Thread: Cooking systems - Light vs cost

My maplefire 1L heat exchange pot arrived today, did a quick comparison with a normal (wider shaped) alloy pot. Both on the little BRS ti cooker on the same setting, though it wasn't on full power because I didn't think about that until I'd already started. 500ml of tap water.

Maplefire about 1 min 50s
Normal pot about 2 min 20s

So thats about 22% faster/more efficient, and the different probably would have been bigger if the cooker was turned up higher.

Maplefire weighs in at 187g pot only, and 220g including the silicon plastic lid.
My comparison pot is 162g pot only, but if you add its lid (which is pretty solid because it doubles as a bowl or frypan) and pot holder (because it doesn't have a built-in handle) you end up with 419g total.

So I'm happy enough.

One minor downside - the arms of the ti cooker were a few mm too wide to fit inside the heat exchange ring of the pot, but not wide enough to give a stable platform with the ring sitting on them. Problem solved by bending the arms in slightly to fit inside the ring.

Originally Posted by GravelBen

My maplefire 1L heat exchange pot arrived today, did a quick comparison with a normal (wider shaped) alloy pot. Both on the little BRS ti cooker on the same setting, though it wasn't on full power because I didn't think about that until I'd already started. 500ml of tap water.

Maplefire about 1 min 50s
Normal pot about 2 min 20s

So thats about 22% faster/more efficient, and the different probably would have been bigger if the cooker was turned up higher.

Maplefire weighs in at 187g pot only, and 220g including the silicon plastic lid.
My comparison pot is 162g pot only, but if you add its lid (which is pretty solid because it doubles as a bowl or frypan) and pot holder (because it doesn't have a built-in handle) you end up with 419g total.

So I'm happy enough.

One minor downside - the arms of the ti cooker were a few mm too wide to fit inside the heat exchange ring of the pot, but not wide enough to give a stable platform with the ring sitting on them. Problem solved by bending the arms in slightly to fit inside the ring.

Be interesting to try it against a 114 gram Ti comparison pot&lid. 22% less fuel or 100% less weight of pot, which is lighter?

Originally Posted by gimp

Be interesting to try it against a 114 gram Ti comparison pot&lid. 22% less fuel or 100% less weight of pot, which is lighter?

Depends how long the trip is I guess! With the normal pot I used about 40g of gas on a recent overnight trip (weighed the canister before and after just to be geeky, because I've never really checked how much I use) - there was a bit of wasted energy boiling the same water multiple times though after only using some of it.

If 40g/day is normal then the heat exchange pot might save 10g/day (rounded to 25% for simplicity), at that rate it would take 11 days to use 110g less fuel - the contents of 1 small canister, which weighs about 210g total. So for shorter trips than that the ti pot will save more weight, but the heat exchange pot will save more money. Obviously those figures will change a bit when cooking for multiple people and/or above the snowline etc, the more fuel you use the better the efficient pot will look.

On a cold morning if you do have some liquid water in a small bowl and sit the gas canister in it. It will make a big difference.

Originally Posted by stug

On a cold morning if you do have some liquid water in a small bowl and sit the gas canister in it. It will make a big difference.

Take the lid off your billy, put the gas can\cooker in the lid. Pour some warm\hot water from the billy into the lid and that warms up the gas canister. Of course to do this you need the cooker to work well enough to warm up some water first...

Originally Posted by stug

On a cold morning if you do have some liquid water in a small bowl and sit the gas canister in it. It will make a big difference.

Also if there are two of you with a cooker, heat one of the gas canisters over the flame of the other one for "a little bit" to warm it up & then use it, gets them cranking, good for getting the last bit out of a nearly empty one

I use my meths cooker mostly too which is cheap as heck to run, a couple of bucks a litre

Originally Posted by gimp

I use my meths cooker mostly too which is cheap as heck to run, a couple of bucks a litre

Where do you buy meths?

tbh I haven't in a while and don't remember exactly what it costs, I recall it being something like $6/l

Originally Posted by gimp

tbh I haven't in a while and don't remember exactly what it costs, I recall it being something like $6/l

yea I use it in my fish smoker and am sure its more like 6-8 bucks not "a couple" per liter at the gas station i use.

I consider 6 bucks to be "a couple". linguistic nuances


e: It's clearly grammatically incorrect, I clearly don't care

Coffee-wise, I got one of these the other day and it does the trick. Weighs 17g, the (pretty pointless) lid adds another 9.

Brew Basket | Equipment | Clearance | Macpac New Zealand

Yeah I've got one of those they're really good

Originally Posted by GravelBen

Coffee-wise, I got one of these the other day and it does the trick. Weighs 17g, the (pretty pointless) lid adds another 9.

Brew Basket | Equipment | Clearance | Macpac New Zealand

Thats what I use. Spent $50 buying the msr one a decade ago and then just picked up a new one for $5 from macpac....

Life is too short to drink instant.

nice