The Trangia Camping Stove

A review of the Trangia Stove from Cool Tools:

I’ve used the Trangia 25-7 UL/HA for a year now, and it’s as reliable as sin. Since I got it, I no longer use my MSR Whisperlite stove. This model comes with a frying pan lid (which doubles as a pot lid and serves as the top to the kit when it’s all packed up) and two pots; the pots and burner combine in a neat, self-contained package. The stove itself is basically an alcohol burner (think Sterno can) with a custom top by which you semi-regulate/extinguish the flame. The stove sits in a two-piece extremely stable wind screen (picture two pots bottom to bottom, with a hole through the middle for the stove).

The Trangia uses denatured alcohol, which is easier and quieter than white gas. Easier because you don’t have to prime the stove or pressurize the fuel canister. To start the Trangia, you set up the windscreen, put the stove in the middle, add fuel and light the top. To turn it off, you slide the lid on the custom top, cutting off the oxygen. And it’s quieter because there’s no hissing or roaring -- again, think Sterno.

Another advantage the Trangia has over the MSR stove is the windscreen design, which makes a far more stable cooktop than the MSR’s three-wire tripod. As for weight, since I usually pack stove and cook pots together, the combined weight and size of my MSR and REI cook pots is about the same as the weight and size of this Trangia kit (around 2 pounds).

Negatively, you can’t regulate the Trangia's flame very well. The Trangia is a little slower, too: it takes a few minutes longer to boil a couple of cups of water for tea. Without a stopwatch, both the Trangia and the MSR take about the same time to boil a pot of water for dehydrated dinners, always too slow for whoever isn’t cooking that night.

-- P. Chang 

Comments

[Timo Kiravuo]

I have used Trangia for at least quarter of a century and I would say that it is an excellent choice for scout troops. It is fairly idiot proof. Set up the windscreen, pour alcohol in and light. It is possible to tip a pot, but much more harder than with the tiny stoves without integrated windscreen. No seals to leak or pressurized containers. The thing is practically indestructible. In Finland a typical troop has a bunch of these and 3-4 kids can feed themselves with one.

However the Trangia is on the heavy side and alcohol is slow. I use mine when paddling and pulling a sled and I change the burner to propane or gasoline depending on the time of year. When backpacking I use a tiny propane stove with lightweight pots and aluminium foil windscreen.

But for scouting purposes Trangia is really hard to beat.

kiravuo

[Mark]

I own a trangia stove for when I go camping/cycle touring around Europe. I found 1 litre of fuel lasts about a week of use for a cooked breakfast & tea and evening meal with the occasional hot drink during the day.
Bear in mind different countries have different names for the fuel (Methylated spirit or denatured alcohol) and common locations where the fuel gets sold.
This website lists some of the names and location of trangia fuel by country, which I found handy in my travels.

http://www.trangiastove.co.uk/fuelavail.html

This is especially useful when flying to a certain location as you can't take the fuel on the plane and need to source fuel locally