Comparing two homemade alcohol stove designs: Unican (left) versus Supercat (right)
To save weight for my End of July Pacific Crest Trail attempt, I am going to take a homemade alcohol stove instead of a heavier and expensive commercial unit. The ‘best’ two models I found were the Supercat, which is made from a cat food can, and the Unican, which is made from a single soda or beer can. On a side note, Heineken is not my favorite beer, I just had a lot of those cans handy from previous alcohol stove experimentation. Also, please be aware that playing with fire and flammable liquids is dangerous, so don’t go blaming me if you burn your patio down or set yourself on fire.
Read on to see who wins the Supercat versus Unican challenge:
Oh, before we get carried away with this challenge and the rules, regulations and fairness, let me just say that I made the rules up as I went along while seeing which one would be a better fit to come on my backpacking trip. I built both stoves for fun. So, now that my disclaimer is out of the way, let’s fill ‘em up with some Denatured Alcohol and fire ‘em up!
The Homemade Supercat and Unican Alcohol Stoves getting their Flame On
Here are the two Alcohol Stoves in full flame, side by side. I’m using a small Heineken can-pot for both of them. The Supercat pressurizes and sends the flames out to the sides of the can, and doesn’t do a very efficient job of heating the water. The Unican, however, takes an extra 30 seconds to pressurize, but once it does, it gets the water boiling in half the time as the Supercat.
Supercat Alcohol Stove heating up a pot of Water
The Supercat did a better job with an actual larger pot, where the flames would still hit the bottom of the pot. This won’t work, because I’m not bringing a larger pot than the 24oz Keg Pot.
Unican Alcohol Stove with 24oz Keg Pot
The Unican alcohol stove won the day by doing the best job heating up my 24oz Heineken Keg Pot in about half the time that it took for the same test with the Supercat.
Since my Unican stove was golden, on account of it being made from a Miller Genuine Draft can, I have dubbed it c3po, after everyone’s second-favorite droid in Star Wars.
In case you’re interested, here are some of the links that I used:
- The Supercat Alcohol Stove
- ZenStoves – More Alcohol Stoves and Pots
- The Ultralight UniCan Alcohol Stove part of the Troop 73 Alcohol Stove Project
- Low cost backpacking cook kit
The Ultralight UniCan Alcohol Stove part of the Troop 73 Alcohol Stove Project
From my email:
I wrapped my keg-can-pot with the drywall repair tape, and it worked like a charm for the built-in pot holder capability. However, the flames jumped up high enough to light the tape, which caused smelly burning plastic smoke. It’s by no means ruined, however it’s not as pristine and beautiful as before. I may need to rewrap it and possibly only put half the tape on there, leaving the insulated part near the top, away from the flames. Actually, the reaching in to the flames to grab the insulated part would be mitigated by moving it all the way up there.
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