JimSproul
10-22-2004, 13:09
I recent bought a Vargo Triad™ Titanium alcohol stove. It seems pretty tough but it is light weight and small.
I am using for a class demonstration as well as my own hiking. I planned to show the student various items that can be used and their relative heating capacity. If you know of other items please let me know so I can include them in my demo.
So far I have tried:
71% Isopropyl - Soot, hard to light, "pops"
90% Isopropyl - Lights better, less soot
Denatured Alcohol - Much cleaner, seems hotter
HEET (yellow) - Have not tried yet.
Other suggestions anyone?
Thanks
Footslogger
10-22-2004, 13:27
I think you pretty much have all the readily available ones listed. I ran through the same list in preparation for my thru last year. I personally found that HEET (yellow container) burned the hottest. I based that decision on the time it took to heet the water in my cookpot for a meal. I no longer have the actual times I recorded but for the same volume of water (in my case 1 - 1.5 cups) there was a noticeable difference in time before "bubblage" was visable in the water. That translated into less fuel consumed per meal for me because of the preparation method I used. I would routinely bring my water to a rolling boil, insert and stirr whatever I was eating that night and then extinguish the flame. I covered my meal and let it sit for a few minutes. I would then lift the lid stirr again and dig in.
I did the whole "coozie" thing at first but ditched it by the time I got to Neels Gap. Dunno ...the coozie might have made a difference in "how long" my meal stayed warm but to me it wasn't worth carrying that extra piece of gear. Besides ...once my noodles (or whatever) absorbed the water I was ready to eat and generally finished off the meal before it had a chance to get cold.
Anyway ...it worked for me.
'Slogger
AT 2003
IdahoDavid
10-22-2004, 13:58
Just have a care with Heet if you are demonstrating in an enclosed space. I'm very concerned about the potential for toxic vapors when you are using an automotive product. I know it it is mostly pure alcohol, but ...
EverClear. Watch out for the proof though, the highest (190) is not available in all states.
Ditto on the grain alchohol. Good for fuel, good for cocktails. HEET is mostly methyl alcohol, although you can also buy ISOHEET, which has isopropyl in it. Denatured is ethyl, although sometimes it seems to be cut with other ingredients. Somewhere, two years ago, Sgt. Rock posted a good message about the BTUs in various fuels.
C-Stepper
10-22-2004, 22:30
These should help
Sgt Rock's tests are listed on his website...however, it has been down all week. When it gets back up, try his website (I think it is www.hikinghq.net (http://www.hikinghq.net) )
Types of fuel here (same website, different page) http://www.thru-hiker.com/articles.asp?subcat=2&cid=51
JimSproul
10-23-2004, 00:25
Just what I was looking for!
Youngblood
11-24-2004, 18:46
Looks like there is one less source for alcohol stove fuel in Georgia: http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/1104/24rabun.html ... and they didn't worry about LNT when they closed it down.
Youngblood
11-25-2004, 09:25
I forgot, I think you have to register to see that link. Just in case, here is the text:
================================================== ======
Police blow up moonshine still
By MARK DAVIS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/23/04
RABUN COUNTY — State and local authorities stumbled across a small piece of private enterprise Monday as they poked about in the ridges above Lake Rabun. So they did what any cop would do.
They blew it to the moon.
That's "moon" as in moonshine still, and that's what Rabun County and state officials detonated Tuesday afternoon: a well-made little manufacturing plant capable of producing about 300 gallons of white lightning every week.
Standing at the bottom of a ridge waterlogged by two days of intermittent rain, a handful of men stood back and blinked as the handiwork of some unknown craftsman got blasted into the sky.
BOOM!
Pieces of aluminum hurtled skyward, tumbling in the air like flipped coins. Bags of sugar blew apart, their tatters settling like old rags on the branches of gum trees ringing the site. Leaves blown off trees scattered like pigeons.
The noise, said police, was what happens when someone goes into the business of manufacturing whiskey without bothering to alert the government.
They found the still Monday afternoon, hidden in a stand of hardwoods about three miles west of Lake Rabun on Vandiver Mountain and 110 miles north of Atlanta.
Whoever made the still didn't want it found. Shoved into a slice of earth roughly the dimensions of a one-car garage, the still was covered with green galvanized roofing. Its mash box was spray-painted in a camouflage pattern. Ditto for the condenser, which contained 144 copper coils capable of rendering alcohol that could explode if left too close to fire.
With its production capabilities reaching 300 gallons a week, the still was probably a going enterprise, police said. Prime stuff fetches anywhere from $35 to $50 per gallon, meaning potential sales of $10,500 to $15,000 each week it operates.
"When you see somebody putting that much effort into it [a still], they're not doing it for a hobby," said Bart Graham, the commissioner of the state Department of Revenue, who witnessed the explosion.
The cops, who had made no arrests late Tuesday, destroyed it almost reluctantly. Even guys who blow up stills for a living recognize a good one when they see it.
"Still makers are like bomb makers," said David Dyal, a state revenue agent who spent Monday night squatting in the leaves, sodden and cold, in a fruitless wait for the still's builder to return to the scene of his crimes. "Each one is different."
This still was tooled to exacting standards, tucked in mountain mud the color of peanut butter.
A stream, somewhere over the ridge, fed water into the still's mash box, a rectangular structure roughly the size of a Mazda Miata. A propane flame kept the water, sugar and feed grain bubbling, which created a mash that was fed into the "thumper," an oaken barrel that separated the mash residue from the pure stuff. Rendered into steam, it traveled through the condenser, a shotgun-length box containing copper tubing, where it emerged as liquor, aged three days.
A black plastic pipe, stretching a tenth of a mile down the ridge, delivered the booze to a livestock watering trough. From there, the moonshiner could fill plastic jugs, jars or whatever, "just like you were at a filling station," said Jason Brown, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent stationed in Rabun County.
Was it rough stuff? Probably. Could you get legal stuff more cheaply? Certainly, but that's not the point. "It's all about heritage," Brown said. "It's a link to the past."
A link, perhaps, to some of those newcomers in the mansions down on Lake Rabun, too. "They can buy it in a store," Brown said, "but it's not the same as saying they have moonshine made in the mountains."