1/2 " gap between the top of the cone and the cookpot. )

The results of the no pot stand approach with a loose windscreen were disappointing. From the very beginning, there was a lot of smoke coming from the bottom of the JetBoil cup. To me this was a sign of an inefficient burn. Confirming this was the 10 minute boil time with a loose windscreen. Additionally there was a large amount of black oily residue on the bottom of the cup. While this cleaned up easy, I suspect this is unburned fuel that contributed to the slow boil time.

As a side note, I did multiple tests without cleaning the bottom of the JetBoil cup to see if the residue changed the boil time. Surprisingly it did not change a thing. I did 3 tests in a row. All of them came up 10 minutes on the nose to boil 2.5 cups water + 1 ice cube without a pot stand and a loose windscreen.

Then I tested the Jetboil cup elevated using the esbit folding stove + 2 tent stakes as in the original post. Without a windscreen it took 8.5 minutes, with a loose windscreen it took 6.5 minutes and with a tight windscreen it took 6 minutes on the nose. Here's a picture with the tight windscreen.



I did 1 other test to see if using a trail designs gramcracker esbit stove would render a better boil time.

I only did 1 quick test. The setup was essentially, the no pot stand approach with a loose windscreen, except the fuel cube was inside the gram cracker, "u-shaped" piece of metal. This boiled in 10 minutes, but there was much less residue on the bottom and the fuel cube appeared to be only halfway consumed. Where without the gram cracker, most of the fuel cube was used up. Here's the gram-cracker on the metal reflector tray.



Conclusion and future tests:

I think it's possible that a Jetboil+Esbit Titanium Folding Stove+gram-cracker+tight windscreen will be the best combo balancing low weight with faster boil times while still being simple to use, simple to determine fuel needs, and quiet at camp.

I have a folding titanium stove on order. Hopefully it will come in next week.

I had some fun rain testing the esbit fuel cubes and lighting it with a firesteel. I had trouble getting it lit ( rain or shine ) using sanitizer gel. But a few drops of zippo lighter fluid, and it's up right away. See Below:



I'll do some experimenting with the other plastic lid choices. I hope that one of them will let me cook with it on and maybe even modify it with a "sippy spout".

Thanks for the comments and suggestions!

sincerely,

-daniel-

not quite quiet but my solo cook kit is 13-15oz (depending on the fuel canister fullness). I did 1.5c boiled in 3min indoors with 60F water.

Stoic 700 pot
Optimus Crux stove
Campbells soup cup
mini lighter
Ti long handle spoon
100g canister

Just curious about the Stoic 700 pot. Do the pot handles get hot when you're using it? I would assume yes, but maybe they don't.

Thanks,

-daniel-

They might.. i think i usually use my piece of pack towel as a precaution. i wrap the stove in the pack towel to keep things from rattling when packed.

That's a pretty cool test you did there. I have a Jetboil flash and was thinking of making an alcohol stove for it for fun. Seeing that your esbit experiment worked makes me want to try even more!

Finally got back to this. Here's what I found. In order to get a true rolling boil using the esbit+jetboil combo I measured the distance between the Trail Designs gram cracker for use with a hardcounrty 3 cup pot. It just so happens that to reproduce that distance on the Jetboil, all I had to do was allow the heat exchanger to sit below the cone, and the neoprene sleeve to sit above the cone.

In order to set this height, I used 3 zip ties to create a lip on the jetboil cup.



Using this config, at 47 deg light wind, 2.5 cups + 1 ice cube, it took 6 minutes to achieve steaming water ( plenty hot for tea and instant oatmeal if water is pre-filtered ); it took 10 minutes to acheive a rolling boil. The rolling boil lasted for an additional 6 minutes. This gives a total burn time of 1 cube at 16 minutes.



Once the rolling boil was achieved, I was curious if the heat exchanger actually made a difference in boil time. To test this, I did a boil test using the gram cracker with a cone and an evernew ECA418 pot frying pan combo. The time to boil was exactly the same as the jetboil combo. 6 minutes to steaming water, 10 minutes to rolling boil, 16 total burn time. This appears to mean that the heat exchanger is not helpful to decrease boil time or fuel efficiency.

The next set of tests were setup to determine boil time fuel efficiency of the folding titanium esbit compared to the gram-cracker cone jetboil combo. When setup with the Jetboil, steaming water was achieved at 6.5 minutes. Rolling boil occurred at 11.5 minutes, but was not sustained more than 1 minute longer. The total burn time was reduced to 12.5 minutes, where the last minute of burn was not hot enough to maintain the boil. Additionally in this config, the cook pot sat much lower then the cone+gram-cracker combo. This meant the neoprene sleeve was down inside the cook environment inside the cone. This resulted in a very hot neoprene sleeve which essentially rendered the sleeve useless for protecting hands from the hot cook pot.

I did find that the folding esbit stove worked very well for frying eggs, and for making tea in a GSI Ketalist. But the fuel def didn't last as long and the rolling boil only lasted 2 minutes.







Finally, I did a test using alcohol to be sure that it made sense to continue with the esbits. I tested this by setting up a jetboil+cone+traildesigns 12-10 stove (with priming ring removed)+ 2.5 cups+1 ice cube config. As others have documented, it takes all of 3/4 oz of fuel to achieve a rolling boil in 8 minutes. Then it took an additional 1/4 oz of fuel to keep the rolling boil going for an additional 3 minutes. So that is 1 oz fuel alcohol vs. 0.5 oz fuel esbit.

Final product:

Here's a picture of the finished product. The zip ties have been trimmed and then tucked under the neoprene sleeve. This helps keep the zip ties from getting caught on anything in the pack. It also helps keep the neoprene sleeve from sliding off the jetboil cook pot. I also trimmed the black hand loop from the neoprene sleeve. But I left the little square thumb pad which makes it much easier to hold the cook pot. I also added a thermos top ( cup ) to the setup after repeated burns while trying to sip straight from the jetboil cook pot. I avoid using the plastic cup that attaches tot he bottom of the jetboil because it could get contaminated by the esbit residue on the bottom of the cook pot. I also found it was ery easy to store and re-light partially used esbit fuel cubes. When making hot water from filtered water a rolling boil was not required, and I was able to recover almost 50% of the cube. As such, I've added a small plastic pill container to store the partially used esbits. Total weight of Jetboil+cone+gram-cracker+fire steel+lighter fluid+stormproof matches in metal case+spoon+cup+container for partially used fuel=13.8 oz

note: I have left a partially used fuel cube n the container in the picture, but the fuel was not included in the weight.







Conclusions:

1) The traildesigns gram-cracker solid fuel stove provides the most efficient fuel usage compared to the esbit titanium folding stove and compared to no pot stand windscreen at all
2) The heat exchanger on the bottom of the jetboil cup did not decrease boil times or increase fuel efficency when used with the traildesigns cone and gram-cracker. Therefore lighter cookpots (example MSR Titan + vargo titanium pot lifter) would render approx 5 oz of weight saving.
3) It's possible to setup almost any cook pot for use with the traildesigns cone+gram-cracker using zip ties to set the appropriate distance between gram cracker and stove.
4) The benefits of using the jetboil cookpot vs. a traditional cookpot are diminished because it is somewhat difficult to to drink directly from the cookpot. This requires the addition of a drinking cup at additional weight penalty. However, the jetboil is unique in that the residue left over from the solid fuel cube is not as messy because the residue is above heat exchanger and thus doesn't touch any other gear.

Further questions:

The biggest benefit of the jetboil vs. a traditional cook pot are the packed size of the cook kit. A traditional cookpot may not be able to easily stow the fullsize cone windscreen/potstand. Sidewinders that completely stow in the cook pot are certainly available for the MSR titan 1L and 1.5L. Not sure how bulky these are compared to the jetboil setup. I'd like to get one and compare how well it will pack up in my 30L solo-overnight pack. A Jetboil-Ti would also close the gap to approx. 3.5 oz between the Jetboil config and a traildesigns sidewinder. I'm also looking at the vargo bottle pot ( http://www.vargooutdoors.com/pots-mugs/titanium-bot-bottle-pot.html#.UUybmRJHerA ). These weigh about 2 oz more than the MSR titan 1L and may be a compromise solution between the Jetboil Cookpot and a traditional cook pot.

Hope his helps,

-daniel-

Edited by daniel@fishfamilypdx.com on 03/22/2013 12:56:59 MDT.

It is important to note that the JB has ~50% of the bottom surface area of the evernew pot you compared with. I wouldn't generalize your results to say that any non HTX pot is as fuel efficient - just any w/ ~2X the bottom surface area.

For what its worth my alcohol setup will raise 750mL of water 75C (~3cups, ~135F) in ~9mins using 13grs (~.5oz wt) of 95% ethanol.

Nice work on the zip ties.

Hi James,

I'm curious to see what your boil time and fuel usage is if you reduce your water volume to 2.5 cups then add 1 ice cube right before putting the cook pot on the fire.

This would help to compare apples to apples.

I'm def open to switching back to alcohol if it's lighter than the esbits.

sincerely,

-daniel-

Sorry wasn't trying to steer you away from esbit...

I reran my stove a couple of times:
Outside 40F air temp, little wind, 625gr(2.6cups) water @ 54F w/ one 17gr ice cube added just after taking water temp and just before firing up. 14grs ethanol...

Rolling boil ~12.5 minutes continued simmering till 15:50s.

This is a little slower than the other measurements I provided as this was outside on concrete vs inside on stovetop -- I think the main factor is that the concrete slowed the rate of evaporation of the alcohol for burning. Typically inside the stove will only burn for about 13-14mins (although hotter).

Hi James,

Thanks for spending the time to report back on your boil times and fuel usage. If I'm understanding, you were able to boil 2.6 cups + 1 ice cube with 14 grams of fuel? That's approx. .5 ounces of fuel used? That's awesome. I hate to keep bugging you, but would you mind sharing a bit more about the components of your cook kit?

sincerely,

-daniel-

I'm also trying to dial in my Esbit kit. Great idea using a Sol Ti! I read through your review but I missed the total weight. How heavy is your kit minus fuel?