Cooking setup part 2 (Evernew Titanium Mug Pot 500 and MYOG solid fuel stove)

A while ago I explained how I went from the idea of taking a lightweight alcohol stove to just going with a gas stove. After a bit of research I bought me a Fire Maple 300t stove and ordered an Evernew Titanium Mug Pot 500. The pot came too late for the trip I planned so I had to use another pot instead, which was heavy compared to the Evernew (73g, or 2,6oz, including lid on my scale).

Evernew pot
The pot comes delivered in a mesh bag which is in a carton, this gives it a nice and almost luxurious look. The pot itself looks nice, a single piece of titanium with spot welded pieces added to attached the handles. The folding of the handles is not too loose, so you will always know where they are when grabbing for it. The lid fits perfect and with the rubber around the handle it is safe to handle when hot.

Although I couldn’t use the new pot during this trip and I didn’t have the time to go on a next, I took it for a test drive under stable conditions in my kitchen. I weighted the gas canister before doing the test and measured the room temperature: 14 °C or 57,2 °F.

I did the same test with the gas opened about half way and with max power. Room and water temperature were the same in both tests. And the results were somewhat surprising:


Half power: 7 grams of gas and a rolling boil in 4 minutes and 45 seconds.

Full Power: again 7 grams of gas but a rolling boil in 3 minutes and 50 seconds.


Like expected the full power test was quicker to a boil but the exact same gas usage was a bit unexpected. Probably just coincidence.
Note that the volume of this pot is 500mL but approx. 450 (15oz)  is usable if you want to use the lid. So, just under 4 minutes to boil not even half a liter of water is not fast but really, what else are you going to do? 

Since you have time on your hands (apart from the bad weather hurries once in a while) you might as well take some more time to prepare your dinner; as I expected when using solid fuel to cook. And because I was still not at enough peace with myself to start on a new can stove for use with alcohol, I started with making a "Brian Green Esbit stove".


MYOG Esbit stove
Brian made a nice, easy to use template which I printed, cut out and taped to a piece of cut open can. Using a needle I poked holes where the end of each cut would be; this prevents the aluminum from tearing once you start folding, so do not forget this if you try it yourself. Which is kind of the goal with a MYOG project...and you already know you want to, am I right?

I made the cuts with an old pocket knife which I sharpened. Just place the tip on the hole you made with needle and make nice and easy cuts, shouldn't be to hard if the knife is sharp. After you cut out the entire stove, you can take of the paper template. Using a ruler you can trace the bends and after this, the real fun starts: bending right on the marks in a perfect 90 degree angle and with the nice Z-fold, this should keep you going for a while. Don't forget the tiny strips that have to be bend underneath the "feet". It actually went quite well for me, because I happened to have a pair pliers that fitted nicely.

And there it was: my first-try-went-well-MYOG-esbit-stove. No rips or anything, just a little crooked. First thing I did was put it on my scale, speaks for itself:

I need a more accurate scale...


Of course, the piece of Esbit fuel did not fit exactly into the stove but it still went well for my first try. So it was time to test the stove. First thing I noticed I have another MYOG project coming up to make something that can hold back the wind as well as hold up my pot. So I used my barbecue for this run:

The numbers are quite good: the cube burned for over 16 minutes, of which the first 15 minutes was actually useful. But since I wasn't paying attention I put my pot above the stove at already 2 minutes in....and it didn't come to a full rolling boil. I believe that if I bring the pot down some more (now 40 - 50mm or 1,5 - 2 inches) and put it on from the start, I will get the full pot of water to a boil easily.


Steps to take next
The next project will have to wait for a little while since the Walk of the World is next week. A nice time to see if my feet are still up to the challenge. A small pack will be all to carry during this walk, about 2.500g (88oz) excluding any snacks and water.
After this it is time for my summer holiday so I will have some new stuff to blog about then.

Cooking setup part 1 (Fire Maple 300t Hornet)

For my solo trip to the Ardennes I wanted to go with lightweight cooking: bags of freeze dried food as diner and a light stove and pot from which I could also drink my morning coffee. So I bought a sixpack and I started a MYOG project to build a alcohol stove. This project is still ongoing… Do not let my failure fool you: I’m just a very impatient guy. This often results in teared up cans when trying to make them fit together and an angry me deciding to try again in a week or so. I will follow up on that soon.

The first failure made me rethink the alcohol cooking for this trip and by the second time I messed up I decided that for this trip I would go with a safe and clean gas stove.
Now I own a nice Primus Gravity 2 which burns a whole range of fuels, including gas, but it weighs 365g or 12,9oz and due to its large diameter burner it is not suitable for a small pot.

I went for some research and put my mind on a Fire Maple 300t gas stove in combination with an Evernew Titanium Mug Pot 500: 45g for the stove and 74g for the pot (1,6 + 2,6oz). A total weight of 119g, excluding any fuel of course, sounds great! Also, the small stove seems it would fit in the pot together with a small canister of gas, so the used space would be kept to a minimum. Just another plus.

 

I ordered the stove in China and it was soon in my possession. It comes in a little bag, which is nice but fairly useless, and it does what is promised: it’s small and light and it burns gas. The pot stands are titanium and about 1,5mm thick but seem solid enough to hold a pot with 500mL of water on it.

The pot I ordered in the UK and this took a little longer to be delivered than expected. It actually took that long, that I had to start my trip without it. Very unfortunate but these things happen. So I had to take a pot I had laying around. The lucky one was a 500mL pot which is used by the Dutch military. A heavy steel pot weighing in at 234g (8,3oz). Quite the difference compared to the titanium one! The size of this sturdy pot is great and you can put it right in a camp fire if you like. But since I was going to rely on a gas stove, this pot is too much.

The stove and the pot served me well during my trip. The stove folds in and out like a charm although I noticed the pivot points ran a little less smooth after about 10 uses. This is probably due to the way the pot stands are connected to the body of the stove which is a rivet like joint. By heating up and cooling down this will expand and shrink every use so there is some wear, but nothing too serious. I used it another 10 times during the trip and again a couple of times while back at home and it still works perfect. No worries there. A very cool plus of course, is that you’ll soon see the nice color changes that come with combining titanium with heat. The stove makes quite a bit of noise but not more than any other gas stove will do. The flame is steady and centered and spreads out nicely under the pot.

Cooking times for approx. 400mL were around 5 minutes, but I never took measures. Also, I did not always heat up the water to an actual boil since I had tap water available most of the time and for my coffee and tea it doesn’t need to boil, so I could preserve some gas for the trip.

I didn’t need saving since I took two gas canisters with me which I had laying around (they also wouldn’t fit inside the Evernew I was planning to take with me). One canister had only 89g (3,1oz) of gas in it and I figured I would use about 15g per day so this canister would run for almost 6 days. Because I did not always bring the water to a full boil I eventually had 7 days where I boiled a coffee, a tea and diner (approx. 1 liter/day). The other canister I used for another 2 days alone and then another 2 days for cooking for two and there is still lots of gas left in it.

Cooking for two we did with the Primus Gravity combined with an 1,2L Eta-pot which already proved itself already during previous trips. Cooking times are somewhere between 2 or 3 minutes for nearly 1 Liter of water. The Gravity is a powerful stove and it works well when cooking for a small group of people like a family.

For future trips I will look into making an alcohol stove and a small stove for Esbit tablets for which Brian Green deserves credit. Also, in the meantime I had my Evernew pot delivered and I will post a review on this sometime soon.