BREW KIT FUEL TEST
HEET STOVE OR ESBIT?
BLUFF: The HEET stove is much higher in BTUs meaning it will work faster in the cold, burns cleaner without smell and can be used to get a fire going with wet wood and in the rain FAST compared to the Esbit tabs if needed. Something I consider a premium in the very wet Pacific Northwest.
For an additional 4oz I’ve decided to go back to the HEET stove, test results below.
TESTING
The three options I have chosen in the past for a brew kit heating solution.
LEFT: The standard Esbit stove setup. MIDDLE: Nails for multipurpose use and allows leveling on uneven ground. RIGHT: HEET re-burner stove and MSR fuel bottle
All setups show have plenty of fuel to last a week of brews. For the most part, the Esbit setups are the same size and put out nearly the same BTUs.
All water was 48-50F before heating for 5 minutes.
FIRST TEST (SIDE BAR)
Using 85% Ethanol hand sanitizer (Covid 19 left overs from work, they gave cases of it away recently) might help keep wet wood burning, but it does not have enough BTUs to heat water on it’s own. Only raised the water temp 13deg in 5 minutes.
THE MAIN CONTENDERS
Traditional re-burner HEET stove and the Esbit portable stove.
For the past few years, I’ve been packing either the Esbit stove and fuel tabs in my GHB and later replaced it with (3) 6” nails and bought a box of fuel tabs from Amazon, assuming that the HEET canister would be way heavier.
Having put all systems on the scale, I find it’s only 4-5oz heavier.
Today was the first time comparing them in a long time and the first between the official Esbit pellet (~$1.00 ea) against the Amazon alternative (~$0.61 ea) both rated at 1300F.
The Amazon pellet is a bit reduced in BTUs compared to the Esbit pellets but are a lot cheaper and is able to reach boiling in one tablet easily.
Five minutes in both tablets had more than 1/2 the amount left @ 5 minutes.
The HEET stove is the clear winner in speed of getting a boil on by far.
COST DIFFERENCES
Cost wise the Esbit stove is hard to beat for $15.00 with a weeks’ worth of fuel tabs included.
The HEET burner Setup: ~$22.00-$37.00
Can be made from an aluminum beer bottle for free. (I paid for one pe-made years ago from BatchStovez ~$15.00 IIRC)
Bottle of HEET for ~$2.00
11oz MSR Fuel Bottle is ~$20.00 (I would not suggest using a Nalgene bottle.)
The Heet stove looks interesting. Have you done a comparison between it and a standard Trangia type burner?