Gear Review: Ultralight Butane Canister Stove - Alta Outdoors

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Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Gear Review: Ultralight Butane Canister Stove

★★★★★
The most lightweight and the most compact yet powerful backpacking butane canister stove is the only stove one needs for three season backpacking trips. It only weighs 25 grams, yes, this is true, and takes virtually no space yet brings 2 cups of water to hard boil in less then 3 minutes, and all those features for a very affordable price. If you can use butane canister fuel in your conditions, you can use this stove.

Usage

This stove is best suitable for lightweight backpacking when weight and size are more important than other features. The stove is very compact. It's so small it literally requires no space in a backpack as it easily fits inside of a cooking pot.

ProsCons
  • Ultra lightweight 25 g and very compact
  • Powerful: generates 2700 W
  • Boils water quickly
  • Comes with a high visibility pouch
  • Very inexpensive
  • Short pot support legs
  • Feels a little flimsy
  • Short control knob
  • Short connection threads

Overview

Using this stove is very easy and intuitive. Open support legs, screw on your canister, open valve and fire on with an external flame source. A few things to note:
  • The connection thread is on a short side so the stove may not fit perfectly on every canister. I mostly use Primus canisters and it fits on them snugly.
  • The control knob is short and when used with a wind screen may be hard to reach.
  • The stove is small so you need to fire it before setting a pot on or it will be hard to reach the burner area.
  • The pot support legs are short so if using a larger pot make sure your canister is very stable on the surface.
All the notes above are direct results of the stove small size. If you feel like it's too inconvenient you need a larger stove.

We have used this stove for over a year in all seasons and it behaves consistently with no problems noticed. No maintenance required whatsoever and when used with a pot equipped with a heat exchanger this stove is one of the most fuel efficient stove that I have ever used.

Power and Fuel Efficiency

As stated by the manufacturer the stove produces 2700 W on a full flame which roughly corresponds to 9200 BTU/hr. In comparison, the Primus Express generates 8900 BTU/hr and the Primus ClassicTrail - 10000 BTU/hr. So despite its small size the stove is quite powerful.

Based on our averaged experience the stove brings 2 cups (~0.5 L) of water from a natural source (~15C/52F) to hard boil in about 2.5 minutes depending on air temperature, water temperature and wind.

How much fuel is required to bring water to a boil directly depends on how much time it will take: the longer the time the more fuel is burnt. We have collected a lot of statistics during our trips, including short overnight and multi-day trips.

Considering an average consumption of 4 cups of hot water for two persons per a single food break this stove used about 10.5 grams of butane gas fuel per a food break with a slightly modified JetBoil SOL Titanium pot with a heat exchanger, a lid and a small titanium wind screen. This is quite efficient and allows not to over-provision the fuel. For example, a short overnight backpacking trip with 4 food breaks would only require ~45 grams of butane. During our recent 5 days backpacking trip to La Cloche trail we have consumed ~146 grams for 14 food breaks.

Conclusion

★★★★★
Approved and recommended.

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