This is a small field test carried out on the group buy Swiss Issue Boiler.
You really don’t think of the Swiss in military terms, but we forget why they are neutral. In times gone by the Swiss mercenary bands were a force to be reckoned with, Napoleon rather than take on the Swiss produced a treaty with them to stop them allowing troops into Europe. From the land of cuckoo clocks comes a neat little bit of kit to rival the Crusader. In fact if it was stainless steel I would ditch my Crusader in favour of it. I prefer not to use Teflon based or ally based products, but still, this for me is a contender.
The fist thing you notice is the boiler is neat compact and is designed to be used wearing gloves. The second thing you notice, given that the mug fits very deep into the boiler its not designed for sticks, wood chips or pinecones but fine dead fall is perfect. I suspect it is designed to be a brush burner, which makes perfect sense for mountain troops. I ended up just throwing stuff in from the ground. Once it starts to burn the internal heat is ferocious so fine twigs from the wood land floor are perfect, the finer you use, the more heat you generate, the quicker it boils. The natty little wire handle enables you to twist the boiler into the wind to get a roaring up draught. The main trick is start it burning and then put the cup in after you have generated heat to begin drying the fuel in the mouth of the boiler. Use small twigs in little bundles. From getting out of the rucksack to boiling time 12 mins. Now this compares very favourably with a Kelly kettle and the boiler is smaller and carries its own water supply, it also used about half as much fuel as my 1 litre Kelly. If you fitted a lid to the mug it would heat up even quicker. The second picture shows the total amount of fuel needed to produce a rolling boil.
This was probably the perfect situation to try it out in as it was wet, windy and my blood sugar was dropping like a stone and I needed a hot brew fast. All in all a good bit of kit which I will use again and again.
As a side note, anybody know if the Swiss have or use an integrated cooking set with one of these?
Sandsnakes
PS I have just noticed that Chris G is organising another group by on these, take a peek in group buys.
A few people have asked a couple of other questions
so....
1 Cork is a saftey measure, when boiling up the bottle. If you forget to remove the cork rather than blowing up and throwing boiling water and shrapnel everywhere the cork flys out!
2 Its a boiler/kettle not a fire cage. It is designed to heat food and fluids using brush, gel or small twigs etc.. It is not designed to be used like a fire cage.
3 If you heat the bottle so you can fill two mugs, the ash does not go into the bottle and its a quicker method of heating a mug full. I have now used it three times with all sorts of different fuels and I have had no ash deposits into the cooking cup/mug.
4 It weighs under 300g (thanks mjk123 ;-))
Oh yes, you can fit in and heat a Rat Pack meal in the mug. Bit of a squeeze but works dam fine.
Sandsnakes
You really don’t think of the Swiss in military terms, but we forget why they are neutral. In times gone by the Swiss mercenary bands were a force to be reckoned with, Napoleon rather than take on the Swiss produced a treaty with them to stop them allowing troops into Europe. From the land of cuckoo clocks comes a neat little bit of kit to rival the Crusader. In fact if it was stainless steel I would ditch my Crusader in favour of it. I prefer not to use Teflon based or ally based products, but still, this for me is a contender.
The fist thing you notice is the boiler is neat compact and is designed to be used wearing gloves. The second thing you notice, given that the mug fits very deep into the boiler its not designed for sticks, wood chips or pinecones but fine dead fall is perfect. I suspect it is designed to be a brush burner, which makes perfect sense for mountain troops. I ended up just throwing stuff in from the ground. Once it starts to burn the internal heat is ferocious so fine twigs from the wood land floor are perfect, the finer you use, the more heat you generate, the quicker it boils. The natty little wire handle enables you to twist the boiler into the wind to get a roaring up draught. The main trick is start it burning and then put the cup in after you have generated heat to begin drying the fuel in the mouth of the boiler. Use small twigs in little bundles. From getting out of the rucksack to boiling time 12 mins. Now this compares very favourably with a Kelly kettle and the boiler is smaller and carries its own water supply, it also used about half as much fuel as my 1 litre Kelly. If you fitted a lid to the mug it would heat up even quicker. The second picture shows the total amount of fuel needed to produce a rolling boil.
This was probably the perfect situation to try it out in as it was wet, windy and my blood sugar was dropping like a stone and I needed a hot brew fast. All in all a good bit of kit which I will use again and again.
As a side note, anybody know if the Swiss have or use an integrated cooking set with one of these?
Sandsnakes
PS I have just noticed that Chris G is organising another group by on these, take a peek in group buys.
A few people have asked a couple of other questions
so....
1 Cork is a saftey measure, when boiling up the bottle. If you forget to remove the cork rather than blowing up and throwing boiling water and shrapnel everywhere the cork flys out!
2 Its a boiler/kettle not a fire cage. It is designed to heat food and fluids using brush, gel or small twigs etc.. It is not designed to be used like a fire cage.
3 If you heat the bottle so you can fill two mugs, the ash does not go into the bottle and its a quicker method of heating a mug full. I have now used it three times with all sorts of different fuels and I have had no ash deposits into the cooking cup/mug.
4 It weighs under 300g (thanks mjk123 ;-))
Oh yes, you can fit in and heat a Rat Pack meal in the mug. Bit of a squeeze but works dam fine.
Sandsnakes
