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so i am considering one of the cookmate double burner stoves, my only question is, do the alcohol stoves blacken the bottom of pots, currently use butane stove. i know the alcohol is not as hot- but potentially a lot safer.

I do not consider anything with a flame safe period ! all need considerable attn. @ all times lit or not lit I use a propane BBQ in the cockpit & have two single butane stoves & I installed a fume alert last yr just as a precautionary measure sniffs all gasses even batteries even fart gas LOL ,

J

do you have a model no for that fume detector, might be handy for when my outlaws are visitin'
my mother outlaw....wooooheee!
roger that on all the flame issues and gases etc- hence considering the alcohol stove. i have a bbq in the cockpit, but up north here its not always condusive to outside cooking!!!

Origo (non-pressurized) alcohol stoves are fine and do not blacken anything! Do not try the pressurized type of alcohol stove. I prefer alcohol and the admiral prefers propane (regular small bottle type of Coleman) stove b/c she thinks it cooks faster. There is really not much difference. I have both on boat and cook at the sink. I do not have any fear of leaks with the small bottle and I disconnect the stove from the bottle after use. With the alcohol stove I cover the inner pan hole with a rubber coaster to prevent evaporation.

We have a two burner Origino non pressurized alcohol stove and love it .
It cooks as good as gas , but safer .

On our extended cruises , finding stove alcohol has not been a problem , but we have noticed that propane gas is hard to come by in marinas .

Originally we were going to cook with propane , but couldn't find a good place to carry a propane bottle outside , so we went with alcohol . That's why we notice who sells propane . I can say that most marinas don't sell propane nor is there anyplace nearby the marinas. While stove alcohol can be found in many marinas , marine supply , hardware stores , and Wal-Mart .

thanks opie
yup thats what i had in mind except the cookmate 4200- more affordable than the origo- looks to be the same thing.
thanks three gypsies- good info
thats the way i'm a gonna go
my only concern was the pot blackening
thanks

We have both a gas grill and an Origo alcohol stove. The gas grill mounted outside is great for... grilling. We store a couple of pressurized Coleman bottles next to the gas tanks, in the cockpit--they seem to fit perfectly there. For a three-week expedition, three gas cans are more than enough (we always have leftovers)
The Origo stove mounted on the galley has other advantages: coffee in the morning, warming up some soup below deck, even a pan to do ham and eggs in a pinch. We use common denatured alcohol from Home Depot that does tend to blacken the bottom of the pans, a little, but it costs half as much as the marine fuel does. I can live with that. Two cans of such alcohol will give us plenty of fuel.
We never ran out of pressurized fuel, but we did happen to run out of alcohol several times. The little stove is very popular when the weather outside makes grilling a chore, or for a quick fix.

thanks March!!!

The little butane cooker certainly heats better than the metho (origo) and doesn't blacken the bottom and nowadays is as easy to find as metho especially in our North where the metho is only sold on request in case you are selling to the indigenous folk to use as a drink.
We did use our butane stove last trip as the wife bought turps instead of metho but still pretty nervous of using it in an enclosed space.

thanksBoblee, unfortunately we are forced to cook down below- due to our weather. and i have heard that the alcohol stoves seem to be a bit slower, but they might be a safer option, and the inlaid 2 plate and the potholders are a pretty good unit, i have found with the mac, and the butane stove i was using, all it took was someone getting off the boat onto the dock, the movement could upset the whole cooking deal.
i think i will still carry the butane as a spare though!!

Eight months of cooking on alcohol and we never saw any blackening of the pans . The alcohol we used mostly came from hardware stores , in the paint stripping section . But the cans also say for stove fuel .
We have one small stainless steel pot that we used a great deal . It came from a Dollar store , so if a pot was going to blacken this little cheap one would have been it .

I've long wanted to use an induction cooktop on our boat, because it's flameless and heatless (only steel pots/items will heat up) and should therefore be the absolutely safest method of cooking on a boat. They're also about 85% efficient, which is better than other method of cooking in terms of total power consumption. And you can safely cook canned food in the can itself if you want to save on cookware.

Unfortunately, all forms of cooking takes a lot of power, and even an efficient induction cooktop would require a minimum of 1200 watts. At 120VAC, thats a reasonable 10 amps, but at 12VDC, that's a difficult 100 amps.

Induction cooktops rectify the AC current to pulsing DC and then use transistors to generate a 27KHz AC cycle for the induction coil. So running DC to an AC inverter just to have that rectified back to DC is inefficient. It should be trivial to modify an existing induction cooktop to run from 12VDC by removing the rectifier and including a step-up 1:10 transformer to 120VDC.

So I'm thinking the right way to do this is to put a group 24 battery close to the cooker, say within 12", inside the sliding galley. Then you only have to have 2' total of 100 amp rated cables, and you can run a typical 14 gauge cable for charging the battery at a moderate rate. Most people could just use a 15w solar trickle charger to keep that battery topped off if they're only on the boat on weekends--plenty of time to charge it during the week.

I think I'm going to take apart one of our induction cooktops and see if I can convert it to DC.

Alcohol is not safe compared to Butane or Propane .
Is Burning BTUES 50 % LESS than above alcohol.
Makes no sence to use Alcohol when Butane or Propane is much more fuel efficient.
It's very safe to use above gas below with 1lb containers.
We use a Propane grill at companion way hatch,( Grill steaks, burgers, Chicken) use a Propane flat grill below deck (eggs,bacon homefries), use a 1 burner Butane for top mount sink for boil water for coffee/ can items.
Just like home cooking.
No discolor of any of my pans.
Dave

Wayne nicol wrote:so i am considering one of the cookmate double burner stoves, my only question is, do the alcohol stoves blacken the bottom of pots, currently use butane stove. i know the alcohol is not as hot- but potentially a lot safer.

Three Gypsies wrote:Eight months of cooking on alcohol and we never saw any blackening of the pans . The alcohol we used mostly came from hardware stores , in the paint stripping section . But the cans also say for stove fuel .
We have one small stainless steel pot that we used a great deal . It came from a Dollar store , so if a pot was going to blacken this little cheap one would have been it .

Boy you mob must have better metho over there, I just checked with the cook as thats her dept and I knew I always got in trouble for putting the pots or kettle on something that she didn't want dirty but she not only confirmed the metho blackens the bottom but also reckons puts a colour on the top of the cabin, perhaps the difference is we are using alloy rather than stainless???
Our Metho is kept UNDER the front counter at hardware stores

Alcohol is not safe compared to Butane or Propane .
Is Burning BTUES 50 % LESS than above alcohol.
Makes no sence to use Alcohol when Butane or Propane is much more fuel efficient.
It's very safe to use above gas below with 1lb containers.
We use a Propane grill at companion way hatch,( Grill steaks, burgers, Chicken) use a Propane flat grill below deck (eggs,bacon homefries), use a 1 burner Butane for top mount sink for boil water for coffee/ can items.
Just like home cooking.
No discolor of any of my pans.
Dave

Dave certainly don't want another debate on this but do you have anything to verify the bold bit???? as it seems completely contrary to anything I have heard or seen in practice, the alcohol is certainly a cooler flame and takes longer to boil the kettle (harder to light) but a one litre bottle lasts us a week living full time on the boat with all cooking done on it where the butane we used last trip I just confirmed with the cook lasts two days max but much much better to cook with.
On that note we have never been concerned with the alcohol but one of the butane cans was making a slight hiss noise and that concerned both of us although as they are only used for emergencies the cans could have been old, if I was in a remote region I would have had more concern but last trip shore was only metres away.
I am pretty sure alcohol stoves are used on boats for the very reason that they are safer, maybe the pressurised ones aren't as safe but the origo type certainly seem to be especially with careless or absent minded people like mysef who have been known to leave the flap slightly open and lose all the metho to evaporation.

"metho" is denatured ethanol, typically 90% ethanol and 5% methanol. There's no reason these alcohols would blacken cookware as it is sootless and generally very pure. Any blackening is from introduced impurities in the fuel, impurities on the pot, or from burning wicking material.

Alcohol fumes are non-toxic. You can spill a liter can of metho in the cockpit and be perfectly safe. No other fuel can be safely released in uncombusted form inside a closed environment.

Alcohol creates less heat than the other fuels, and it can be difficult to bring water to a boil in a cold environment. Our alcohol stove can take as long as 30 minutes to bring a pot of water to a boil.

But looking at the specific energy in a fuel is a false measure--it doesn't matter. What you need to look at is energy/$$, where alcohol is vastly cheaper because it's easy to handle and doesn't require pressurized bottles. For the money, alcohol is 4X more efficient than small propane bottles. It's like comparing diesel fuel to gasoline: Yes, diesel has more energy per gallon but it also usually costs more so you need to look at miles per dollar, not miles per gallon.

In terms of combustibility, the combustion product of all of these fuels is CO2 and water. Propane is 2x CO2 and 4x H2O molecules. Butane is 8x CO2 and 10x H2O, so a much higher proportion of CO2 which makes it more dangerous. Ethanol (metho) is 2x CO2 and 3x H2O. They're all about equally dangerous as CO2 is an asphyxiant, but propane is additionally dangerous because in a lower oxygen environment it will also produce CO, which is poisonous.

Anyway, the safety difference is in fuel handling, where alcohol is definitely superior, not in fume safety where they're all about equal and all require reasonable ventilation while cooking.