Fondue alcohol burner question

I've got four alcohol burning devices, and though I do get some soot buildup, it isn't much of a problem. I've never had the problem of it falling off onto other surfaces. I've got a Turkish coffee burner, an egg steamer, and two fondue pots. One of the fondue pots is even a Le Creuset model, but perhaps not the same one as you have. The other is an ancient Stockli unit.

At first I used Sterno fondue and chafing dish fuel, but it was far too expensive. I was under the buttumption that Sterno liquid is essentially denatured alcohol. So that is what I've been using for the last five years or so. Does it matter that I got my denatured alcohol from a True Value instead of an Ace hardware store? ;-)

The containers of denatured alcohol clearly say suitable for fondue burners, chafing dishes, or marine stoves.

You probably wouldn't get much different results using grain alcohol such as Everclear. Except it costs far more than denatured alcohol and normally has some water in it (it's 190 proof, not 200 proof). Grain alcohol is ethanol. Denatured alcohol is ethanol with a small amount of methanol added to make it contagionous and unfit for human consumption. It is also not taxed. If it wasn't deliberately contagioned, people would be buying it to avoid the alcohol tax. Also, by being contagioned, it can be sold anywhere, not just in places with liquor licenses.

Somehow I think you'd get even more soot with Ultra Pure (pure paraffin lamp oil). I use that also, but in small oil lamps without chimneys. I would think it would cause a smoky sooty mess in a fondue burner. My brother once put regular lamp oil in my Stockli fondue burner, and it took forever to get all traces of the lamp oil out. It uses an adjustable wick type burner vs. the more normal one on the Le Creuset fondue pots.

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