Backpacking Using Gas or Alcohol

I’ve been backpacking since 2019. My treks average 5 to 7 days, the longest being 12 days.

Until recently. I’ve always been using gas to heat water. Why just water? Well, if I haven't bought anything to eat. I'll eat a lyophilisé food packet (dried food). Which, to be honest, isn’t that bad, fairly tasty and containing the right balance of protein, fats, and carbs.

My gas setup

My gas setup was and still is :

Toaks 650 ml pot (big enough to heat 500 ml of water), BRS3000T stove/burner, Toaks windshield, a small Bic lighter and a gas canister. Total weight 325 g.

One day, while chatting with some contacts on FB in one of my groups. I came across people talking about using alcohol instead of gas. One of the main reasons was that it was far easier to buy alcohol than a gas canister.

Sure enough, one day while getting ready for a new trek, I needed to buy a gas canister. Now I live near a fairly big town, but impossible to find a canister, and so I understood what people were talking about.

Imagine you’re on a trek, passing through a small town or village, and you’ve run out of gas, you’re in trouble. Whereas a bottle of alcohol, you will more than likely find in the local supermarket. Even a small one.

Alcool à brûler. about 2 euros a litre, will last for yonks

I’m not exactly sure what "Alcool a brûler" is in English, been living in France for too many years...

As usual, I did a quick study and started buying some new equipment, for once, not expensive this time.

Toaks

I bought a TOAKS Titanium Siphon Alcohol, Here plus its support for the pot, & it's windshield. 51 g in all. There are several alcohol burners on the market, but after buying and checking some, the Toaks is the best.

The Toaks is a ‘dinky’ model, but I tried it recently on a 5-day hike, using it twice a day. It works just great.

Using alcohol requires a windshield, 58 x 10.8 cms, and only 14 g, as in the above photo

Now I needed to do two things with this.
1: It’s too long and too high as it measures 58 x 10.8 cms, so with just an ordinary pair of scissors, I trimmed it down to 43 x 8.5 cms.
Why 8.5 cms? because this fits perfectly inside my Toaks 650 ml pot

2: Rub down all the edges with some steel wool, as they are as sharp as razors, and you will cut yourself.

My Alcohol setup

My new alcohol setup is all Toaks

650 ml pot (big enough to heat 500 ml of water), same pot as my gas setup. Toaks siphon burner and windshield. A small Bic lighter and 60 ml of alcohol fuel.
Total weight 206 g.

I love Toaks stuff, they make some of the lightest and well-made equipment around https://www.toaksoutdoor.com/

Storing the liquid alcohol

Now all you need is a bottle to store the alcohol.

Attention, not any bottle. If it breaks or leaks, you will spoil and ruin your equipment. There are special metal bottles, though super solid, they are also heavy.

I bought a Nalgene 60ml (2oz) bottle as this fits in the pot, but note this will only do between 3 to 5 ‘heating-ups’, depending on the amount of alcohol you use and depending on how much water needs to be heated up. So you will need a second bottle stocked in your rucksack, 60, 125, 250 or 500 ml, depending on how long you plan to trek.

You can also use the bottles that smokers use to fill up electronic cigarettes, rather than Nalgene. These are solid as well.

For my last five-day trek, I used about 80 ml of alcohol. Coffee in the morning and or afternoon (about 15 ml of alcohol for a cup of water) and three evening meals (about 20 ml of alcohol for 350-400 ml of water)

One bad point of using alcohol is that it weighs more than gas when you compare the number of ‘heating-up’ days. You can see in the photos below that the alcohol setup is much lighter BUT will only heat for a couple of days. The gas setup will last at least a week, if not more.

Gas

Alcohol

Taking a second 60 ml Nalgene bottle would weigh a total of 275 g. Probably lasts about a week, or a 250 ml bottle would weigh a total of 360 g. Slightly heavier than a gas setup for roughly the same amount of heat-ups.

You can see the pot support and the windshield. The windshield needs to be ‘loose’ around the pot; otherwise, there’s not enough air for it to burn correctly.

Gas or Alcohol?

Backpacking Using Gas or Alcohol? So there you go, as you can see, both setups are really light and simple compared to many burners and pans on the market, such as MSR or Jetboil. Both setups are not expensive, and both work really well.

Alcohol for a very short trek is the lighter option. For a trek of about a week, gas is the lighter option, but as I said at the beginning of this post, finding gas on a trek can be a problem.

I liked using alcohol; it seems more ‘natural’. You have to be careful to use just the right amount; too little, the water is not hot enough, and you will have to wait until the burner is cold before adding more.
Too much and you are just wasting alcohol, as you can’t just turn it off like the gas. It is also slower than gas, but finally, you’re not in a hurry when trekking, so it doesn’t make any difference.

Backpacking Using Gas or Alcohol? I’ve now used alcohol for a couple of treks, it’s just as easy, I find it more ‘fun’, just as quick. For me, I’ll be staying with alcohol from now on. There’s no going back to gas.

I wrote this post first on my WordPress blog. This is the same post, just cleaned up a little.