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Accessories for your Alcohol Stove
MSR's Solid Heat Reflector with Windscreen
A wind screen serves two purposes. It acts as a radiation shield, reflecting heat back at your stove and pot, and shields your stove against the wind. Rocks, trees, snow walls, packs and trekkers may be used to block some wind, but a properly designed wind screen works so much better. Commercial and DIY aluminum screens should more than make up for their extra weight in fuel savings and decreased cook times.
Note - A tight fitting windscreen isn't recommended for gas stoves that mount directly on top of the fuel canisters. This can cause overheating and lead to an explosion. There are a few safer options for canister stoves - See Canister Stove Windscreens, Roger Caffin's Wind and Radiation shields, Homemade Canister Stove Windscreen and 2DrX Explorations' windscreen for more information.
Making your own functional windscreen is pretty easy and should be just about free:
Use dimensions listed in How to Build a Pot Stand.
Aluminum flashing, a disposable bake pan or heavy duty aluminum foil (folded over on itself 1-4 times for durability or not at all) works great for a lightweight windscreen.
The flashing and bake pan can be held together by the methods mentioned in How to Build a Pot Stand.
Foil can be held together temporality with paperclips or permanently with folds.
Use a hole punch and punch out holes in bottom row.
Modified pots, tin and metal vents cans can be used, and may work well with certain applications.
Tom Wood's KiteScreen is an interesting alternative worth looking at. It's basically a sheet of fabric held up by branches.
If you want a windscreen that needs to be so close to your stove that it touches the flames, consider using stainless shim 0.003" or thinner instead of aluminum.
You can also make a windscreen that's cone shaped to allow it to have enough space away from your stove at the bottom and then come in around a narrow pot at the top.
Jason Klass' Belt Buckle Windscreen is a simple collapsible windscreen worth taking a look at.
If you don't want to go to trouble of building your own windscreen and heat reflector, then MSR, Aaron Rosenbloom from Brasslight and others will be more than happy to take your money and sell you a strip of softened aluminum or something similar.
This is nice to have if you need to simmer a special dish for a long time. A more fuel sparing alternative might be to use a pot cozy to keep food at near boiling temperature longer.
The following methods work well with open jet stoves. You may also be able to get a simmer attachment to work on a closed jet stove, but it can be difficult as you must find a way to balance having enough heat to keep the stove in operation and not so much as to burn your meal, plus you must be able to do this with different environmental conditions (what works on your stove top, may not work on the trail).
Ideally you want to cover all or your jets (except with pressurized jet stoves) so that you can just drop your attachment on the flame without needing to extinguish it, there isn't any wasted fuel leaking out and to prevent stove fire ups. This can be difficult if you have jets on the side of your stove, but isn't completely required for safe simmering. Just make sure that you allow your stove to cool down enough that the jets don't fire up when you relight it with the simmer attachment. If you want to cover your side jets or vents, make sure that the simmer accessory you use doesn't fit too tightly (as you may not get it off) and you may want to polish (SOS pad or metal polish) off the side of your can to remove any browning that might adhere to your simmer attachment. Test out your setup and if it continues to relight to full operation, you may need a smaller opening in your simmer attachment.
To get your simmer accessory to work, you may need to put out a hot stove a let it cool for a couple of seconds before relighting it.
Options
Use this template to cut out a piece of aluminum flashing to be riveted to a can bottom with the center section cut out. Make sure that you stretch it out or cut it short enough that it flits nicely without becoming stuck. You can use a rivet (use J-B weld to hold it in place or only partially set the rivet and cut off the exposed rod) or use a small nut and bolt to secure your pivot point.
Instead of cutting out the entire center section and riveting on a pivoting top, just cut out a hole in your can bottom and enlarge to your desired size after experimenting with your stove.
You can get fancy and bolt or rivet a section of a center portion of the can bottom under a cut open bottom of another can.
Two can bottoms with half circles (or any other shape you can think of) cut out of their inner depressions may be stacked and rotated to allow for an adjustable opening.
The sidewalls of the simmer adapter shown above has been stretched out with a dilator tool to allow it to easily slip over your stove. If you decide to go this route, make sure that you stretch your simmer adapter enough that won't get stuck on your stove.
Form heavy duty aluminum foil or a disposable bake pan over the top of your can and cut out a hole in the top. You can conform it to the top of your stove as shown or just place it on top of your stove and hope it doesn't fall off.
Trailquest's Adjustable Simmer Attachment
Get two 2.25" muffin tins and cut out a half circle on each top. Rotate one on top of the other as needed/desired. This will work for mini stoves made from 5.5oz V8 cans or Red Bull cans.
You can use a can top from your can or a larger one and make it work (you may need to enlarge the hole and/or do some hammering). Most 12oz can tops will fit well on a stove made of 6oz cans.
You can use a small binder clip to secure a strip of sheet metal around sideburner jets or side vents in an open flame stove. If you cut out tabs on the end of your strip to wrap around the binder clip, you will be able to easily adjust the height of the ring - just don't use bare fingers to squeeze the hot metal.
A tealight is a simple system that can simmer for many hours and can be used to preheat your stove in the winter.
If you are using a wind screen with a row of holes at its base, you can use a strip of aluminum rolled in a ring to slip over your holes to limit air flow to the stove. Adjusted correctly, you can tune heat output of your stove and simmer away.
This is a nice to have accessory to help you put out your stove.
Options
Variant of Perry Michael Koussiafes' Stove Snuffer
Can bottoms with or without a nice little handle (Aluminum foil tape used to hold two ends of handle together).
Disposable muffin tins or pot pie pans (you may need to reshape them to fit your stove if you can't find the perfect size).
Amazing things can be created with heavy duty aluminum foil.
A cut down can with a larger diameter than your stove may be used (12oz pop can for a mini 6 oz can stove)
If you have a simmer accessory, this will make blowing out your stove a lot easier (unless you have a side burner stove that may burn out of control).
In an pinch, you can use your pot to cover a small fireball.
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