The Evernew Titanium Alcohol Stove was designed to confound those who say such stoves are inefficient. With two sets of jets and a lightweight construction, it remains a favourite with those who appreciate build quality, and can afford it.

Japanese manufacturer Evernew released their Titanium Alcohol Stove, EBY254, in 2010 but it wasn’t until 2013/4 that Three Points of the Compass purchased one. I first used it on a brief three day backpack of Norfolk’s Boudicca Way in 2014 and it has continued to occasionally come along on longer day walks or two/three day excursions in the intervening years. It is light, compact, trouble free, robust and simply works. It isn’t cheap though. As I write this, Amazon have it at £41.39, and Ultralight Outdoor Gear are selling it at £54.99. Look around and you can find it cheaper. There are various small aspects of this stove that set it apart from much cheaper products and almost justify it’s cost. The Evernew stove is also available in the Evernew Ti Stove DX Set, EBY255. This quite expensive set combines the stove with a titanium ‘power plate’, windshield and pot support, (available by itself as EBY257), that can also be used with solid fuel tabs or act as a little twig stove.

The Evernew stove is widely advertised as weighing 34g, it doesn’t. Well at least mine doesn’t. Mine tips the scales at 35.5g. It measures 71.15mm (71mm) x 42mm.

I probably have to define what the difference is between a burner and a stove. A burner burns fuel but cannot perform by itself. It requires something else to support a pot or pan. A stove both burns fuel and supports a pot or pan. The Evernew EBY254 acts either as a burner or as a stove. It was specifically developed to get the most out of low BTU alcohol fuels. It has a lot of jets and burns just about as hot as an alcohol burner can. You can see that it has two rings of holes. Eight around the top rim, and sixteen around a lower rim. If it is treated as a burner and a pan is suspended above, it will burn from all twenty four jets and boil water promptly, well, as prompt as an alcohol stove is capable of. It will burn through fuel very quickly in this manner. If it is treated as a stove, a pot/pan can be rested directly on top of it. This then chokes off the top jets, and a flame is only created from the bottom jets, creating as close to a simmer as it is possible to get and greatly extending the burn time.

I have used the Evernew Titanium Alcohol Stove in a number of configurations. Placing a pot directly on top is possible but it will then take longer to reach a boil and the support surface is quite narrow, just 42mm. The simplest alternative is to use a light trivet. I purchased a Universal titanium trivet from backpackinglight.co.uk years ago for use with various stoves, including the Evernew. This weighs just 7g and slips almost un-noticed into the bottom of a pot when stowed. Inverting the trivet lifts the pot a little.

The Evernew burner also fits and works well inside my 119g titanium Honey Stove or 78g Trail Designs Sidewinder Ti-Tri Cone. These both compact down well and in use provide decent protection from side breezes. The cone especially, which locks in the space around the edge of the pan and ensures little of the precious heat from the Evernew burner is lost. I used to use the Ti-Tri cone quite a bit, but more recently swapped out to the Czech made 29g Vesuv windshield. This is also a cone that supports my preferred pan, a 900ml Evernew.

• Gear talk: Vesuv titanium windshield

Toaks make two windshields that work well with the Evernew Burner. The Toaks FRM-02 in four piece configuration with an Evernew Burner totals 77.5g. However I think it works better with the slightly heavier and larger FRM-03 TiStand as this has better protection from the wind. This combination totals 91.5g, but it depends what width your pot is. While this works with my wide 900ml Evernew pan, some narrow pots will require the optional two titanium pins as support, another 13g.

Gear talk: Toaks FRM-02 and FRM-03 windshield and pot stands

Evernew say that 400ml water can be bought to a boil with 30ml alcohol within 5 minutes, however that is largely a nonsense. Everything depends on elevation, what alcohol fuel is used, protection from wind, isolation from the ground, temperature of water. Enough said that while this is as efficient an alcohol burner as you can get, it is significantly slower than a gas stove. It is unhurried and for those who move at a less than frenetic pace. It also has the important characteristic of being silent, beyond a faint crackling as the fuel runs out.

The inside of the burner has both ml and fl.oz fuel fill graduations and it has a maximum capacity of 70ml. You might also be able to see the glass wool wick between the double titanium side walls that soaks up fuel and provides an improved burn.

If you do not put sufficient fuel in the burner it can run out before you achieve your boil. With an almost invisible flame in daylight you have to be certain that it is extinguished and cooled before adding any more fuel. The best test is first put your hand above it to feel if there is any heat, then, can you comfortably pick it up in the hand. While I will use this stove, with care, in the vestibule, I would never use it inside a tent. I can extinguish the burner by inverting my pan over it, depriving it of oxygen. Blowing hard might achieve the same effect, but you will need a lot of puff. It is safest to simply let it burn itself out. Once the stove has completely cooled, the burner can be inverted and unused fuel can be drained off back into the fuel bottle. A Trangia simmer ring can (sort of) be used with this stove and used to extinguish it.

Despite the option to rest a pan directly on the top of this stove, there is an optimum distance that an alcohol burner requires between it’s jets and a pan to work efficiently. Shorter trivets and supports will work but will not get the best out of the stove. Evernew have produced three trivets for their stove but I have no first hand experience of any of them. I do wish I could try out their new 3.5g offering, however their UK distributor has no plans on retailing it, and it is a very expensive purchase from Japan.

The Evernew Titanium Alcohol Stove is an excellent piece of gear. However it is an expensive commitment. There are many cheaper alternatives, not least the time-tested brass Trangia Spirit Burner, or you can even make your own. However it is doubtful that any will be as light and efficient at creating a hot burn from a relatively inefficient fuel as the Evernew, nor will they be as robust. This stove will last you years and will form part of your inheritance.

• Stoves- reviews
• Make-Your-Own 5.5g alcohol/meths burner/stove while on trail
• Make-Your-Own alcohol/meths burner
• Refining my ‘Make-Your-Own’ alcohol/meths burner

Three Points of the Compass occasionally takes a glance at items of my gear. These reviews get added to occasionally as I get round to it. Links to gear reviews can be found here.