Suluk 46 T.E.A system in use on the PCTSuluk 46 is a cottage gear company based out of Canada that displays the innovation, customer experience and quality that typifies so many of these innovative shops. I was looking for an update to the simple alcohol stove I've been using for some years and discovered the Suluk 46 website. Take some time to peruse the site and discover some truly innovative and light weight designs, many based on titanium. The owner, Steve Evans, is obviously connected to the engineering community in some way as his products are CAD based, waterjet cut and made out of high quality variations of titanium. I was very interested in his T.E.A system (Titanium Esbit Alcohol) for cooking....well, I don't cook so much as just heat water. I like the flexibility of a dual fuel system but have used it exclusively so far with esbit tablets. My testing and field use confirms that one tablet will boil 2 cups of water in 8-9 minutes. For smaller amounts, I can cut the tablet in half if, for instance, I only need to heat 8 ounces. There are a few things I love about this stove, such as its utter simplicity. Lay stove down, light esbit tab. Put titanium windscreen/pot holder over. Put on pot. And talk about light: 1.59 ounces for the entire system (yes, that includes the pot). Pack up is simply fold the windscreen/pot holder up and place in pot, throw in stove and put on lid. The titanium he uses, at least in this product, is extremely flexible but always returns to the proper shape when taken out of the pot. I exchanged emails with Steve when I first tried to buy the system; he replied that he was still tweaking it and didn't like the way it looked. I told him I wanted it anyway, that I couldn't find anything better on the market and I really wanted to use it for my vacation hikes with my daughter. Steve said OK and blasted one off to me (yes, I paid for it) with these caveats. Great customer service. Things I'm not crazy about: esbit is messy, leaving a black residue, but there's no way around this. The stove portion of this system is simply a Tealight candle holder, so when it becomes too much of a mess from the esbit I will simply chuck it and grab another replacement from one of our sets in the house. I use a mini cuben stuff sack from ZPacks to hold the T.E.A. system and the fuel to keep the lid from getting separated from the pot. And I pack along an old biking glove to handle the hot pot of boiling water, but I've also used clothing items or a bandana.

If you are going mountaineering or doing cold weather high altitude trips and need to melt snow for water, this is probably not the system to use. But for general backpacking, I think it's one of the slickest, easiest ways to heat water for a truly light weight. Now I've got my eyes on that titanium/carbon fiber ice axe......