Many thank to all of you for your input and ideas. This is the JRA at its best: people coming together to try and help each other.
Asmat I know Nick’s system well. I really don’t want to have to go back to kero - that is a last resort - I like the fact that I can cook on bio ethanol. I’ve spent several years cooking on this sort of Primus: yes, you can produce meals, but it’s not a pleasure cooking in this way. As you say, the temperature is controlled by reducing the pressure, so when you want to simmer, you have to let off a lot of pressure. It’s a bit hit and miss and far too often the flame gets just that bit too cool and all of a sudden you have a sooty, orange, smelly flame instead of your nice, clean, blue one. I enjoy cooking. I don’t want to cook like this. Trangia are a possibility, but the tanks are small and I’d somehow have to make a cooker to hold them. I am no metal worker, and to be honest, I just want to buy a damn cooker that works. Call me entitled, but that doesn’t seem to me to be too much to ask! Unfortunately, I really enjoy my food, so Bill King’s solution wouldn’t suit me, although it would save me a lot of grief and money!
Arne sadly, yes, I’m certain it’s a genuine Origo stove. I’m sure they usually last for years and I’m sure it’s my fault because I have the burners lit for too long a period of time because I am such a slow cook. And, of course, I’ve cooked around 2,000 meals on them, which is an awful lot of cooking compared to if you just have coffee and corn flakes in the morning and cook two meals on your weekend away.
I must go back and check on your modified burner. I stopped watering the alcohol - someone suggested that this might be responsible for the corrosion (which, obviously, has been happening for some time), hence the dirty pots.
Paul I really, really appreciate your feedback about the Salsa/Mamba. I’ve been following your blog and see that you and Toni enjoy cooking, so if you reckon that cooker is inadequate, I shall take that as a fact.
David’s discovery is fascinating. The cookers look to be beautifully and robustly made, but I’m not sure how I would contrive them in my galley. I have no idea about working with metal and no facilities. Anyway, I have asked David to design me a cooker for FanShi as he was already intrigued by the concept. I reckon he has three years to perfect it because ...
Graeme has miraculously found an affordable Origo in NZ - and bought it on my behalf, bless him. So I now have two more tanks and when I’ve managed to destroy them, I’m hoping someone (David T???) will have created a genuine, seagoing, liveaboard alcohol cooker.