Vargo Triad Alcohol Stove Review

Overview

The Vargo Triad is a tiny little stove that at 55mm in diameter is about the same size as the simmer lid of a trangia. With the legs open the total height is just 60mm. This is a stove that can find space to fit in any pack. It'll happily sit inside of a mug.

At 28g I still hold out a hope that it will be a good little alcohol stove.

Indoor Testing

Fuel has to be poured into the stove through the tiny hole in the centre. You have to do this slowly and you have to fill it until fuel is visible in the basin. This is tricky to do even with my trangia fuel bottle. Using an ordinary bottle is to say the least frustrating with fuel going everywhere.

Once you have the thing filled with fuel then setting it alight is easy with a match or a lighter. It takes several minutes for the heat of the fuel in the centre to heat the stove sufficiently that the jets start to work. Once the jets are lit they will stay lit until the stove runs out of fuel.

In order to work at all you have to fill the stove up every time to the brim.

You cannot in practice empty the fuel from the stove and so you have to always burn it to completion. This seems a little wasteful.

Outdoor Testing

My first field trip with this stove was somewhat stressful. Trying to fill it from a tiny little nalgene bottle meant that fuel went everywhere. I did finally get more fuel in the stove than in the grass...

Once it was lit I found that it was being blown out by light breezes and that the jets would not fire. I erected an adhoc wind break out of rocks and pieces of kit. It was a little precarious but it did help.

I did manage to boil the cup (MSR Titanium 400ml) of water but it took a while and I only achieved a simmer rather than a good healthy boil.

It was only towards the end of the simmer that the jets ignited. I think even the airflow around the wind shield was preventing ignition.

It did not compare at all well with my normal trusty windproof trangia (that is much, much heavier).

Early Conclusions

The stove definitely needs a close-fitting windshield. I have built one and will run another field test. I badly want this stove to work because it is so light but I fear that I might instead settle for an ultralight kit based around aTrangia burner.

Priming

After a little research it would appear that the stove needs a little priming to work best in cooler conditions. The easiest way to prime the Vargo Triad is to use the same trick that is used with Trangias - place a small cap of fuel underneath the burner and ignite it. This is sufficient to boil some of the fuel so that the jets will fire up within a minute or so.

Looking at the various timings published for this stove my personal guess is that boil times must be commenced after the stove has been primed and all jets are burning.

Realistic weights for a cooking system

The stove may weigh only 28g but what do you actually need to carry in order to boil water?

At less than 200g for that first cup of water it compares very well with the MSR Pocket Rocket which started out at 358g for a full cylinder. The big difference between the two is that the Vargo Triad will take around 15 minutes to boil a cup of water in the field compared with 2 minutes for the MSR pocket Rocket. At this point in time I am more inclined to take the MSR stove and have my drink faster than worry about the extra initial weight.

Of course after 3-4 days on the trial the extra fuel requirements of the Triad will of course add up so that the weight becomes similar.