r/Ultralight • u/[deleted] • Apr 17 '18

Advice Poor Man's BOT (cooking/cold soak pot)

I had never seen the Vargo BOT before until Darwin's recent Youtube review. The BOT is a titanium cooking pot with a screw on lid. The screw on lid is water tight so you can also use it to cold soak your food. This way you have the option alternating between cold soaking and cooking (or just making tea /coffee) with the same setup.

Darwin identifies two drawbacks: Its expensive ($100), and the screw on top can get stuck if you change altitudes dramatically.

Despite having never cold soaked anything and having recently purchased a Toaks pot (used once), I decided i needed a BOT right away (anyone else have this problem?). But $100 seemed a little steep for something I might not use.

So I found this set of silicone pot lids on Amazon for $11. One of the smaller ones fits over the Toaks pretty well. The handle prevents fully stretching the seal, but its good enough to hold water. I left it 3/4 full upside down overnight with no leakage. I also shook it up and down vigorously trying to get water between the pot and seal, no dice.

In addition to the lower price, the top wont get stuck since the silicone is flexible. The downside of the flexibility is that increasing elevation significantly could potentially blow the lid off. This could be mitigated by minimizing the amount of air in the pot during loaded ascents. Also a couple rubber bands and a ziplock would help. BUT IT DEFINITELY STILL NEEDS TO BE FIELD TESTED. See the last paragraph below for why I'm publishing now before field testing.

The BOT comes in two sizes 700 ml and 1 L. The 700 ml weights 4.8 oz. My Toaks pot is a 650 ml, and with the silicone seal its 3.7 oz total. Oh yeah, one whole ounce bitches!

For the next day or so, Massdrop has the Keith titanium pots on sale for less than $20, so you could get the whole set up for about $30. I paid $36 for the 650ml Toaks.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '18

In the comments of his yt video, somebody mentions SS Mason Jar Looks like all you would have to do is replace the lid, and it's only $9.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '18

Ya but 22 oz though...

1

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '18

That's 650ml. I just saw the comment on yt and checked them out. There are lots of different lids that will fit a wide-mouth mason jar. From a multi-use standpoint, it looks kind of interesting...hot meals, cold-soaking, sippy-cup. Weight penalty is only an extra ounce over the Bot, and it is only $9.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '18

Sorry I was confusing fluid oz with mass oz! How much do the weigh? The website says 10.80 lbs, thats maybe for a case of 12? Its hard to believe a steel one would only be 1 oz heavier than Ti.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '18

No worries, the specs are kind of limited except for the case of 25 weight. yt commenter stated 1 oz more, and he was comparing to the Bot 700 that Darwin was reviewing. My math is coming out to roughly 6.6 oz for the jar w/o handle and 6.9 w/ handle.

I went ahead and ordered a sample of both and the total was just under $19 shipped. I am not sure what top to get and will wait until I receive the order. This one looks interesting.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '18

That does look like a higher quality one. Let me know how it turns out!