Before testing camp stoves, I suppose the obvious question is, "why?" Going camping means building a campfire and cooking over coals or the open flames, right? Well, maybe not. Building a fire takes time. Open fires may be a bad idea due to wildfire danger. Wet weather or lack of seasoned wood for fuel may complicate matters. I like my BioLite camp stove, but it is not exactly light.
What if I could get a bit of tin and some fuel that takes up less space and weight with less risk of errant sparks and more resistance to dampness? Sterno and Esbit are two brands with the potential to solve my problem!
Esbit
I ran across an Esbit stove while browsing military surplus online. This was a well-used German army stove with rust and residue, and I could also get surplus fuel pellets. If you also need rucksacks, magazine pouches, or odd gun parts, maybe you'd rather get the old-school version from Numrich. It might have saved me a dollar or so compared to buying a new $13 kit on Amazon, but the latter offers faster free shipping for smaller orders, so I bought new.
The stove is small and fits in almost any backpack pouch. The sides can be folded at an angle as shown to support my small-diameter pot, or at 90° for a wider pan. This fuel tablet brought my pot with 18 ounces of water to a simmer after about 9-10 minutes, and started to burn out at 12 minutes, fizzling out entirely after about 14 minutes total.
The fuel tablets are sealed in blister packages, and weigh only 14 grams. If bought in bulk, these tablets cost $24 for 36 tablets, or 66¢/12 minutes of effective heat. They also should be shelf-stable for up to 10 years, and four of these tablets in their blister packaging fit inside the folded stove for convenience.
This stove would be a good fit for a canteen cup, so if your water bottle is military surplus, consider grabbing one of those, too. Expect more on this topic soon.
Sterno
I got my stove on sale ages ago at a sporting goods store, and I don't remember what I paid. The stove is available for around $14 on Amazon as of this post. The fuel can pictured has been used already, because this is not my first use of this gizmo.
My test did not go well. It took over 20 minutes to simmer, and half an hour for a rolling boil. This may not be a fault for Sterno, though. In trying to control my variables, I used the same pot for the same quantity of water, but this stove does not seem suited to that shape. It was stable enough, but I think a lot of heat escaped around the sides without actually contributing to the water. When I used it last, I recall having trouble of a different sort: using kitchen cookware with a lot of mass that needed to absorb heat before any of the contents would boil
Lesson learned: match your cookware to your stove. Look at all that wasted open space for heat to escape around the edges. A shallower, wider pot would probably be much more effective. I suggest choosing one made of thin steel for easier transportation and faster heat transfer.
Fuel cans can be bought in bulk for around $2 each, and burn for about two hours. This is better burn for your buck, and the fuel cans can be snuffed out and stored for re-use. However, these cans have an odor I find unpleasant, and the first can I tried had been set aside some time ago, refusing to be re-lit no matter what. I also had a can that sprang a leak after long-term storage.
Conclusions
This was in no way scientific proof of one over the other, but my subjective experience in limited testing makes me lean toward the Esbit stove. It's smaller, lighter, easier to set up, can be configured to your cookware, and cheaper to get started since the pack includes 6 tablets. That said, the "fair" setup I planned out inadvertently put the Sterno stove at a disadvantage, and the fuel lasts a lot longer. Both lit easily with a standard kitchen match.
I'd like to hear from other people with more experience using either (or both) of these cooking systems, and feel free to offer alternatives to this pair! It's also quite possible to improvise or make your own custom stove from scratch by recycling other containers, so your homebrew solutions might also be neat.
Oh, and that Stanley pot is a sneak preview of another upcoming post...
See also: Compass Shootout: Budget orienteering
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