Esbit Alcohol Stove Follow Up
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ธ.ค. 2024
- This is an update to discuss some of the flaws and gripes I have with Esbit's alcohol stove and pot stand. The fact that the burner leaks fuel ended up being a deal breaker and I plan on returning this kit. Unless you are mainly after the cook set or you plan to use solid Esbit fuel cubes, my conclusion is that your money would be better spent elsewhere (but it's possible that I have a defective burner). I recommend getting a Trangia stove with one of the many pot stand options it has available and then buying a separate cook set if necessary. This would be an incredible value (I spent under $30 shipped) for a solo or 2-person cooking setup, but there are just too many flaws for me to keep it.
Great Vid and observation on the Pot flame going outside pot stand acting as a Heat Sink. If your Lid is leaking the O-ring, Gaskit or whatever is used to seal the lid to the Pot may be dried out. Try Lubing it and see if that helps. Keep up the Great Vids.
I bought the esbit cooking set in 2019 and I have the same issues like you did . The pot stand gets dammed hot and the burner leaks with fuel . I agree with you , the pots themself are good , the pot stand and the burner are crap
Using the smaller Esbit set designed only for hexamine tabs, I used my ha'penny stove (penny stove made out of red bull sized cans) and it worked very well. I did find that picking the pot up off the stand near the boiling point made it start to boil a few seconds early, so I agree that the stand is acting as a heat sink. Boiled 1 cup of water on VERY little alcohol in 5 minutes.
@foreignpress1 I should add that it would still leak when I used the Trangia's lid on the Esbit burner. So I think the issue is with the stove burner and not the gasket/lid. I tried the Esbit's lid on my Trangia and had no leaks, so the common factor is the Esbit burner.
I burned 1 liter of fuel with it and my esbit alcohol burner isn't leaking. i filled in 70ml (max load) of alcohol and stored it upside down over night. no leaking. I have to admit the flame pattern isn't effective as it could be. Like you pointed out in you review the flames hitting the edge of the pot and also surge up the pot. The pot stand has to many openings. i use tinfoil to cover up all big holes axcept the large front hole. this reduce boil time. Overall a good cooking set. I like it.
@ColoradoCamper No i never used the tab plate. I did some experiments varying the distance of the burner to the pot. I used piles of metal coins to bring the burner more close to the pot. Step by step using more coins. The result was bad. Longer boil time. The default distance seems to be the best. More space by lifting the pot causing a smaler flame pattern and actually speed it up a bit. The side effect was the flame wasn't totaly blue but yellow and much more soot at the bottom of the pot.
@Jollyprez I agree, especially since most pots are fairly narrow and most backpackers seldom use a frying pan.
There are a few alcohol stoves that have inward facing jets that I'm aware of such as the Atomic from Mini Bull Designs.
can you plug the holes with jbweld drill new ones facing up?
You're absolutely right. You are not the problem. The design is flawed. Look at a trangia 27 or 25 system. That is the design philosophy for an optimal alcohol burner/cookset.
I have the even smaller Esbit set. Same problem here, pot is too close to flame, and flame comes out from large side opening. I am going to make a large hole to bottom of pot support-windscreen and put the burner under it. I should get burner to pot distance just right. i will hack the sealing lid byt making a large hole on it and then I jb-weld it to the bottom of pot support/windsreen. Burner will be screwed to it from under. I'll post a video when done.
use the simmer ring, opened and control the flame, the extended handle I like over the tangia.
thanks for the heads up about leaking. Was gonna get the whole kit, but if there's even a chance of leakage, forget it!!!
+Fenrisulfr Even without the leaking problem, you can get much better cook kits for your money. Cheers.
@MrCepstrum I would have liked mine overall too if it didn't leak. I think mine must have been a bad burner. I really like the pots, I just think the burner is too big for them.
One thing I thought of was to use a soda can alcohol stove on the little Esbit tab plate. Have you ever tried that? If it worked it would cut down weight and might improve performance too.
The name of the game for alcohol stoves is efficiency. The fuel has only half the energy as petroleum fuels so you can't afford to waste it out the sides like that. Adding an additional windscreen would help, but the trangia is best.
Use a piece of foil to wrap around stove except for big window(place it downwind). Does your stove have a stand for the solid fuel which you can take in and out? If so turn it upside down and place it in stand and drop the alcohol stove on top of it(it will fit in petfectly.
Just a question. What is the issue with boil times? If 1 oz of fuel boils 2 cups of water in 9 mins or 6 mins...does it really matter? I've seen some jet alcohol stoves that boil water in 4 mins...but they still use an oz of fuel to get the job done. Just wondering. I use a "cat stove" and can boil 2 cups of 65 degree water in 9 mins, which I don't think is too bad.
I like that set up for the alcohol stove
I would carry the stove empty of fuel until until it came to actual use.
I use a Trangia burner in mine , Keep there kick off burner as a spare.
Did you injure the gasket in your lid since that would let it leak or there could of been a grain of sand in there not letting it seal like it should.
I ran my own boil test of two cups of tap water (about 70 degrees) to boil (210 degree) and found the flame was perfectly positioned, proper bloom and it took about 9 minutes.
My fuel was kleen strip denatured alcohol (the 'eco-freindly' one) labeled as stove fuel.
I ended up returning the Esbit due to the leaking. But you're right, lubing the o ring would be good to keep it from drying out and cracking.
@rockyraccoon4 I never really thought about that. It's just anodized aluminum, so I think you would be fine burning wood in it.
@ColoradoCamper: Understood. I was just curious if there was some clear reason I was missing. I am a pretty cheap camper...so I make due with my homemade, 9min boil time stove...lol. Thanks for posting...I enjoyed the vids.
Could you use this stand as a wood burner too??
i noticed this when I bought this esbit system. when I placed a larger pot on it (1.7, 2.1, 3.0) with and without heat exchanger the flame doesn't get wasted. in regards to the esbit leaking fuel I thought only the trangia was able to store unused fuel. I need to look into that....nice vid, hun.
I never tried it with a larger pot, but I imagine it would do much better. I am pretty sure the Esbit is designed to carry fuel since it has a rubber O-ring, just like the Trangia.
ColoradoCamper ok. cool. i'm glad I can store fuel in it. I love esbit gear. I have both this piece of kit and the mega multi cook set. thanks for the reply, sweet pea:)
CC; have you tried putting carbon felt underneath the stove? I know this will reduce the gap between the stove and pot. To me it looks as if the Fuel in the Esbit stove is being super heated.
I think plenty of little soda can stoves would actually work quite well inside the pot stand/wind screen. I wish I still had it so I could try it, but I don't have this kit anymore.
Also, I grew up in N Central Colorado (Greeley/Ft Collins area). I live out of state now, but miss the Rockies, RMNP and Estes...beautiful country out there. I just don't miss the snow...ha ha.
hey man please respond but where did you get your stand it looks very useful thanks
p.s your vids are great
Maybe a round base magnet between the stand and the burner would shim it enough.
I have not tried that, and unfortunately I can't since I returned this kit. Thanks for the tip though. Cheers.
Mine works great for frying up fish and fries. I pack light and ride my motorcycle to the favorite fishing spot for a shoreline lunch. Just use the lid as a frying pan. Efficient, light weight, and portable. Doesn't get much better than that!
@rlmarin1968 I'm a big fan of DIY gear myself and I'm currently experimenting with some homemade stoves that are performing well so far. Thanks for watching. Cheers.
If you rub a little silicone on the o ring with your finger, it will stop any leaks from occurring.
@foreignpress1 The gasket is there. I don't have the patience to try to remedy it myself, so I decided to return it. Other people who reviewed it don't have this problem, so I wish you better luck than I had. I really wanted to like this kit though. I'd give it 4/5 stars were it not for the burner leak.
The other option would be to just use the Trangia burner in this same kit.
You can get this for a great deal at Sierra Trading Post if you intend to buy it.
@ColoradoCamper how much
I have found that the wider the pot the better the boil time with trangia's.
I don't think you're losing enough heat from the flames passing through the pot stand vents to say it loses 'performance', you would still lose heat through the stand due to conduction rather than convection. I'd also think that raising the burner would make the flames go further toward the edges of the pot losing more 'performance'. I hope that the leaking issue is simply a malfunction in the particular stove you purchased, does any one else happen to know of leaking problems?
I'm not aware of any other leaking complaints, so I likely got a bad one.
What I mean by this package having poor performance is that this same burner is capable of much shorter boil times in other pot stands. So compared to what the burner is capable of, this pot stand design performs rather poorly in my opinion.
Could have been. I don't think it leaked when I put the trangia lid on it.
I have several of the esbit stoves and none of them leaked fuel... maybe the o-ring was bad on yours?
I've never understood why manufacturers don't have jets pointing inward. That would prevent a fair amount of that overflow problem. For a wide frying pan, that pattern is fine. But a pot, concentrating the flames in the middle would be perfect.
@brianwpratt Yes mine likely had a bad O-ring or something.
@rlmarin1968 Oh that's awesome! I've lived here all my life and although the snow can be a pain, it also provides some good fun and scenery. You'd be happy this winter though. We've hardly had any snow on the front range.
@amcguire89 Thanks.
I got that entire cookset from sierratradingpost (dot) com. It comes with two pots, the alcohol burner, the windscreen/stand, and a solid fuel tablet stand. It's called the Esbit 985ml Cookset.
put the simmer ring on wide open may just get a middle flame
This comment made my day. It's like three shitty fortune cookies rolled into one.
Thank you 😁
What is better for use - dry or liquid alcohol?
Never heard of dry alcohol. This stove is meant to use liquid alcohol.
Dry alcohol is alcohol in the form of tablets. This cookset is also designed for them. In my opinion, dry alcohol in the form of tablets is more convenient.
I'm confused. If you want the burner closer to the pot then raise the burner. You do this by putting something under the burner, like maybe the lid or something of equal height. Then you've got that 1" or 1 1/2." I'm sure Esbit thought of this but they left the clearance as-is. Who knows why, except maybe the flame would get too hot and damage the pot.
Even if the burner were at the optimum height, you will still lose a lot of heat from the flame hitting the windscreen. It seems like the priority of the design was having a compact kit, not performance. And that's completely fine! I simply prefer performance. Others might prefer a neat, tidy kit.
old vid, but the solid fuel insert put that in the bottom upside down, and the burner on top of that.. then you have the intended height..
This stand would indeed make a nifty wind screen for a DIY stove.
I think you had a fluke stove. Mine doesn't leak and performs extremely well.
Good informative video. Thanks
Thank you for watching. Cheers.
Thanks man, nice review
@rlmarin1968 Some hikers are more patient than others, as evidenced by the wide variety of stoves out there. To some people, fuel efficiency is the most important factor so they'll happily wait over 10 minutes to boil 2C if it only uses 1/2 oz of fuel. Personally, I don't like to wait when I'm tired and hungry in the woods, so I like my stoves to be faster. But I have no problem with other people who use slower stoves. It's all personal preference.
Great stuff!!
The flames pushing through the holes is natural. In fact, I'd venture it's by design. You can see this happen in other stoves: th-cam.com/video/_s0CPt0JKcQ/w-d-xo.html
One inch is not the sweet spot for the fastest boil time by my experiments. You actually get a faster boil time by increasing the distance. I get the best Bill time at 1.75 inches. It also depends on the stove and pot combination. I bet if you find a way to raise the pot further up about.5 inches you will see that the flames will come together and you the pot more in the center and will give you a faster boil time.
Yeah, I have a more recent video testing the trangia burner to determine the ideal sweet spot. I found it to be just under 1.5 inches with the pot I used.
th-cam.com/video/QR8WMwE5nkY/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for watching.
10-4. In 2004 I made a "cat can" stove that I took to Hawaii. Since then I've used it throughout the Rockies in MT, WY & CO (including the Federal Republic of Boulder). It has worked without a hitch (I no longer summit fourteeners) in all locations. I reckon I'll just stick to that at about 3 bucks per copy. I sure would like to get to the bottom of what manufacturers are thinking about these days ... Oh, wait! I know this one! $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
+Fenrisulfr I certainly agree with you there. The types of alcohol stoves sold by big name manufacturers are such garbage compared to the designs you can build yourself. I'm amazed they actually sell any of them, but I guess not everyone knows how easy it is to build a great stove by themselves.
Maybe someone else will try insulating the stove from the heat of the pot stand. I guess it was one of those ideas that worked on paper.
Great
Interesting idea. Feel free to post your video as a response to this one if you'd like. Cheers.
@amcguire89 $35 plus shipping
Your later video disproves this 1 inch sweet spot.
Yeah, the reason I made that later video is because I had heard lots of people mention that 1 inch was the sweet spot, but I decided to test it out for myself.
yours is the only one I've ever heard of leaking maybe you damaged it somehow.
rase the burner Colorado
get a better burner
You're drawing some really strange conclusions with no evidenmce at all to back them up. I know where the one inch optimum height comes from, and it didn't have any real evidence to back it up, either.
Generally speaking, the lower the pot, the more the flam spreads, and bubbles should always concentrate around the outside of the water, rather than in the middle.
I don't know why this setup takes nine minutes to heat two cups of water, but the reasons you give make very little sense in and of themselves. Even if they're right, it's most likely coincidence. That's not how a heat sink works, and I have two setups of an inch and a half that boil in under six minutes, so something else is happening besides height.
As for leaking, if your stove leaks, you either have the lid on wrong, or too loose, or the O ring is out of whack. I've never seen an Esbit leak unless user error was involved. Most of the time, lack of muscle is involved, and the lid simply isn't tight. When someone says their Esbit leaks, this remedy stops the leak nine times out of ten.
But none of outrs have ever leaked, and between the ones we use, the ones we store as backups, with fuel in them, and the ones we've bought for other crafters we know, that's at least fifteen burners.
I see you're back, talking out of your ass again on one of my videos. If you want to see some evidence on the optimum height above the burner, see this video: th-cam.com/video/QR8WMwE5nkY/w-d-xo.html But I warn you, if you leave another stupid comment on that video, I'm just going to block you.