Vargo Titanium BOT Series | Vargo BOT - 700 | Titanium Cooking Pot and Water Bottle with Foldable Handles and Watertight Lid | 700ml (23 oz.)

This is an amazing peace of ultralite gear and is now my favorite piece due to versatility and design! It will take over as my central water bottle and cook pot to my ultralite kit bag. The lid was not frozen and nor have I had that issue. I think pressure change or people cranking down too hard is the leading cause of the vacuum seal issue which is common even with a basic thermos and can be resolved easily. It doesn't take much to get a water tight seal on the BOT. I screw it down till lightly snug and then do a quick seal check by shaking it on its side to see if anything drips out. Next, some reviews complained about there being no handle. This leads me to my "work around" to what some people saw as THE big down to the BOT. First, the BOT not having a handle isn't an issue for me; I just all see all sorts of other options and potential for applications. Second, a next generation BOT with a handle added will likely increase the price significantly due to the challenge that titanium presents to smith and weld. That's why titanium ware is so expensive. I wouldn't want to pay any more for the BOT than I already did, especially after I came up with the alternative in the pictures. I did everything with a leather man multi tool and I spent less than 15 minutes on it. 1) Purchased a 8 inch diameter hoseclamp for 1.99 (first pic) at the hardware store and gathered a cheap carabiner from a junk drawer. 2) Filed one edge of the caribiner flat (second pic) to provide a flat side to match flush against the BOT. 3) Used the pliers to shape a notch in the hoseclamp to fit the caribiner. 4) Tightened the hoseclamp and caribiner down around the BOT until snug. Making sure not to over tighten the hose clamp and risk warping the BOT. 5) Then tested to ensure my improvised handle could hold the weight of a full BOT and that the lid still screwed on with ease. 6) When wanting to travel with the BOT you can loosen the clamp a little (see the fourth pic) so the caribiner can move freely and can be used as a convenient gear latch. Immediate observations: there is minimum heat transfer to the caribiner when boiling water. The improvised handle is sturdy and does not shift and there's no noticeable damage to the BOT. This addition does not change the BOT so no harm no foul if you want it just as it came, and it only cost me two dollars and 15 minutes to make. The real test will be how this holds up during my upcoming trip to Nepal. More to follow... I hope this review was helpful. Also, this is an unsolicited review of the BOT. I was not offered any perk or benefit to write a review. I just think it's a great product and I take my gear seriously. There's nothing else on the market like the BOT. Even if Vargo decided to release a handle version, I would hope it's like this so it has the flexibility to be more than one type of container.

Love the removable gasket so I can put it right in the fire. Honestly love everything about this canister. Will most likely attend every camping/hiking/hunting trip I go on moving forward. Good size, light, seals tight, patinas nicely and is plenty durable for my uses.

I just can't say enough good things about this bottle pot. If you take your adventures and preparedness as seriously as I do, you should really consider this very versatile pot set. I've had a few chances to use it on various stoves, and to pack a very versatile kit with it, so here are the pros and cons based on my personal experience with it: Pros: - Titanium, so it's strong but very lightweight for its size - Has a threaded lid! This is very hard to find in a pot you can cook with (don't cook with the pot lid screwed on!) - Cook with it, or carry water/food/gear with it - Fits in any bottle holder that would fit a 32oz Nalgene bottle - Holds a ton of cook gear and makes an excellent backup water carrier in a pinch - It just looks cool - The lid flips over to be a small cup/bowl, and is used upside down as the pot lid - It's taller than most cook pots, so you can carry non-folding utensils inside - It won't rust. You can clean it with steel wool and not have to worry Cons: - The threading is tricky, but if you put the lid on carefully every time, you won't cross thread. After using for a bit, the threads catch better, get smoother, and track better - I wish it was slightly more narrow so it could nest in the same cups that a Nalgene could nest in. I did find a Keith titanium bowl that this pot nests perfectly into, though - I really wish it had folding handles on the side so I wouldn't have to carry a pot holder - Doesn't disperse heat as evenly across the pot as aluminum does - Some have issues with tightening the lid too much when the pot is warm or at higher altitudes, then having it get suction from the pressure change and they can't get the lid off So there's an easy fix for when the lid gets stuck on the pot due to temp/pressure change. The suction of the pot can be released within 2 minutes by sliding a credit card corner underneath the edge of the visible airtight/watertight gasket. Put the corner of the card between the pot and the gasket just enough to deform the gasket, then let it sit for a minute or two and the pressure will regulate so you can unscrew the lid again. I have yet to have this problem, but when the pot is empty I don't screw the lid down completely snug. Just tighten it enough for the gasket to just touch the pot, then stop. You'll keep your contents inside of your BOT, and never have a stuck lid. I have been evolving the kit that I store in the BOT, and at this point here is my list of gear that I have inside: - BOT itself - Small Toaks titanium gasifier wood burning stove (their larger stove won't quite fit inside) - Vargo titanium pot lifter - BCS micro titanium stove - 4 Esbit fuel cubes (could hold much more) - 10,000 strike ferro rod and steel striker - Light My Fire titnium spork - Still room for more small items such as more fuel cubes and even an alcohol stove I carry the BOT and a small canister of stove fuel inside of a molle-equipped bottle carrier. In the outer pouch of this carrier, I have a scrub sponge, small bottle of soap, and a folding windscreen. This kit allows me to start out using fuel with the stove/canister, but if I am stuck in an extended situation where I use up all of the fuel, I have the titanium wood burning stove as a backup so I can cook anywhere. If I need to use the pot to carry water, I just dump the contents of the kit into a pocket on my pack and fill it up. The BOT is truly a versatile piece of equipment that should be the part of any survivalist's or backcountry adventurer's kit. It can take a beating, won't corrode, will hold enough water to actually be useful, and it holds a ton of gear.

Titanium is expensive, nobody is expecting this to cost 10 dollars. But it's insanely expensive compared to competing pots and other cookware from other vendors. I love this pot's idea, I'm experimenting with using it as my second water bottle (that I can also cook with). Knock $20 off and it'd be a no-brainer. At $100 it's definitely a luxury item. Functionally it's pretty good. I wish the the screw threads were polished - it makes a TERRIBLE grinding noise when you screw it closed. And given that it's a non-standard O-ring size I feel like a product this expensive should at least come with a spare O-ring, since that's a wear item. But otherwise it does what it's supposed to do.

So I have had one of these for a few years and recently bought another. It's not a perfect product for me. I wish the threads on the screw lid were more pronounced so that you wouldn't jump threads as easily. I wish it had built-in handles of some sort. I wish it wasn't as tall. But for all of my wishes, someone else is happy with the current configuration. The only universal complaint people generally have is that the lid can be hard to screw on and off and even downright impossible if air pressure builds up internally. Vargo provides helpful tips on how to deal with that on their blog. So if it's not perfect, why do I give it 5 stars? Because there's nothing else like it in the marketplace right now and because the product works well enough that it's replaced all of my other pots. I probably have cycled through 10 other pots that are widely used and highly revered among campers/hikers. Some of them I would rate 5 stars as well, so if this is the pot I choose over all of them, it certainly deserves a 5 stars mark as well. I believe that part of a product is also the company and the warranty and customer support that comes along with the product. I damaged my 2nd TI BOT -- it was due to the air pressure build-up that is a known issue with the BOT, but it was also due to human error for not properly taking the steps to de-pressurize -- NOTE: YOU HAVE TO RELEASE PRESSURE FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE O-RING, NOT THE TOP-- AT THE TIME OF THIS REVIEW, IT WASN'T NOT CLEAR ON THEIR BLOG, BUT I BELIEVE THEY ARE GOING TO CLARIFY THAT. By damage, I mean I crumbled in the walls of the BOT. The BOT is very, very well-built. It's hard to crumble in the walls. That's how tight the lid was. A couple of Home Depot guys were trying to open it with a strap wrench and exerted so much force that the BOT buckled. An email from Vargo later explained why I wasn't depressurizing it correctly; once I applied the proper technique, it only took a few seconds to open the BOT with a credit card. Maybe it was product design that caused the intense pressure buildup (not necessarily a flaw, because maybe they had to make it that way to achieve the metal on metal closure). Maybe it was my fault for improperly opening in. Regardless of whose fault it was, Vargo never blamed me and offered to replace the BOT. That's a company you don't mind paying a few extra bucks to buy from. Since I bought it from Amazon, I actually ended up processing the refund through Amazon directly, but it's nice to know that Vargo stood behind their products as well. The product alone warrants 5 stars in my book, but their customer service and warranty really puts them over and above. Buy Vargo products. They generally have good designs, good quality builds, light products, and great customer service. Despite my issues with the BOT, it is actually my favorite Vargo item because there's nothing else quite like it.

What are you gonna do, dump your water out to cook in this? But, I can fit my whole man-hand in it, which is convenient for cleaning. So it's a good water bottle - it's not a pot. Get a titanium water bottle, get a nesting titanium cook set *with lids*. The water bottle needs to be metal so you can purify it over a fire. The leads are necessary to store heat in the pot while cooking. And, hey, if it ever HAS to be a pot, it can be. You need a titanium cookset. You want a titanium stove.

Used it for a month on the JMT. Let go of my Nalgene and my cooking pots. The best way to put it is that this served the functions of three different items on my trip, but performed each function a bit clumsily. The fact, however, that I can replace three different items with this one makes it a big time win for me, as I like to pack as light as possible. I used motorcycle gloves instead of a potholder, as they doubled for warmth I needed anyway. The lid was my dish and food got stuck and was hard to remove from the lip that curved under, but it was fine. My search for this item began because I wanted to drink a warm beverage but not out of plastic and I wanted the receptacle to have a lid and be lightweight and serve more than one function. I would put whatever I was cooking for dinner in my Bot with water in the morning and hike with it sealed shut. By the time dinner rolled around the food was so well hydrated I only needed to use a small amount of fuel to warm it up. The lid will seal if you close it with hot water inside. Just shove a credit card or something comparable to pry the silicone ring up and that will release the seal. Your lips will burn on the hot metal, but honestly, that probably means your beverage is still too hot to drink anyway. If you are a semis intelligent, somewhat aware human being, you should have little problem getting the hang of sealing the lid so no liquid leaks; no sharpies, engravers, or electric tape necessary. I am so glad I added this piece of gear to my collection.

I carry my mini snow peak burner and mini fuel canister. instant coffee, tea and cocoa in my bot. easy to fire up a cup of coffee in the middle of my day.