You're right, he was. I have to admit, I was just illustrating why they don't send donkeys to college ("No one likes a smart...")

The few times I tried Esbit, I never found a good solution for storing partially burned cubes. I tried a freezer-strength ziploc, which helped some, but never completely contained the smell.

I've got to wonder, unless the OP is considering a long trip, whether the best solution for smell might be to simply burn the entire cube. Reusing a partial cube certainly makes sense from a point of view of avoiding waste, but it certainly doesn't result in any meaningful weight saving all by itself.

(I don't really remember any partially burned cubes when I tried Esbit; I do remember giving up after two cubes failed to boil water in a large Rocky cup - similar to a Sierra cup, but larger, with a lid; briefly popular in the 80s in Scout circles. After that failure, and some more reading, I was able to boil half a Rocky cup of water using a windscreen. All we had back then were the little "wing" stoves, I think they were called. I've heard there are some better burners out there now.)

Again, my apologies for the lame attempt at humor.