Hi Mark,

Like Mole I also used an alcohol/ Esbit combination this year (mainly Esbit) and I agree with pretty much everything that’s already been said so far in this thread. I’m not entirely convinced though that Esbit is significantly lighter than alcohol overall – I think it may depend on your system and precise needs.

In most conditions a full 14g tab seems a little more than I need to boil 570ml or so of water using my Caldera cone and Evernew 630ml tall pot. However, rather to my surprise, I found that 3/4 of a tab or 3 x 4g tabs won’t reliably produce a rolling boil.

On the other hand I spent some time recently trying to build an alcohol stove which would be optimal for my particular system and fuel – I use bioethanol rather than meths. I now use about 18ml of fuel to boil my 570ml which, with alcohol being only 80% of the density of water, weighs almost exactly the same as the large Esbit tab.

If your pot is larger than mine and you want to boil a bit more water then you might make better use of the full 14g tab than I do. Otherwise, you may find there’s little to choose between alcohol and Esbit on weight alone.