Alcohol Stove

Cooking with a homemade alcohol stove

This little home made alcohol stove is a pretty fun project to make, its made from two aluminum drink cans, and takes about an hour or so the first time.  Its a good exercise, and a handy skill to have should you ever get caught in a situation where you need to improvise a way to boil some water or heat some food up.  There are dozens of variations of home made "Penny Stoves" like this, but I found this design to work well, with the holes on the outside corners of the  

I'm not going to go into how to construct one of these, there are hundreds of websites, and videos online showing how its done.  We'll just point out a few pros and cons, and discuss what this alcohol stove can do and what it cannot do.  First and foremost, this particular type of stove is extremely light, very small, and simple to operate.  The weight involved with this stove is not the stove itself but the liquid fuel, however, the wide availability of alcohol that will burn in this stove means you dont have to carry too much with you.  Fuel can be carried in a plastic bottle, just make sure you use a container with a good seal.  In the event that you have a leak, at least alcohol wont ruin everything in your pack or gear bag like other camping fuels.  Alcohol stoves are also very quiet compared to some other choices that sound like F15 afterburners, if you're hunting or hiding... an important feature. While these little stoves do a reasonable job at warming things up, they are not the best for actually cooking with.  Sure they will cook food, but you dont always have the time it takes for this thing to get something cooked.  They will heat up some water for coffee or soup, or warm up a small pot of food that doesnt require much cooking, dont plan on cooking elaborate meals for the entire family.  Oh.. they also do a good job on Jiffy-pop popcorn, which I found was a good way to keep my young boys interested in the process !

You can use any denatured alcohol available at your local hardware store, you can also use a product called Heet, which is a fuel line antifreeze, just make sure you get the yellow bottle, not the red. 

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