How to save fuel using a Pot Cosy when camping

hello welcome back to the outdoor station and this quick little video hopefully most of you will have now popped along and visited our new website the outdoor station co uk where there's lots of exciting videos and in particular audio podcasts to listen to all based around self powered travel I've had quite a few emails regarding a couple of podcasts that are on there number 336 and 337 which is where Andy and I went to the heart of Wales during late December 2011 and what happened to be the worst night of the year I think it was and cooked up a three-course Christmas meal just using a single stove a handful of pots and a whole variety of this magical ingredient a pot cozy I've had a lot of emails ask people asking all about pop codes is how efficient they are what difference they make to the cooking experience the most important thing these days not only do they make a lot of difference to the cooking but they also save a vast amount of fuel and I'm all about saving some money we're at all possible so in this video what I'm going to do is have a look at the efficiency of pop cozies and show you quickly how to put this one together which is a double layered pop cosy the pop cosy principle is very very simple it's not new it's been around for many many years hundreds of years in fact and it used to be called a hay box where people would make a stew put the stew in the pot put the pot in a box that was stuffed full of hay and that would keep it for as warm as possible for as long as possible the material changed over the years and it changed to polystyrene and the modern day material this material is bubble wrap insulated as sandwich rather between two sheets of highly reflective aluminium foil however the efficiency of this stuff is exceedingly good and it's equivalent to two inches of polystyrene now this one is a double cosy so there's a lid there and I lid there and a base for it to sit on and that of course would be equivalent to an awful lot more insulation so in this video I'm first of all going to take these outside and go through a simple experiment to show you how effective they are at retaining heat and then we're going to do a quick little how-to video and how I put this actual double one together so heading outside the first thing I'm going to do is boil up the kettle and in each of these pots place 500 milliliters of boiling hot water straight out of the kettle that's a point for you people overseas now we're going to quickly measure the temperature before putting the lids back on and then reporting back every 5 minutes for the first half hour to record as best we can the temperature drop after half an hour I'm going to break it into ten minute segments and at the very end they'll put it all into a graph to show you how well the heat is retained using this simple effective accessory it's cheap it's exceedingly light it's very very durable and you can make pot cozies for anything at the end of the hour you can see here that there's quite a big temperature difference between these three pots the pot on the left the one without any cozies the water is tepid if that the one in the middle is still quite warm I would say probably about as warm as a nice bath and the one on the right hand side still is piping hot you could make a brew with that still and that's after an hour so it shows you the effectiveness of this material what Kouzes of course don't have to be circular in their nature for pots they can come in any shapes or sizes I made one particularly here for the frying pan I use this one on that Christmas podcast have a check those out by the way on the website number 336 and 337 and of course if you're a dried food instant food that is your chosen food of choice when you go backpacking or hiking then a pop cozy makes a world of difference it keeps the food piping hot more importantly piping hot right to the very end which makes for a much more pleasant meal so we do have a look at the website do pop along and leave some comments we'd love to get your feedback and if you want to send me an email please drop me a line on info at the outdoor station co uk anyway in our next video we're going to be look at making a conical windshield that clips to your pot so that you can use it with most stoves and once again increase the fuel efficiency until next time bye for now thanks for watching

Channel: The Outdoors Station

Views: 128,035

Rating: 4.9264708 out of 5

Keywords: pot cosy, hay box, alcohol stove, meths stove, camp cooking, bushcraft, Holiday, Fun, Weekend Survival, Hiking, lightweight, pyrenees, saving fuel, outdoor meals, Tent, pot cozy, diy pot cozy, lightweight cooking tips, camping tips, clever camping hacks, outdoor cooking, outdoor camping tips, camping over a wood stove, outdoor camping menu, diy pot cosy, what is a pot cozy, weight saving backpacking tips, hiking cooking tips, best outdoor meals, best freeze dried camp food

Id: VkQA0_duIHE

Length: 7min 51sec (471 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 22 2012