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I think I read in another post that you have started using the Esbit stove. We're trying that for the first time - are you happy with it? How many pints of water will a fuel cube boil at higher altitudes? (hard to test in Houston!)Happy? I won't carry any other, unless it's a snow-camp where we need to melt snow to drink. I don't understand people's obsession with Jet Boil and other canister stoves. The canister itself is dead weight, and the rest of the stove is relatively heavy, too. The
Titanium Wing Stove is practically weightless (0.4 oz), so the fuel is the major part of the weight. I use a
Snow Peak 600 mug as my drinking cup and cook pot. Esbit tablets weigh 0.5 oz each. The stove, tablets and wind screen made of several layers of aluminum foil all fit easily in a sandwich ziploc.
I can heat two one-person dinners with a single tablet.
This site reports that a tablet will boil a pint of water in 6 minutes, and a tablet will burn for 12 minutes.
But I don't boil the water first. I just put the dinner in the cup, add water, put it on the stove and heat it. No sense wasting all the heat and time it takes to bring the water to boiling. I just hold the cup and stir the stew frequently.
As for the residue that Esbit tabs leave on the pot -- that residue is water soluble. Just get it wet and rub a little, and it washes right off.
