Don’t know about you, but we can’t start the day without coffee and a shower. If you were to drag us on some overnight trip into the wilderness, we could probably forego the shower for a day, but we will be a grumpy trail mate without some kind coffee, even instant.
Yes, if you were to get us on an overnight outdoor adventure, we would insist on bringing along a couple of these little disposable, self-destructing rocket stoves, if for no other reason than that we can have some coffee without having to forage for a bunch of firewood and build a whole regular-sized campfire. Don’t worry — we’ll share the water because there’s plenty of time built in. Per [smogdog], these Swedish torches will boil water in 20 minutes and burn for 60 — that’s enough time to make a coffee, a bowl of soup, and toast a single marshmallow before the fire consumes the scrap wood.
We love the use of bike chain as a burner to raise up the pot for fire ventilation. But our favorite bit has to be the dual-purpose packaging. It’s nice-looking, it’s informative, and it’s paper, so you can use it as a fire starter. Failing that, [smogdog] has a backup fire starter system — rubbing alcohol in a small spray bottle. Unwrap a protein bar and check out the demo video after the break.
Tired of the same old, boring trail foods? How about flat-pack pasta that morphs into fun shapes when you boil it?
Ok, but instant coffee?
As a guy who roasts his own green beans and takes great care in all matters that are coffee brewing – I take instant out when I’m hiking. Brewing equipment and coffee weighs quite a bit and then there’s the issue of dealing with the used grounds. I usually make cocoa oatmeal that’s a bit too sweet for my normal liking for breakfast in my cup, then make coffee in that same cup to “rinse” it out. The leftover oatmeal residue, sugar and cocoa combine with the instant coffee to make a tolerable beverage reminiscent of a mocha.
When I was in the National Guard and doing the yearly 2 weeks summer camps , I would horde all the instant coffee and cocoa packets I could get (most of the other people didn’t want them) I would use them the same as you , minus the oatmeal lol
You need the coffee brew pipe. I just ordered one. https://briping.com/
What an expensive way to have a tiny metal cup and a bombilla.
I was gonna comment that! Terere ftw!
I have never seen them. The Bripe is all in one and comes with a few extra bits but in essence it is a more expensive version.
Don’t you hate it when you have bought something and someone knows of a cheaper version. Yet if I hadn’t put the expensive one here I would have never heard of the cheap one.
Anyways, both bombilla and bripe has to be lighter than many logs. Although I think the log is cool :)
Perfect to smoke some Skooma from too
I can’t imagine any police officer or forest ranger in the US would ever be convinced this isn’t for crack
Seen it, want it, but only for novelty. It still has the problem with the fact coffee grounds weigh quite a bit, and the pipe weighs a bit.
Aeropress is not so bad to carry.
It’s not bad, but every ounce that isn’t food, well… isn’t food. For a couple of days out, maybe an Aeropress, but on long excursions, I’ll pass. Still have the problem of hauling coffee grounds, which aren’t insubstantial in weight.
I cannot stand oatmeal. I love Hazelnut flavored coffee. So, I will combine my coffee w oatmeal n drive to work. Done & done!
You should ditch that snobby attitude and maybe try a few. Many instant coffees in the US may deserve that reputation, even those brands that taste good in Europe (looking at you, Nescafe), but Maxwell House is good and widely available. I prefer it to most non-instant coffees. I can’t believe how many people queue up twice a day for weak-ass Dunkin coffee. There’s also a number of Vietnamese instant coffees that come with creamer and sugar in single serving packets that are ideal for camping trips. I think that most creamers are the work of the devil, I abhor the flavor they impart, but somehow those Vietnamese packets are magic.
Hey, you can’t get that burnt ashtray flavor from just anywhere.
I’ve rarely had instant coffee, but I cook with it sometimes. Drank some on a camping trip once, for some reason the flavor reminded me of beef broth, but when you’re really cold in the morning, the first cup of instant coffee tastes good enough to get you warmed up and get your breakfast going.
Not all, but some U.S. Coast Guard cutters dump massive amounts of bromine into their fresh water tanks to prevent algae and bacteria growth.
At one point the heating elements in the coffee pot went out. Fearing mutiny due to caffeine withdrawal an enterprising mechanic plumbed the coffee maker into the ship’s low pressure steam lines. Which would make coffee in record time but if you didn’t get a cup within 3 minutes of brewing an urn all you could taste was carbon.
Between the coffee still boiling as it dribbled out of the spout and the bromine over and under tones, the primary flavor was scorched metal followed by an acidic bite. On the plus side, no matter how backed up you might be, it would squeegee your bowls clean after two cups.
It took a solid six months after I got out to realize what food (and real coffee) was supposed to taste like.
For all you coffee snobs either bring along a bag of Turkish ground coffee and a bag of sugar and have Turkish coffee. Or just bring along tea and sugar. (Wonder if you could get enough heat and time out of this thing to bake some bannock too?)
I’ve never climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro but I’ve done plenty of week+ long trips into the Boundary Waters, so I know a little about this.
My experience is that volume adds up a lot quicker than weight, at least in a Duluth pack. I think it is a very cool concept and execution but I bet I could make a whole week’s worth of coffee with a minimalist stove and a single isobutane canister. Yeah, I’ll have to pack out that dead weight, but it will take up almost no space and no weight.
I was thinking that maybe a few could be strung up on a length of bike chain and hung on a backpack. Alternatively, maybe it’s just a good excuse to bring with a tool capable of drilling the holes for you in wood that you find on your trip, chop and shape it with a hatchet/knife and then drill a few holes?
Many bushcrafters carry a 1″ auger for things like this. It’s a very useful tool if you are planning on doing some carpentry or for making single use rocket stoves.
I want everyone to take a picture of that so you all can tell your grand-kids what snow use to look like back in our day.
I hear you!
Very clever from a bushcraft standpoint, I could see keeping one or two of these in the pack for an emergency situation where you need to have reliable heat in short order.
Or you could, you know, grab three rocks and make a rocket stove to be fed with twigs. Also works with a branch and two stones, two branches, a wall and a branch, a wall and two stones, etc.
Truly spoken like somebody who’s never ventured out past the front garden. Good luck gathering those materials in the snow, and trying to make/tend a fire in the dark as you approach hypothermia.
+1
This isn’t an emergency stove – for that you have your windproof matches and a can of sterno.
Please be sure it’s not pressure-treated fence/foundation lumber before you do this. Please.
What’s a little arsenic between friends? 😁
Pressure treaded as switched to “micronized copper”, copper particles between 1 and 700nm. So no more chromium or arsenic but maybe some copper vapor or suspended airborne particles?
Which we all get anyway when we are soldering…
Why I have a small fan blowing.
I don’t think we get court particles, it doesn’t get hot enough to melt.
That’s cool, but a Swedish torch is not a rocket stove. A rocket stove needs a much longer insulated chimney to build up enough heat to ignite all the particulates in the smoke. You can tell when it does that because it starts to sound like a rocket. Hence the name. It’s basically an intentional chimney fire that you generally want to avoid in a normal chimney.
This would be cool if I’m not trekking very far, but a woodgas stove weighs a fraction of just one of these and runs off of twigs and other small wood bits that can be found practically anywhere. one of these would definitely be nice for one nighters so I don’t have a sooty stove to contend with.
There are better options than this but it has few advantages:
– once burning you don’t have to add fuel
– once burned you don’t have to carry
– if stored correctly could be light up even straight after heavy rain
– safer to store in car than liquid fuels
– once you like it you can youtube Felix Immler and see how to make rocket stove with your Swiss Army Knife in the woods (know more carry less).
– Once you know Felix Immler youtube channel you know how to make skis with your SAK or cook pasta in a wine bottle over camp fire ;-)
It definitely has its advantages, I’d just rather not carry more than a couple day’s worth of fuel with me, especially given there’s quite a bit that goes to waste with this. For just a day or two, I could see prepping a few of these out though. For groups it would be nice, especially for end of day fire starting – light this up, get some water going for dinner. Once dinner’s made, start building up logs around it for a campfire.
I like Felix’s bushcraft style – applying bushcraft for pleasure instead of the usual end-of-times survivalism, sort of bush-glamp, err glamp-craft? He seems to actually have fun with it while applying real skills.
Indeed, you don’t want to carry lots of extra mass when you don’t need to. That said this is properly burning dry timber that is easy to start, depending on just where in the world you are venturing it (or something similar) might be just about the only choice, so might be a good idea on that score.
Never heard of Felix before now, sounds like my kind of bushcraft, so I shall have to have a look. Personally I always enjoyed Ray Mears programs, usually showing just how comfortable you can be with the knowledge in the wilds, sometimes documenting remarkable survival feats possible through force of will and enough bushcraft skill. Infact this stove reminds me of something I saw in one of his programs – split or saw an x in a resin full log like pine and fill that x gap with ‘sheets’ of tinder/bark and light, turns the whole log into a very effective, long burning stove with its own flat top, that is cool at ground level, so can be embedded in snow etc safely.
I thought this was hilarious. I actually think is an awesome paradigm of thinking too with a neat label even.
Love it!
But would be afraid to use it in a fire hazard area (like California) since it’s not so quick/easy to turn off.
Here’s a riddle: what do you do with a jellyfish sting?
What if you need to do that before you had coffee?
And the ladies among us might find that a wee bit intimidating?
Scrape the affected area with a plastic card and rinse with vinegar?
If you’re lighting a fire in an area with no water available to put it out, you shouldn’t light the fire in the first place.
Sand or dirt, but yeah since there’s a drought going on it’s not a good idea.
https://youtu.be/-qDYi9HfQkI
Not sure where I have seen it, but you can make on in the field with a hatchet by splitting up part of a branch/log first by half,
and then one side by half again (giving you 1/4 sections). After that you split off the inner part of the 1/4 sections to give you the down pipe, and chop out a section down the side to form the inlet hole. If I remember a small hole was dug to set the butt end of the reassembled pieces back together, and it all worked the same but was field buildable.
20 minutes to boil water? No thanks, I’ll keep using my miniature gas cartridge cooker.
Also, a 1 cup Bialetti is lightweight and makes a decent cup of morning brown.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Moka_Pot.jpeg
It might be possible to make a lighter, pressed version of one of these out of the material used for cellulose home insulation before it is treated with fire retardant.
Or just do like hundreds of people on YouTube and make is from old paper, into “papier mache” fire logs, just with the needed holes drilled or cast into them. They might not burn as long but would be lighter.
I was thinking of a commercial product. I don’t hike.
For a commercial product all you need is a modified artificial fire log.
If you really need a swedish torch carry a saw and a bit and brace…
Cut off a section of suitable wood, and drill two holes… Shavings can be used as kindling.
thats just a fancy sweden torch
This is pretty cool, but has no one heard of a beer can stove?! They can get a larger pot of water than that boiling in about half the time with a miniscule amount of isopropyl if you build them right. Is also smaller and lighter.