Flaming Beer Can Stove!

My housemates and their dinner guests drank a 24 pack of lagers yesterday.

What luck! After gleefully mangling a half dozen cans, I successfully constructed an ultralight back/bikepacking alcohol stove. This model is called the Hannah stove (PDF instructions here). This variation on the pressurized penny stove does not require any special equipment or glues — just a pair of scissors, a pin and a handful of soda or beer cans. The idea is simple: cut the bottoms off of two cans. Drill a hole in the top of one half — this is for filling the stove with alcohol. Insert the top piece into the other half. Poke twenty-four holes around the rim; these become the gas jets.

After crushing my first two versions, I came up with a strategy for fitting the top half into the bottom. I first softened the metal of the bottom piece by burning a bit of denatured alcohol in it. I then wiggled the bottom of another can into the piece to gently widen the rim diameter. The two pieces fitted easily together using this trick!