I’m taking a pepsi can stove for the first time on this year’s hike. What should I use to carry the alcohol? Somebody mentioned using a pepsi bottle, and someone else mentioned buying a rubbing alcohol bottle, throwing away the rubbing alcohol, and using it to hold denatured alcohol. Any experienced alcohol fuel users care to give me some advice?
davepaumen
You can use any bottle but it should be in a polyethelene container. Milk jug plastic. Imperviuos to any chemical. You can get new empty bottles for that in the hair care products isle at the grocery. They’ll be soft and milky white in color, like…Find a soda cap that fits one since most will have a spray top and and mark it with a permanent marker “fuel” in big red letters so someone doesn’t drink it. Its been done.:nerd
Bushwhack
I use the heavier gauge plastic bottles you buy beverages in. Not the cheap thin plastic from 20oz. sodas, but the heavier plastic from some fruit juices, etc. You can find them in any grocery or convenience store, just look for the heavier grade plastic, once you find it, you’ll know what I mean. Cheap, easily replaceable, and lightweight.
The link below is a good reference regarding this subject.
http://www.trailquest.net/TQaltgear.html#bottles
Hope this helps. :boy
xtn
airferret
I’ve been using a 20oz coke bottle and has worked fine. It conveniently comes with a red cap also.
bigfoot
Or, this is a novel idea: use a fuel bottle. Trangia and Nalgene both make fuel bottles for alcohol fuels. They may not be ideal for you weight self conscious hikers, but there are no concern about reactivity with the materials and they don’t leak in your pack. No matter what you use, I suggest sticking with the high density polyethylene (HDPE) type.
Farther
I’ve always used soda or gatorade bottles. They are surprisingly strong, very light, and free. If they said REI or MSR on them, they’d probably go for $10 each!
Colter
This place is great! www.usplastic.com They sell anything from Nalgene to flip spout bottles. I prefer a flip spout bottle for my alcohol. Very precise and clean for filling alcohol stoves. Flatfoot.
Flatfoot
Flame and I carried the same coke bottle from GA to ME for our alcohol and it worked perfect. Why over engineer something that works? I do not recall a single mishap with a coke (or pepsi) from anybody on the trail. I would say that 90% of the alcohol was carried in a soda bottle of some type.
Papa Smurf
I’m in florida. It gets hot, as it wil on the A.T. I had a half full coke bottle full of denatured which was last opened in hot weather. It cooled down one night and caused the bottle to collapse. Now the bottle will not uncollapse, and the plastic has become “thin”. Whatsup with that? Oh yeah, extremly important: clearly mark all over your fuel bottle so you won’t drink it. Trust me, I know. Once I was in withlacoochee state forest and I woke up one morning and felt a bottle next to me. I thought it was my coke that I had brought the day before, that denatured burned my throat like crazy. I probably could have breathed fire!:eek:
I made myself throw it up, just in case. Now I mark my fuel!:x
Bucky
My color of my denatured is clear.
Bought it in the paint section of super wally world
Bucky
here in london, its purple, and has a definate smell. so you always know metho 
cant confuse and drink it (unless you strain it with bread). ahem.
see ya on the trail in 04 bucky.
-BC
Bloody Cactus