Trangia 27 or 25

[granville2]

I getting ready to pack for a 6 week camping tour in Spain and Portugal. I have been a couple of times in the past few years and I used an old Trangia 25 which is converted to gas. Last year I had a look at options for reducing the weight of my kit and a getting a new smaller Trangia 27 seemed an easy way of loosing nearly 400 g. I got one fairly cheap in a sale but I have not been camping since I bought it.

I always cook fresh or tinned food, looking at the new stove it seems too small for a proper meal for a hungry cyclist. Anyone got experience of cooking with the 27?

[Heltor Chasca]

27 is my preference. I cook for 3 using it. If you have 'courses' it's more than enough. Mug of soup; pot of pasta; hot custard and biscuits to finish.

And in the Med you can eat fresh fruit, sausages, bread, cheese etc. You don't need to cook all the time. To me the kettle is most important.

Bon appetite!

[gaz]

IME the 27 will be fine. If you're unsure have a test cook at home.

[meic]

I have a 27 and it probably helps me to lose weight when I am touring.
If you are a greedy* cyclist it isnt quite big enough but you will survive and possibly be a bit better off for the restriction.
The pans are officially 1 litre but that is to the brim. With the shape of them you are risking spills at 700cc and at 900cc you are having to balance it very carefully and no stirring!

As said above you can get around this by having multiple courses or supplementing with uncooked food but that doesnt actually make the pans magically larger.

If you are not so greedy the 27 is perfectly adequate.

*have an appetite, like your food or whatever other euphemism you prefer.

[granville2]

Meic
I expect to eat a lot more than normal and still loose weight.

[meic]

I wouldnt change to a 25 because as you say the 27 is lighter and smaller to pack in your luggage.
If I did have a 25 then I would certainly have put more food in the pans than I can manage with the 27.
That is for Northern Europe in Easter, further South and later in the year you can move to a different type of meal which doesnt need as much cooking.

[hamster]

I've never had a problem with 27 pan size for two.

[Gattonero]

I getting ready to pack for a 6 week camping tour in Spain and Portugal. I have been a couple of times in the past few years and I used an old Trangia 25 which is converted to gas. Last year I had a look at options for reducing the weight of my kit and a getting a new smaller Trangia 27 seemed an easy way of loosing nearly 400 g. I got one fairly cheap in a sale but I have not been camping since I bought it.

I always cook fresh or tinned food, looking at the new stove it seems too small for a proper meal for a hungry cyclist. Anyone got experience of cooking with the 27?

To be fair, on such a long trip you may consider a woodburning stove, plus the Trangia burner (filled) as backup.
Not having to carry fuel is some serious weight and bulk reduction.

Even tho, I'm a fan of meths burners so go ahead with the 27.
The windshield/support is quite solid so there's no risk of rocking the pans. It needs some clumsiness to make things wrong, and with other pan supports the same situation it will be proper disaster.
The 0.9lt pans are good enough for cooking a substantial amount of pasta, even with 200gr of spaghetti or short pasta you need only 1/2lt of water, after all the more water you put the more it takes to boil and more fuel is used. Just stir it frequently and you're ok.
Soup or canned food are no problem either, even big cans of 400-450gr leave enough space in the pan.

There's a lot of people out there cooking one-man meals in tiny 0.65lt mugs, I've tried and is not very convenient, a 0.9lt pan is just a little more but it makes a differerence

[bohrsatom]

25 is a good size for two hungry cyclists in my experience, so a 27 should be perfect for one. If the worst comes to the worst you can always cook two courses

[PhilD28]

Yes a 27 should be fine for most normal people on their own. We take a 25 for two people which is perfect. On the other hand the 25 is a great size for cooking generally and if I was travelling on my own I wouldn't bother buying a new 27 just to save a few hundred gms. Either will do the job.

[loch eck steve]

My good lady and myself have toured for years using the 27 and its been no bother for two .

[granville2]

Thanks for the replies, they have help firm up my opinion that six weeks is just too long to be with a stove that might be too small. I will need to test it properly on a shorter trip. Convenience has won out against weight saving, I will have to keep telling myself that on the climbs.

[PhilD28]

I've done lots of 6-8 week trips with the 25 and it's a joy to use. I find the longer the trip the more I appreciate certain pieces of kit - the Trangia is one and a Helinox chair is another. Of course you get stronger the longer you are away. last year I was away 9 weeks and after the first few weeks none of the weight bothered me, hilly or not, the heat did - 43 deg in the Midi Pyrenees is tough going.

[Ivor Tingting]

I have a 25-6 Trangia running on gas. I cook for myself. I made a similar such request about 10-15 years ago now before I got mine, 25 or 27, and was advised by those in the know to get the 25 unless you want to be cooking twice as with the 27 it is too small to cook enough if you ride 70-80 miles each day on a loaded touring bike. It was good advice. I don't regret buying the larger and slightly heavier 25-6 and 'am certainly pleased I got the butane/propane gas option as waiting 10-15 minutes for water to boil using meths or bio fuel is a pita when you are hungry. Plus I hate the stink of meths or alcohol fuels. I also carry a smaller Spider Express stove as a second stove to cook as well, as one stove is simply not enough for me when I cook. For places where butane/propane gas is not available I use an MSR Whisperlite International Universal Combo stove which can run on anything which is also very good and sometimes I take my Primus ETA Multi-Fuel stove instead which is also very good. For short tours depending where I am going I don't necessarily take a stove or only take an MSR Windburner to cook ready meals/soup as you can generally get food during the day so you don't need to cook. It all depends what you need or want, but for me the 27 series would just be too small if I were cooking, the pans are tiny in comparison. I find cooking with the 25 easier as the pans are larger especially the frying pan which doubles as a lid when you boil stuff. You still lose weight believe me. You only put on weight cycle touring if you don't cycle very far or hard, eat lots of processed sugary rubbish or are generally a glutton anyway. I ride every day about 35-40 miles to and from work and eat a tonne of food but still can't put on weight so cycle touring riding the WHOLE day on hilly terrain, or riding 100 miles a day, you can't eat enough to replace the calories you burn say 4-5k or more calories so you are in calorie deficit anyway, unless you are a fairly sedate half hearted rider who only rides a few miles on the flat and pigs out every couple of miles as you feel you have cycled the equivalent of the TdF you are not going to put on weight.

This is just my experience and the advice that I was given before I bought my Trangia which has proved correct and invaluable. Sorry to all those up thread who say the smaller 27 Trangia, which was initially the one I was going to get, but was advised against, to get the larger 25 series instead. If you are that worried about losing weight because you are fat then of course you could get a 27 series but you will likely be cooking twice you could even get a Trangia Mini if you really want to lose weight but IME you will lose weight and can't eat enough.

So stick with you existing larger 25 series IMHO. Hope this has been of help.

Bon appetite.

[Gattonero]

... the 27 it is too small to cook enough if you ride 70-80 miles each day on a loaded touring bike. ...
Sorry to all those up thread who say the smaller 27 Trangia, which was initially the one I was going to get, but was advised against, to get the larger 25 series instead. If you are that worried about losing weight because you are fat then of course you could get a 27 series but you will likely be cooking twice you could even get a Trangia Mini if you really want to lose weight but IME you will lose weight and can't eat enough...

I don't agree with this.
Having both the 25 and 27 pans and pots, my opnion is that the 25 it's convenient but overkill for one rider alone. It's not about the weight saving in the kit, but about being realistic: you can cook with no trouble -especially since the Trangia pots fit nicely in their windshield- on the 27 pots, I've cooked 400gr of couscous for two in the 0.9lt pot with no trouble at all. And that was a lot of food paired with Tofu and spinach.
Same for soup, I cannot see most of the cyclists eating over 700gr of soup alone
5-600gr of soup plus bread and one or two eggs and fruit is a very substantial meal, and can be easily cooked in the 27 pots and pans.
Besides, my opinion is that food should be eaten during all day, smaller meals more frequent rather than two or three massive meals that will take long to be digested. The only exception being the dinner, a good meal will help the body generating heat overnight, and IMO is better to have a two courses meal than a massive amount of one type of food only