Burner Biscuit Alcohol Stove Mod

I've messed around with alcohol stoves for years since they're fun to mess with. There's no end to new designs. Some have amazing craftsmanship while others are mindboggling simple. The classic Fancy Feast stove is no more than a cat food tin with holes punched around the perimeter. It also serves as its own pot stand. Out of the ones I've tried it's one of my favorites.

It does run hot and fast though. If all you need is boiling water to add to something dehydrated it does the job, but given how fast and forceful the flames jet out it also needs a wider container to best capture the heat. If you watch closely through the vent holes you can see the entire surface of the alcohol boiling off.

Recently I experimenting with some perlite stoves. These use perlite (used for mixing with potting soil) to hold the alcohol and by insulating the liquid alcohol from the flame it slow down the rate the alcohol boils off as vapor. In testing they would take several minutes longer to get the water to a boil, and would then simmer along for several more minutes, while the Fancy Feast would have about one minute of a rolling boil to work with before running out of fuel.

An new stove type called the Simple::Stove (aka Pill Bottle Stove) came out a year or two ago. It's just four pucks of a stone-like material (probably compressed perlite) that you soak in alcohol and then light. It's like a containerless modular stove. Light one for a less heat or use more for bigger containers. It's hilariously simple. I was wondering if you could do something similar by making a puck with regular perlite wrapped in aluminum foil to make a "patty". Just punch a couple holes in the top where you could drip in fuel and then light it. I tried it with pot stands though, as it seemed a little lumpier than I'd like for serving as its own pot stand.

The "burner biscuit" sort of worked but the alcohol would wick out the aluminum foil and drip everywhere. I was hoping once primed it would jet out of the vent holes but the flame behavior was all over the place as the alcohol vapor found wrinkles and crannies to escape from.

Then I realized the biscuit could fit into the Fancy Feast stove. The stove would contain any leaks from the foil, the biscuit would reduce the spill risk, and hopefully slow down the fuel consumption.

With the Fancy Feast and 20ml of fuel, I'd get a boil (12oz cold tap water) in about 6 minutes and it would be done by 8 minutes. With the burner biscuit, it would boil around 7 minutes but then slowly throttle down. There would be a point where the flames withdrew into the cat tin and just burned off the vent holes in the biscuit. This gave more of a simmer that lasted four minutes.

While at least interesting behavior, the question is now whether it's useful. It might work better for meals like the Knorr Sides that need some extra cooking time. I'll have to do some real testing outside with actual food.

There are of course other stove designs that have a simmer ring to adjust the output. And as light as these stoves are, you could easily carry separate boiling and simmering stoves to use as needed. Admittedly, I'll usually take a cannister stove just for fire safety, but for light and quick winter trips these alcohol stoves are undeniably fun.