I was recently in the market to purchase a new light weight camp stove. I thought I would be able to just make a quick purchase, but once I started looking I realized I was wrong. When you are looking to buy a backpacking stove there are a huge number of choices are out there. Do you want a gas model, an alcohol model, a wood burning model, or a solid fuel model? Once you make a decision on fuel type there are still a ton of different stoves to choose from. Stoves can go from a fly weight ultra light stove to a mammoth twin burner unit. My decision was the Esbit solid fuel cookset.
The Esbit solid fuel cookset comes with three pieces, the wind deflector/fuel holder, the 16oz pot, and the pot lid. The wind deflector is meant to be stored inside the pot then put inside the mesh bag that came with the stove. I would call this a medium sized backpacking stove. The complete set weighs in at 6.94oz. So it is still a light weight stove, just not as light weight as a titanium folding stove. The Esbit burns the .5 oz solid fuel tablets, made in Germany by Esbit. Esbit claims that one large tablet will bring one pint of water to a boil in 8 minutes. I would imagine that this varies with altitude.
So after using the Esbit solid fuel cookset a couple of times I can attest to the quality and ease of use of this product. Set up is easy, just take the pot/lid containing the wind deflector out of the mesh carry bag. Then place the wind deflector on a solid level surface, next place a fuel tab in the tray on the wind deflector. After that you may light the fuel tab and put the pot with water in it on the top. Now to the main reason that I selected this stove; it is capable of using wood, alcohol, and the solide fuel tablets. My penny stove fits nicely in the wind deflector, and twigs may be broken up and put in the windeflector as well. I also liked the fact that this stove came with a pot already. You could use other pots with this stove but the Esbit pot has a small lip on the inside that allows it to kind of lock into the wind deflector for added stability. To clean the residue left by the fuel tablets you just scrape out the tray. The pot is not dishwasher safe so it must be washed by hand.
Esbit claims that 1 large fuel tab will boil 1 pint of water in 8 minutes. This was not my experience, I used one large tablet, and let it burn for it's entirety of approximately 18 min. Even letting it go this long the water temperature was only 180 degrees Fahrenheit. I have to take into account that where I live is at an elevation of 4,336 ft. Even so I thought that letting it heat up for twice the advertised time that it would have reached its boiling point.
This stove seems to be well made, and can use different fuels, but it's performance was a let down. I had better luck using my penny stove to boil the container, and it was boiling in seven minutes. With a price of $24.95 it is a relatively inexpensive stove, but the fact that that a stove that cost me 51 cents outperformed it was a let down. I think that this stove has excellent usability, but again lack luster performance. If I had it to do over I would have stuck with my penny stove.
While the performance of this stove was a let down, the construction of the cookset is solid. Those of you at a lower elevation may have better luck. The Esbit cookset is available on Amazon.com and the price I paid was $24.95. Thanks for reading...
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