Jason Merrill 
I am going to begin by making the very bold statement that this is the best solo cookpot available at this time. LiteTrail offers this 550ml thin wall titanium cookpot as an individual purchase or bundled as a complete esbit cook kit. The complete kit appears really well thought out and looks great but I’m still really pleased with the performance of the Zelph Starlyte burner so I opted to use this cookpot with my own alcohol setup. In addition to the pot, I also purchased the LiteTrail titanium windscreen and titanium ground reflector.
LiteTrail “Thin-Wall” 550ml Cookpot
Pot: 1.95oz (55 grams)
Lid: 0.6oz (17 grams)
Total Weight = 2.55oz (72 grams)
LiteTrail Titanium Foil Windscreen: .16oz (4.4 grams)
LiteTrail Ti Ground Protector: .04oz (1.2 grams)
Zelph Pot Stand: .17oz (5 grams)
Zelph Starlyte Burner w/lid: .56oz (16 grams)
So why do I think this is the “best””” solo cookpot? I freezer bag cook and make an occasional hot drink. That’s it. The 550ml volume will easily hold 2 cups of water with enough headroom to prevent boil over. I specifically assemble my FBC meals as to never require more than 1 ¾ cups of water. Most often times I can get away with 1 ½ cups. I have done approximately ten burns with this setup and was able to achieve a rolling boil each time using 1 ¾ cups water and ½ ounce denatured alcohol.
Fantastic, this totally exceeds my needs and expectations. This past weekend I did an overnighter and cut the alcohol back to a little over ¼ ounce and got 1 ½ cups water more than hot enough to rehydrate my meal (it did not achieve boil). The following morning I used ¼ ounce alcohol and 1 cup water to make my coffee. I was more than happy with the performance of this set up.
To rehydrate my meal, I did the following:
- Heated 1 ½ cups water in the cookpot
- Poured the water into the freezer bag
- Sealed the bag and placed it inside the cookpot (only required a few seconds for the pot to cool down enough to put the FBC in)
- Put the lid on the cookpot and wrapped the pot with my bandana
- Waited 10 minutes
- Removed bandana and lid, rolled the freezer bag down around the cookpot and had an instant bowl
- Time to eat!
Very quick and easy; no dedicated cozy required. And due to the size and shape of the cookpot, it functions very well as a drinking vessel. I was quite comfortable sipping my morning coffee from it. All in one cookpot, bowl and mug. It doesn’t get any better than that.
At this time I cannot think of anything negative or critical to say about the LiteTrail 550ml Ti Cookpot. If you are in the market for a smaller volume solo pot then I highly recommend you give this one a try. And if you are a fan of esbit, pick up the whole titanium cookset.
Visit LiteTrail for more specific specifications on the pot, windscreen and ground reflector.
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