The greatness of this product is in its simplicity. I purchased this stove while hiking in the mountains of northern Wales after my gas stove refused to light because it was to cold. I guess you can by Trangia stoves through MSR in the US. It has never let me down. My only problem is that in Europe there was fuel sold specifically for trangia stoves that burned clean and hot. In the US you need to buy either ethanol or methanol and ad about 10-15% water to keep the stove from sooting. You can find fuel at just about any grocery store and once in a pinch I was able to use a bottle of Everclear I picked up at a late night liquer store. I think the cost of the stove worked out to about $40 including two pots, a fry pan, a kettle and pot holder. For value I'd go much higher than 5 if I could.

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MSR and Primus stoves

As Trangias aren't popular in the Ottawa area, I become the centre of interest at camps (and picnics) everytime I light its brass burner and cover the stove with the pan (included are two pots and a pan. People are used to roaring stove-flames, and the Trangia's flame is invisible in light. It's also silent; steam jetting around the lid is the only way I can tell the water's boiled. Accusations have been made about it's long boiling time. In Spring and summer, I find water is rolling in a few minutes. In colder weather, it takes about ten. Using alcohol fuel is marvellous; with no gas-stink or tempramental stove flare-ups. With pots and pans included with the stove, your field kitchen is complete. The bottom section of the 2-part stove is the windscreen; keeping the vent down there pointed into the wind will make it boil FASTER. I cooked a big pot of soup and what seemed to be eight thousand hotdogs, for two people, during a withering rainstorm, under a tree, all on one burner-load of fuel (about 30 minutes). Fuel's easy to get and cheap. A bit bulky in the back pack, and a rather crude way of regulating the heat (a sliding plate must be moved across the top of the burner, thereby cutting off the flame) are two disadvantages.

Customer Service

There's nothing to break, there's no moving parts. Just a brass burner and some aluminium bits...

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I have a Svea 123 for cold weather, and have used many other types of outdoor cooking apparatus.

I´m happy to give this product five stars because its far superior to all other stoves that ive used. I have got the modell with titanium pots and pans and ive had it for 6 years and it still have not had it´s first problem. And don´t think i don´t use it i use it almost every weekend

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I have tried a primus stove for a while but it broke

I'm almost embarrassed to admit when I bought my Trangia. I984. And believe it or not its still going strong. I've now got a new set of teflon coated pots but other than that its all original. Now there have been times when I haven't used it for months, and times when I've used it almost everyday for weeks but this stove has never let me down. It doesn't heat things quite as fast as pressurised systems but makes up for that in its total reliability and ease of setup. I have seen countless occasions where others with there groovey high tech stoves have been fiddling and cursing while the ol'Trangia just goes quietly about its job. Needless to say I can only rate it as five stars.

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Have only seen others usually not so good experience with various pressure systems

I use this product every time i go camping and have had no problems. It has a simple but efective design which is its best feature as their is nothing to go wrong- very efficiant too.

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None

After living in Australia for a year and a half, I finally gave in and bought a Trangia like every other Aussie backpacker. Weight, cost, and gear-freak nifty-ness were my priorities. I looked at the MSR multi-fuels, but as my cookset needed replacing as well, the Trangia seemed the obvious choice. Besides, all the really cool people had one.
I actually have the T-27, which is littler than the T-25 and makes a heck of a lot more sense for one or two people - three at a pinch. They come in eight combinations, but mine has two one-liter pots, a kettle, a lid/skillet/plate thing, handle, burner, base, windscreen, all aluminum. (Non-stick and "Duossal" versions are also available.) Get the kettle - you can always leave it out if you're that concerned about weight, and it's sometimes nice to have something clean to boil coffee water in when your pots are covered in noodle residue.
The base and windscreen look bulky at first, but they're relatively light and everything nests together pretty well. Lighting the thing is quite easy... just fill the burner and off you go. (Although I kind of enjoy flare-ups and that sexy diesel roar... oh well.) It takes a few tries to get the hang of simmering/capping/refilling, but it ends up pretty easy. The rotator on the simmer cap is tight enough that I need to remove it to adjust the actual simmer rate, which is a minor inconvenience, but I've been told they loosen up with time. I only use the simmer ring once in a while, anyway. I've found that a liter of alcohol will easily last two people five days or more. Performance is good but variable - it works fantastically better in the wind, and make sure your pots are nicely blackened.
Drawbacks would be the simmer mechanism, slow boil time on a still day, and the ability to spill flaming ethanol all over yourself and the pristine outdoors. (Saw a fellow hiker do this when he picked up a flaming burner, not realizing that it might be hot, and dropped it. Good move.) If you're into snow or big walls, this is not the stove for you; if you'll be cooking for more than two, get the bigger version or consider an MSR.
Advantages would be cost ($99 Australian, relatively a little cheaper in the US, probably pennies in Sweden), weight, simplicity, reliability, and general coolness. Great for backpackers and lightweight hikers. Even ultralight nuts might like the mini-Trangia (burner and micro stand) for when they actually cook their roots and berries.
Took the thing up a four-pitch climb at Mount Arapiles last weekend; filled and sealed the burner, put my coffee and sugar in the kettle, and jammed it in my day-pack. Climbed by the full moon and had coffee (hallelujah, brother!) two pitches up at sunrise. Boiled faster than ever in the howling wind.

Customer Service

No need for service yet; probably never. What could go wrong with it?

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Previously using a Caribee (Aussie brand) micro butane/propane stove - lightweight, cheap, reliable, but unstable and doesn't like wind. I still have it to loan out to friends. Used friends' Dragonflies and Internationales - good stuff, but they're not as lightweight as they look.

i LOVE my trangia stove. I switched over last year from a MSR whisperlite and i can truly say i'll never go back. it's the ease of use, the quiet operation and light weight that make this my stove of choice.

The Trangia stove is an excellent product. It fits the KISS principle well. I used mine for over night to week long bushwalks, however on longer walks I use my Whisperlite due to the lesser fuel consumption. It is also possible to buy a burner stand for the trangia burner, I used this to make a simpler version of the stove by placing this combination inside a drilled out aluminium colander/ vegetable strainer. Handy tips: whilst a little water in ethanol based fuels helps reduce pot blackening it also substanially increases cooking time in cold weather, at the same time in hot weather slightly more water stops the fuel from vapourising too quickly.
Whilst using the stove in Canada I found Fondue Fuel to be excellent- it doesn't burn black and it burns hot.
Oh Yeah- if you carry a little orange drink powder in your pack it can make even the bitterest tasting alcohol taste good if you're desperate(only joking!) This does however highlight one of the drawbacks- alcohol can be hard to come by in some third world countries (and even in the UK it's only available from pharmacies, and only with a good explanation (I've got a bunch of university students coming over for a party....))

Customer Service

The only thing that could kill this stove would be to drive over it!

Similar Products Used:

MSR Whisperlite Internationale, Coleman Peak 1, Various Primus Kerosine stoves

I bought the Trangia burner as part of a nesting kit used by the Swedish Army; the set is stainless steel and consists of a 1.5 quart pot, 1 quart cover/pot, a windscreen, plastic fuel bottle and the burner. The whole unit hefts in at about 2.5 lbs with fuel ... kind of heavy, but what a super stove!

Can't say enough about the alcohol burner: silent, hot, a simple engineering marvel with it's little pinholes firing up as the fuel goes gaseous. We had a liter of water doing a rolling boil in 10 minutes, which was plenty good for our excursion. Burned on full for a good 35-40 minutes. No bad fumes, super easy to light in wind and made for our method of backwoods cooking: heating water for coffee and frying up a trout or two.

I'm reviewing the burner in this category, as it's a Trangia; the nesting set is not, and as I've already noted is a little heavy, but for $9.95 for three COMPLETE sets I could get one for my pals and we could all catch the Trangia bug ... and save our bucks for the T25 set down the road, which isn't all that costly anyways. I'm gonna do the duossal steel/aluminum.

Folks doing day trips or weekenders would like this type of stove. You could extend it to longer trips by purchasing one of the lighter weight Trangia sets and keeping your heating needs to water for breakfast and dinner; I think you'd have to carry along a bunch of fuel for anything more (sauteing your Morel mushrooms, etc.), but split up among a few people you might be OK. All depends on what you're looking to do, and how you want to fit into the woods and backcountry.

Denatured alcohol is the way to go - absolutely clean burn, relatively cheap, easy to find. Isopropyl gets a little sooty due to the water content, and I reckon you could use some good Irish whisky ... but, man, it had better be a life and death situation!

Reliable, clean and "green" - gotta like it.

Customer Service

NA - Swedish Army did not try to recruit me.

Similar Products Used:

Svea 123 (best white gas stove made)
MSR Pocket Rocket (lightweight, hot)
MSR Whisperlite (kill this stove!)

Let's start with the disadvantages:

-The Trangia is slow. About three times as slow as a good white gas or cartridge stove. The Trangia is simply not designed to boil large quantities of water.
-Adjusting the flame is cumbersome. (Although, once adjusted, it simmers better than any other stove I know. Your delicate Risotto Allo Zafferano will be perfect.)
-It can only be used with Trangia pots.
-Because it burns alcohol, and alcohol doesn't pack a lot of heat, it's rather fuel heavy. You'll have to carry about fifty per cent more fuel than with a white gas stove (in weight).
-It might be difficult to find alcohol outside of the USA, Western Europe and Australia.

So why is the Trangia T-27 my favorite backpacking stove?

-It's quiet. To be more specific: it's inaudible. Nothing better to enjoy an evening in the wild. I'll gladly wait a few minutes longer for my soup.
-It's light, certainly not heavier than a MSR Whisperlite.
-It's more fuel efficient than indicated in the manual. If you're looking for something truly incredible: well, here it is.
-It always works. A 50 mph storm? Driving rain? Your Trangia barely notices.
-It's safe. There's no stove on the market that's more stable. No flare ups, no nasty smells. In fact, it is the only stove I would use under the fly sheet of a tent.
-It's cheap, at least here in Europe. I paid far less for my T-27, which is perfect for two backpackers, and comes with two pots and a baking pan, than for my Primus Himalaya Varifuel alone.
-It's absolutely dependable. No moving parts. No cleaning or maintenance. Quick and easy to set up. Virtually unbreakable. Your backpack is run over by a truck? Your Trangia will survive. OK, maybe you'll have to beat it back into shape with a stone. But that's all. When you are 75, it'll work as new.
-It packs away neatly.

So what are you waiting for? Go & get it!

Customer Service

I simply can't imagine having an "experience" with the Trangia Customer Service. These stoves will work smoothly the day after Armageddon

Similar Products Used:

Optimus Svea 123
Primus Alpine Microlight
Primus Himalaya Varifuel
MSR Whisperlite