Stove review - Alocs Chinese 7 Piece Cooking Set
Hi Chaps,
Following on from Tony's find on the thread 'Pritty new hobo stove', I 'accidentally' bought one and here's my review, as promised...
You'll find all the tech specs on the Fleabay page and here's the promo shot to get you started:
Initial impressions were that I was quite impressed with the quality and finish of the stove components, but not so much with the spirit burner. It's almost as if the burner was made by a third party, which is probably the case. Do not let this distract you from the stove itself, as the anodised aluminium finish and build quality are very high. This stove looks good.
The stove body is made up of two components; the windbreaker/body and base. These are connected by a pin and slot mechanism whereby you align the pins on the inverted base into the holes in the windbreaker and rotate until they tighten. Into this, you then place the spirit burner, light it (I did this easily with a firesteel) and then put the pot support in place, which is held in place by a series of internal ridges in the top of the windbreaker.
You'll notice that the spirit burner fits snugly down into the hole where the windbreaker is joined to the base. There's no other ridges or holes aligned for you to adjust either the height of the pot support OR the spirit burner, but more on that later.
When you're ready to cook, the pans come in two forms; the main cooking pot and a smaller fry pan/lid. There's also a flame controller/snuffer for the spirit burner and a rough sided cloth for washing up the pots.
I then carried out a simple test of how long it took to boil one pint (568ml) of water at ambient temperature.
The stats for this test are as follows:
Outdoor temperature: 12 degrees centigrade
Wind 7mph SE
Well, from a cold start and with a breeze, it took the spirit burner just under 2 minutes (1 min 49 secs) to 'jet'. The main cookpan was sealed with the lid and put onto the stove from the start of this time and it took just over 9 and 1/2 minutes (9 mins 28 secs) to come to a rolling boil, which is just enough time to sterilise water.
For point of reference, the spirit burner burned for 46 mins from full.
Now I thought I'd give the stove a second test and see how it performed against my little home-made hobo stove, which is based upon a 10cm Zebra Billy powered by a Tatonka spirt burner (could use any twigs or combustibles as well).
[More details about my hobo stove can be found on this thread.]
This was on the next day, so stats are slightly different:
Outdoor temperature: 13 degrees centigrade
Wind 11mph SSE
The main difference between the two stoves is that the home-made stove is made from stainless steel, as opposed to aluminium, so weight is greater. The other main difference is the size, if you haven't already noticed! Well, they could both boil a pint of water (and then some) and, surprise, surprise, the home-made hobo came to the boil first at 8 mins 54 seconds, followed by the Alocs at 10 mins 21 secs - different from yesterday, but the ambient temperature and wind were different from the previous day. It would be nice to be able to adjust the distance between pot and flame - as I can with my hobo - but that doesn;t seem to be the case. It seems the designers have fixed the components at the 'optimum' distance for cooking, without taking wind into account. In any event, that's not a great deal of time if you're waiting for a brew. The only way you're going to get a much quicker brew is to use a 'volcano' stove, a Kelly Kettle or an M-Kettle.
When cold, the Alocs packs into its bag in about 20 seconds with the spirit burner going into the main pot, leaving lots of room for other stuff such as matches, a tin opener, a dangle chain, a pot grabber etc, etc (all the things I have packed into my little hobo stove). Personally, I reckon the designers could've made the stove pack smaller with the base and top lid both inverting into the main body and cockpit respectively, which I reckon would save about 2 and 1/2 inches in height.
I haven't tried the Alocs with any solid fuel so can't comment on its abilities there.
This is really quite a good stove for around £30 but I'd recommend replacing the spirit burner with a quality one. As for me, I'll definitely use this stove but it doesn't compare to my home-made hobo (they never do!) because of the packed-down size, even though the Alocs is slightly lighter when packed with all the gubbins and the burner full. I would recommend this stove if you've not got a stove or if you're not comfortable with the Crusader style/army cook set or if you don't want to cough up the ridiculous money they're asking for Jetboil systems these days.
Steve
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Originally Posted by Martin
