Alcohol Stove

[scallywag]

An alternative is to buy a bar-b-que powered by propane and cook outdoors. Mine is attached to the rails. I have an alcohol stove but do not use it because the alcohol flame is difficult to see.

[cal40john]

Originally Posted by anjinsan

Oh..sorry..the reason I say this is..if the alcohol is not sufficiently heated to disperse for cooking..it will leak out in liquid for and collect in the bottom of the stove. So..you get a bit of a fire in your stove..and what do you do? Throw water on it...."WRONG" all you get is burning water...very exciteing!!

Curious about your experience. Years ago in our club boats I used alcohol stoves and had one or two leaks that became fires that were easily put out by water. Ethanol needs to have a concentration higher than 100 proof, (50%) to burn. Ethanol and water are miscable, but even something like salt water of two different concentrations (densities) can form layers if you are careful enough. I just tried pouring some tequila on top of water as carefully and slowly as I could and the tequila mixed throughout the water. I managed to get the tequila to float on the water by pouring it into a spoon and gently laying it on top of the water, but even then the color looked diluted as if some mixing occurred.

Maybe not enough water was used? You want much more water than the quantity of alcohol to make sure it all dilutes below 50%.

John

[rwidman]

I can't say anything from personal experience about a pressurized alcohol stove, but the non-presurized type is very safe. The alcohol is in a canister with a built in wick. Take the cover off and light it. It's that simple. As for being safe, the stove has a cover that slides over the canister, cutting off the oxygen.

It doesn't cook as well as propane but that's another story.

[forsailbyowner]

Before we got our propane oven we used one of those harbor freight burners out on the deck. Got tired of waiting till lunchtime for the alcohol stove to heat it up.

[spukistiles]

Denatured alcohol is all you need. It is available from a variety of stores. Walmart is the cheapest (next to paint thiners). No matter what the label on the can or bottle says, make sure that it is denatured alcohol and not something else! We currently use a non-presurized or passive two burner alcohol stove by Origo. It is extremely simple to operate. In our first sailboat we had a presurized alcohol stove. It took some tinkering to get working properly. After the shooting flames incident we purchased the Origo. Much safer in my opinion, but fire is fire!