Caldera Cone

In the past few years I’ve made a bunch of different alcohol stoves, as well as the wind screens and pot stands to accompany them. Fun to make, fun to use, light, small, cheap to run. I’ve had other stoves (multi-fuel and canister), but they’re heavy, expensive, noisy, bulky, in some cases potentially dangerous, and in the case of say a canister stove, I was always wondering whether I had enough fuel left for a given period of time, not to mention that the canisters can’t be recycled.

I’m really happy with the pop can stoves I’ve made, but after reading many good reviews of the Caldera Cone, I decided to give it a try.

They are set up specifically for a particular pot. The claim made is that each cone and stove is dialed in specifically for each pot. Beyond the obvious diameter of each pot being specific, the height of the Cone itself and the stove is different for different pots.

There were several features that appealed to me. The first was stability. The Cone acts as both the pot stand and the wind screen. With the pot in the Cone, it’s a rock sold unit. There is no chance that the pot could tip over, or slip from the pot stand. Short of someone kicking the unit, there’s no chance that a pot of boiling water could topple over. The other thing was efficiency. With a major portion of the pot enclosed by the cone, the heat is funneled into the sides of the pot, yet the enclosed aspect of the cone prevents much heat from being lost out the top.

It may be a little bulkier and heavier than many other alcohol stove systems, and the tube that it’s packed in certainly contributes a great deal to that. It can however do double duty as a bowl if you like.

It does have some drawbacks however. A straight windscreen is an easy thing to roll and pack. The conical shape of the Caldera Cone is surprisingly tricky to pack. I try to wrap the top around the stove, put it in the bottom portion of the Caddy, keep it wound as tight as I can, and then put the top portion of the Caddy onto the bottom. No matter how hard I try, it still tends to unwind, making it hard to get the top of the Caddy on sometimes. When taking the Caddy apart, its natural tendency to want to unfurl means that the bottom of the Cone gets battered. The dovetail joint is the thing that gets damaged the most. My worry is that this is the thing that will eventually render the cone unusable. So far I’ve been able to fix it so that it contnues to operate, but I don’t know how long I can make it last.

I got the Caldera Cone for the MSR .85 Liter Titan Kettle.

I keep a bandana in the top, partially to prevent rattling, and also to serve as a pot holder, wipe any moisture out of the pot, etc. But I learned the hard way to take it out of the thing when I come back from a trip. What I thought was a perfectly dry bandana had enough moisture in it to get a bit mildewy and cause some corrosion on one spot on the Cone. Whoops.

I also found out that two CampSuds 120ml (4 fl. oz) oval bottles fit perfectly in the Caddy, and increase the amount of methyl hydrate that can be carried over the bottle it comes with.

One of those bottles on average provides me with enough fuel for one day. Breakfast, hot beverage, dinner, hot beverage, hot water for washing. That is of course contingent on ambient temperatures to some degree, and depending on an individuals cooking style, they may be able to get two days out of it. And I have managed to stretch it out a bit too, often ending up with a quarter to a third of a bottle left over at the end of the day. Which is fine. Better to have a bit left over than run out. But I generally use one of those bottles as a standard measurement.

One of the nice features of the stove is the attached primer pan.

On the one hand the dove tail join is one of the nicest features of this system, and also one of  its drawbacks. I may make a copy of this, without the dove tail and just join the two ends together with paper clips or binder clips like I do with several other wind screens.

It takes a bit of using it, but eventually you learn the subtleties of using alcohol stoves so well that you can get very accurate with exactly how much fuel to add to the stove to boil a given amount of water, and not a drop more.

A few drops in the primer pan, spark it up, and the fuel in the stove lights a bit later. Put the Cone over it, and the pot full of water in that.

If anyone is interested in this system, and doesn’t have a pot yet, my suggestion is the Snow Peak Mini Solo, since the Caddy fits inside it, making it a slightly less bulky system. It’s a tight fit, but it does fit. 

Recently Titanium Goat has collaborated with Trail Designs to offer the Ti-Tri Caldera Cone. Rather than aluminum like the original, the Cone is made from titanium. I’m not sure if the weight savings are that striking, but the big advantage is that not only can the alcohol stove be used, but also esbit tabs, and best of all, fire. The aluminum would not standup to a fire, but the titanium will. The pot choices are somewhat limited, but this makes the system far more versatile. Worth considering. And the price is not that outrageous, given that the pot is included along with everything else. And the best part is that the Cone snaps together, rather than the more fragile dovetail join.


The Caldera Cone is a piece of gear that has some really great features, and a few drawbacks. Like many other things I suppose. It’s very stable, combines two items into one (pot stand and wind screen) and is very fuel efficient. On the down side it is bulkier, trickier to pack, and the dovetail join of the aluminum models is a bit more susceptible to damage. I think the Ti-Tri is the best choice, since it offers several options.