Anonymous wrote:

On a previous boat we inherited a Taylor paraffin stove with two top burners and an oven. As a non gas cooker it was a brilliant performer and was plenty hot enough to tackle all tasks. It was however quite an exciting challenge to light successfully without clouds of dirty black smoke and dirt which followed an unsuccessful ignition.

Now there's an idea for a new glossary... A list of what various fuels are called around the world:

Actually, I found one: https://internationalfuelnames.org/

Paraffin: ? seems to be kerosene. Which seems to repackaged "Jet-A" at least in some places. (slightly less refined than RP1)

They do not mention "Gas" which I assume is propane, not methane (which is used at home), but might be butane? Very much "gas" is only used for petrol in a few places and that is not for cooking. It seems that propane appliances will run on butane but need conversion to run on methane. So maybe "gas" is used to mean "propane or butane".

I have to say however I loved and miss the comforting roar of the Taylor on those cold and invariably wet days and nights when we used to sail on the S.Coast of England CI’s and N France

The sound of a pressure stove (or lantern), alcohol, white gas or kerosene, reminds me of camping. I like the idea I can tell the stove is running just by sound.

I've got a Swedish Trangia backpacker's alcohol burning cook set aboard my 1 ton Coromandel.  Like all alcohol burners, it is slow to boil water, but it's been perfectly adequate for simple camp cookery, both inland and at sea, during life aboard since mid - May. 

After watching your YT demo, it looks like these are even worse than the old pump up alcohol stoves. The old ones at least contained the burning "preheat" pool with the the whole cooker bottom being sealed. They could be started on an angle. Someone said the tank is vented too which sounds like a drip source as well. At this point, I think I would go for propane over either of them.

Compass24.de also do an alcohol cooke, which looks to be a direct copy of the original Origo.

I know someone on here bought one and wasn't too impressed, because of poor assembly and no rubber plugs to cover the burners when not in use.

But I had a look again, after reading the post on the Toplicht.

The Compass user manual now stresses the importance of ensuring the stainless springs push the burners right up against the bottom of the top-plate to ensure the flame will go out when the knob is turned to off and also emphasise the need to use the rubber covers to reduce evaporation of the alcohol.

Which were two of the complaints of the poster on here, which seem to have been rectified.

Not sure if the rubber covers are included in the purchase price, which IS quite steep at €200 for the single, or €300 for the double burner, plus the postage.

It MIGHT be worth looking at, though, despite the negative report from our member.

Good, Tony.
That sort of  «Spirituskocher» seems to have a long tradition in Germany. Unlike my Dometic /Origo stoves (one dual burner and one single), the Mamba burns with a perfectly blue flame, so should make maximum use of the fuel, and produce the least smoke, soot and smell.

I still use my Origo, after trying several modifications to the burner. These days I run it without the original flame damper, but with a washer with a 25mm orifice. This 25mm orifice increases time to boil with about 10-15%, but the flame is almost blue. This has also been helped by using 80% alcohol instead of 96%.

Yesterday I made a few performance tests to boil 0.5l water, starting at around 19°C. Using a digital scale, I also found the fuel consumption after each test.

The first test was made using a plain little casserole.
This resulted in spending 6:20min and 20g fuel to bring the water to boil.

Then I brought home my little Alocs kettle from the boat. This is a thin-walled aluminium kettle and with ‘cooling’ ribs in its bottom. The test above was then repeated.
This resulted in spending 5:44min and 16g fuel to bring the water to boil.

One gram of ethanol has a burn energy of 29,7kJ/g
Since I use 80% alcohol mixture, I reckon its specific energy to be  29.7 x 80 /96 = 24.75KJ/g.

Edit, 20240817: Actually, the useful specific burn energy of ethanol is only 26.5 kJ/g or 21.2 kJ/ml.

To cut a long story short, I found the efficiency of this burner to be 34% with the casserole and 42% with the highly efficient Alocs kettle.

Tony, I hope you can make this little test with your Mamba cooker as well. It will probably be slower than the Origo, but my guess is that the fuel consumtion will come out quite low.
Many of us are curious about those German alcohol stoves.

Cheers, Arne

(PS I also made the test with the Alocs kettle and with a 33mm wide orifice. This resulted in spending 5:10min and 17g fuel. I still prefer the smaller orifice since the flame stays bluer, and thus makes less smell...)

(Photo on my members' albums, section 8 of photos, photo no. 13)