Thanks Colin for the advice, think it will be a BushyBuddy initially but will probably also buy a Ti-Tri at a later date which sounds like it would work better with my MSR Titan Kettle I have hanging around somewhere.

I have always stuck with the genuine Esbit branded stuff which I’ve bought from etiher Ebay or Amazon. It looks like model shops sell it for use in model trains.

George I was thinking about making an esbit stove just as a test. There isn’t a lot too the Gram Cracker but it does work great but the postage is more expensive than the stove to the UK, unless buying other stuff from them.

The point about fast burn and efficiency is true for canister stoves as well of course.

1) As noted, the MLD 850 has a fairly small cross section/face to the fire when on the Ti-Tri and as such, will not see as much heat as a wider pot…..and consequently will go slower. The Ti-Tri Inferno admittedly does much better with wider pots.

2) As Alan mentioned…..not all solid fuel tablets are the same. In the US, we have seen and tested round tablets under various names, and they really don’t do as well as genuine Esbit. Can’t speak specifically to the eurohike product.

3) As to the quality of the burn mentioned by Londonbackpacker and why the Gram Cracker is better. The nature of what happens with the Esbit tablet just burning on a flat surface is that 5 sides of the tablet are burning all at once. This typically puts off heat at a faster rate than your pot/water can absorb and the excess heat is blown off to the atmosphere. As you run your tests with Esbit (or alcohol for that matter), place your hands near the exhaust vents on your cone (or above your windscreen). If you can feel heat coming off, that is heat that is not going into your meal but instead is heating up the great outdoors! What we did with the Gram Cracker was to build it in such a way that the wings/side panels press on the two long sides of the Esbit hindering their ability to burn. This forces the Esbit tablet to burn at a slower, more efficient rate. More of the heat is absorbed by the pot and less blown off as exhaust. (as a side note, in our system development, we consistently make the observation that “time to boil” is inversely proportional to “efficiency”. The faster you boil, the less fuel efficient you are….and the more fuel you need to carry.)

Rand

The tablets seem to burn for around 10 minutes but in this time I never got the water to boiling point.

I probably could of used two tablets but the 20 mls of meths brought 250 mls of water to the boil fairly quickly.

Steve – if wood burning performance is important to you then I would look elsewhere but if you want a reliable do-it-all stove then I can thoroughly recommend the Inferno Ti-Tri ULC Titanium stove and MLD 850 pot.