New lightweight stove

[captain paranoia]

> I dabbled with the alcohol stoves but didn't like them. I always ended up with alcohol on my hands and it reeked.

I use a bottle with a fine nozzle, and use this to dispense fuel into a medicine measuring cup...  UK meths doesn't smell too bad, but the Bitrex denaturant isn't nice when you're handling food, or licking your fingers...

Despite my like of making alcohol stoves, I'm agnostic about stoves; I use meths burners some of the time, and gas burners other times, depending on what I'm doing, how I'm getting there, and what I'm cooking.

Whilst my current 'go to' meths stove is the Mytimug setup shown above, my current 'go to' gas stove is a badged-engineered Fire Maple FMS-118 with piezo lighter, aka the Karrimor Alpine stove.  I bought mine for £23, but they're now reduced to £17.

Alpkit have just launched a Ti version of this stove (the Koro), which is obviously a bit lighter, but £35.  Still a better price than you'll get, even importing from China.

I like the look of the new Alpkit 650ml Mytimug, too.  And only £20...  Looks nicer than my old 750ml version.

[krenaud]

Of course, once winter comes, I will probably need something different.

@Angle Of Repose, Primus have announced a new canister and mixture which is said to improve winter performance.

http://www.grough.co.uk/magazine/2014/09/12/primus-winter-gas-gains-top-award-at-outdoor-trade-show

[captain paranoia]

I think, judging by the stated performance figures, I'd probably go with a burner with pre-heat tube to allow the canister to be inverted.  This allows the propane to provide the pressure to force liquified gas to the pre-heat tube, largely avoiding the issue of fractional separation of the propane & butane (which leaves increasing amounts of high BP butane behind, thus degrading the low temperature performance).

The disadvantage of such a system is that they need to be remote canister stoves (to allow inversion of the canister to get the liquid feed).  This means that the burner cannot feed heat back to the canister like a canister-top stove does (which raises the canister temperature, thus improving gasification).

The evaporation blanket looks like it might be useful at very low temperatures (below the -18C BP of propane).  Rather like a wick for an alcohol stove...

[krenaud]

@captain paranoia: What about the Jetboil Joule? It has the canister upside down, and it is placed under the burner. Looks like it might deliver decent cold weather performance.