Early preparations for the planned the long walk around the mountain resulted in me re-examining my cooking equipment. 45 years ago weight and volume was a major consideration. If you were going to be carrying “stuff” on your back you wanted it to be a light as possible. It also needed to fit in a small backpack as “stuff” tends to multiple to fill the available space .
Back then I cooked using small gas canisters on an equally small aluminium pot. The pot was mostly used to boil water for a drink as I tended to be lazy and not bother heating the food, rather consuming it cold. Cold baked beans, cold Irish stew, etc
I still have that pot and cooker
The cooker fits in the pot for transit with a sock to stop it rattling. The equipment had several deficiencies. Most notable was the inefficiency of the cooker if there was a breeze. Pouring the hot water from the pot also involved an interesting technique.
Unlike Australia, there isn’t a shortage of available water in New Zealand. That particularly true of my planned route which circumnavigates a snow capped mountain with numerous stream that I’ll have to wade (I’m not looking forward to that part!). I’ve therefore decided to eat dehydrated meals (freeze-dried). This will require boiling water as part of the rehydration process. Being lazy, I want all this to be completed swiftly and therefore started looking at the latest technology.
My attention was drawn the the ‘JetBoil’ system. However I couldn’t justify the price and after looking on Aliexpress, found a much cheaper Chinese replica.
The APG Outdoor stove consists of a vessel (I’ll call it a mug) silicon lid, burner, pot ring, stand and carry bag. It accepts the same type of gas cartridge as my 45 year old stove.
The APG is larger than my original pot/burner and slightly heavier. The exterior of the mug has a removable neoprene sleeve which acts as a thermal barrier retaining the heat and allowing the mug to be held. It has two folding handles. The mug is made from aluminium which has an anodized coating.
The base of the mug has a flat central ring with radiator fins around the circumference.
Heat from the burner is directed onto the centre of the base and then horizontally onto the radiator fins. This design appears to be very efficient in capturing heat and directing it into the mug.
The inside of the mug has volume marks pressed into the metal.
Maximum heating volume is 0.8 ltrs. But total volume is 1.4ltrs. There is also a mark at 0.5ltrs which will be very useful as that is the volume of water required for most dehydrated meals
The burner and mug clip together. The burner has a piezo igniter and folding gas valve to adjust the flame.
The flexible silicon lid has a large hole on one side of the lip and smaller strainer sized holes on the opposite side.
I particularly liked the small vertical lip adjacent to the large hole. This protects your lower lip from being burned when drinking directly from the mug.
As an alternative to the mug, a pot stand can be fitted to the burner.
The assembled cooker
I needed to establish how many 500ml ‘boils’ I could get from one gas canister. To do this I weighted the full canister on Jan’s kitchen scales. After screwing the gas canister to the burner I added 500ml of water to the mug and attached it to the burner. The stove was then lit until the water reached boiling. This took approximately 2½ minutes. The stove was then disassembled and the canister re-weighed. The process was then repeated until all the gas in the canister was used. The result was 36 cycles. It was actually possible to place your hand on the side of the base of the mug during the boil without burning your fingers. This suggested to me the radiator fin design of the base was very efficient in absorbing heat from the burner.
I was using tap water on a mild winter day in Perth. The water on the mountain will have come from snow melt and I’ve therefore decided to reduce to number of boils by a third. Plan on 24 boils from a container on my walk.
How many times will the stove be used?
5 days @ three meals daily = 15
5 days at five hot drinks daily = 25
Total of 40 boils. Two gas canisters are required!
Which stove will I take? They are almost equal in weight, but the APG is larger. However the APG appears to be more efficient. I wouldn’t want to cook food in the APG as cleaning it would be messy. This isn’t an issue with the old aluminium pot. Moreover you wouldn’t want to use a metal utensil in the APG as it might damage the anodizing. Again, not an issue with the aluminium pot.
As I plan on eating dehydrated meals I only require boiled water. I’ll use the ARG!
4 comments :
Thank you for a comprehensive review, but I'm not sure I have understood it correctly.
From the boil counts in your testing you appear to anticipate having hot drinks. It therefore appears you will need the burner for heating, the mug for drinking, and the older pot for cooking and eating.
Regards.
Option 2
Take the APG as main stove and use for water, but also take your pot (not the stove) and use it for storage, put the spare gas in it along with some luxuries like condiments, instant coffee sachets, sugar and so on.
You then have two options, can boil water for a cuppa, then cook a meal (more than just adding water to a freeze dried) or vice versa.
Always tell the Explorers on their Dofe that they need flexibility and options so that their meal at the campsite is more than just a boring necessity and can lift their spirits after a hard day.
The extra minimal weight of the pot will repay you in that flexibility and gives you strong storage for items easily lost in bottom of bags.
You don't seem to have taken altitude into account in your boil calculations. The higher you go the lower boil temperature. Maybe not too significant on Ruapehu though.
Don the altitude is approximately 2800 metres. I suspect the water temperature will be the major factor!
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