Hi lads and lasses,
Well recently I've started wandering about in Iceland and Norway and even in the UK we can't have helped but notice that last winter and this one have already been harsher than usual. Almost all my little adventures thus far have been in pretty temperate conditions, but I'd heard that not all fuels are born equal when it comes to lower temperatures in cooler climates, so 'time for a test' thought I.
Luckily, the weather being what it is, the test could take place in my own back yard!
Here we have our three contestants: a pretty standard Karrimor gas burner running their own-brand butane/propane mix; a mini-Trangia (also known as the '28') running on meths; and a can of 'Lacor' brand chafing gel I picked up at a local garden centre.
The test will be done on 700ml of water from the tap in an uncovered Dutch aluminium mess tin. Yep, I know that the Trangia comes with it's own covered pot and using an uncovered messtin in winter isn't the smartest, but the point was to see what was the best fuel/burner combination and not the most efficient cooking pot. All the kit and fuel has been out for 36hrs, and is being tested the morning after the second night out. It got to a pretty chilly -12c during the night, according to the BBC!
Frosty, eh?
And they're off!
I finished the gas test first, then lit up the meths, then lit up the gel 4 minutes later whilst the meths was still on - using a fresh mess tin for each so there was so heat left in the system from the previous test.
Gas boiling:
The gel seemed to be getting off to a good start compared to the mini Trangia:
The results were a bit hard to interpret. For the gas I didn't notice any real difference between 'degrees of boiling' - the thing just hit the boil. For the meths and the gel though, I made a distinction between the '1st boiling point' - when I first saw those bubbles gathering eagerly at the bottom and releasing one by one - and the '2nd boiling point' - when I would call it fully boiling. There was more than a minute seperating these times with the Trangia, and the gel never even got to the second point: I waiting for ages whilst it was on the cusp of boiling over properly, but it just never seemed to get there. Disappointed, I called it a day on the gel; besides, there wasn't that much of the original 700ml left in the tin at that point, some serious evaporation had been at work.
Results:
'1st Boil' Pt. '2nd Boil' Pt.
Gas 6:18 6:18
Meths 23:20 24:30
Alc. Gel 27:15 N/A
Yep, you read right. It took more than half an hour and the gel still did not fully boil the water. Not exactly what you want of a morning when you need to get brekky and a cuppa down your neck and get moving.
What did I pick up from this? Well, gas doesn't seem to be the useless fuel I thought it became at subzero temperatures. It's important to note that this was in the UK and not extremely cold, I didn't have an accurate thermometer on me and things may well be different at -15, -20 or beyond, but I'd heard gas was terrible in the cold and in this case it was still by far the best option. Maybe it's a combination of altitude and cold that does for it, or extreme cold, but at least I'm glad my gas stove is usable in more circumstances than I originally thought it was.
The second thing I took away from this was that alcohol really isn't going to be my fuel of choice in the cold! Obviously boil times would be quicker with a covered pot as you would use for real, and I think the flame from the gel probably wasn't the optimum distance from the bottom of the pot given my cook-stand was two lumps of chopped wood, but still. Maybe preheating the burner or some other trick improves the performance, but this was still without any wind and not at altitude. I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. Trangias are also a bugger to light when it's cold - don't rely on a firesteel spark, you need to get a match or bit of paper or something down into the well and really expose it to get it to catch. Gel lit easier but performed worse once lit.
I'd be interested to hear what your experiences are using different fuels, especially as this was just a backyard test and I've not had cause to cook in extreme cold on a tour yet. What do you find to be best suited?
I'm also wondering how naptha, petrol, kerosene and the various other fuels and multi-fuel stoves stand up in cold weather...
Cheers
Beardy
Well recently I've started wandering about in Iceland and Norway and even in the UK we can't have helped but notice that last winter and this one have already been harsher than usual. Almost all my little adventures thus far have been in pretty temperate conditions, but I'd heard that not all fuels are born equal when it comes to lower temperatures in cooler climates, so 'time for a test' thought I.
Luckily, the weather being what it is, the test could take place in my own back yard!
Here we have our three contestants: a pretty standard Karrimor gas burner running their own-brand butane/propane mix; a mini-Trangia (also known as the '28') running on meths; and a can of 'Lacor' brand chafing gel I picked up at a local garden centre.
The test will be done on 700ml of water from the tap in an uncovered Dutch aluminium mess tin. Yep, I know that the Trangia comes with it's own covered pot and using an uncovered messtin in winter isn't the smartest, but the point was to see what was the best fuel/burner combination and not the most efficient cooking pot. All the kit and fuel has been out for 36hrs, and is being tested the morning after the second night out. It got to a pretty chilly -12c during the night, according to the BBC!
Frosty, eh?
And they're off!
I finished the gas test first, then lit up the meths, then lit up the gel 4 minutes later whilst the meths was still on - using a fresh mess tin for each so there was so heat left in the system from the previous test.
Gas boiling:
The gel seemed to be getting off to a good start compared to the mini Trangia:
The results were a bit hard to interpret. For the gas I didn't notice any real difference between 'degrees of boiling' - the thing just hit the boil. For the meths and the gel though, I made a distinction between the '1st boiling point' - when I first saw those bubbles gathering eagerly at the bottom and releasing one by one - and the '2nd boiling point' - when I would call it fully boiling. There was more than a minute seperating these times with the Trangia, and the gel never even got to the second point: I waiting for ages whilst it was on the cusp of boiling over properly, but it just never seemed to get there. Disappointed, I called it a day on the gel; besides, there wasn't that much of the original 700ml left in the tin at that point, some serious evaporation had been at work.
Results:
'1st Boil' Pt. '2nd Boil' Pt.
Gas 6:18 6:18
Meths 23:20 24:30
Alc. Gel 27:15 N/A
Yep, you read right. It took more than half an hour and the gel still did not fully boil the water. Not exactly what you want of a morning when you need to get brekky and a cuppa down your neck and get moving.
What did I pick up from this? Well, gas doesn't seem to be the useless fuel I thought it became at subzero temperatures. It's important to note that this was in the UK and not extremely cold, I didn't have an accurate thermometer on me and things may well be different at -15, -20 or beyond, but I'd heard gas was terrible in the cold and in this case it was still by far the best option. Maybe it's a combination of altitude and cold that does for it, or extreme cold, but at least I'm glad my gas stove is usable in more circumstances than I originally thought it was.
The second thing I took away from this was that alcohol really isn't going to be my fuel of choice in the cold! Obviously boil times would be quicker with a covered pot as you would use for real, and I think the flame from the gel probably wasn't the optimum distance from the bottom of the pot given my cook-stand was two lumps of chopped wood, but still. Maybe preheating the burner or some other trick improves the performance, but this was still without any wind and not at altitude. I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. Trangias are also a bugger to light when it's cold - don't rely on a firesteel spark, you need to get a match or bit of paper or something down into the well and really expose it to get it to catch. Gel lit easier but performed worse once lit.
I'd be interested to hear what your experiences are using different fuels, especially as this was just a backyard test and I've not had cause to cook in extreme cold on a tour yet. What do you find to be best suited?
I'm also wondering how naptha, petrol, kerosene and the various other fuels and multi-fuel stoves stand up in cold weather...
Cheers
Beardy
