• Home
  • Newsletter Home
    • Hiking & Camping Gear
      • Stoves
        • Goat Test #1: Canister Stoves

Goat Test #1: Canister Stoves

Add to Del.icio.us

This canister stove test is the first of many scientific endeavors conducted by the Backcountry.com staff.

It’s tough to find gear advice you can trust. Gear vendors might inflate the stats of their gear. Magazines get most of their revenue from advertising; they have a hard time blasting a product that you’ll see in an expensive ad on the next page. Big-box gear shop employees sometimes earn commission or free gear when they sell specific brands. At Backcountry.com we’re all gear junkies. Because of our buying power and our well-respected list of vendors, we have the outdoor industry’s best gear to choose from when we set off on our own adventures. We only want to use the good stuff and we figure our customers do too. We buy the best so we can sell and use the best. But honestly, how do we sort out which products are the best? Everyone seems to have an opinion, brand loyalty, or good or bad experience with a product or brand. We decided to start conducting our own gear tests to settle some arguments and give you the insider info necessary to help you make educated buying decisions. This canister stove test is the first of many scientific endeavors conducted by the Backcountry.com staff. The tests are designed to differentiate the stoves' features and simulate real-life backcountry conditions. All the timed tests have a margin of error +/- a few seconds, since it’s tough to open a beer and run a stopwatch at the same time. The Tests We used an MSR Titanium Kettle with 650ml of water for the boiling tests. Each kettle of water was boiled at each stove’s max heat without a lid on the kettle, so that it would be easier to keep an eye on our thermometer; expect slightly better results in the backcountry where you would have a cover over your kettle. We used 4oz MSR IsoPro Fuel Canisters for every test. For the Freezer Test, we soaked the stoves and froze them overnight—like if you forgot to cover your stove while winter camping. The boil time test was done in my kitchen, and the rain and wind test was done in our warehouse parking lot with a massive fan during a downpour. Fun, eh? Backcountry.com employees burn several down—fuel canisters, that is. Photo by: Steve Sramek All the stats supplied in this article come from our own tests, not from our vendors' advertising. We award them Goats based on how well they do in our tests. Think of it as a Sickter scale [sic]; the more goats they get, the better. 1 Goat=Needs to catch up to the herd; 2=Not baaad, 3=Head of the herd, 4=King of the Mountain. The Stoves We compare the MSR Pocket Rocket, Snow Peak GigaPower Auto, Brunton Crux Foldable Butane Canister Stove, Jetboil PCS, and my 4-burner home stove. MSR bills their Pocket Rocket —paired with the MSR Titanium Kettle—as an ultra light, lightening fast boiler.

Boil time: 4min 3sec Burn time: 56min 17sec Boils per canister: 13.9 Weight: 86g Wind Rating: 3 Goats; stands up to heavy wind gusts. Gusting rain without kettle: 1 Goat; it goes out immediately. Gusting rain with kettle: 3 Goats; having the kettle on top shields the flame enough to protect it from all but the heaviest gusts. Freezer test: 3 Goats; performed the best of the group. It came out of the freezer as an ice cube, but the air-intake on the bottom of the stove flamed up when we were trying to light it. This is bad. We put it out as quickly as possible, but it burned long enough to thaw the stove. It didn’t take in as much water as the competition, so it thawed much quicker. Price: [Stove] $39.95

The Goat says: This stove is a screaming deal. It’s way cheaper than any other stove tested, and it boiled water just as quickly. The bad news is that it burned through a canister faster than any other stove we tested. It may boil water quickly and not weigh much, but those weight savings are quickly lost when you need to carry an extra fuel canister into the backcountry. Be careful moving pots on and off the Pocket Rocket, the simple collapsing design makes it easy to accidentally close one of the supports if you don’t lift the kettle straight up and down. Ultimately, in terms of price and versatility, this is the best stove we tested. Snow Peak makes stylish high-end gear that utilizes titanium parts to save weight—think retractable titanium chopsticks. The GigaPower Auto comes in steel or titanium versions; the weight difference is about 20 grams.

Boil time: 4min 39sec Burn time: 1hr 10min Boils per canister: 15 Weight: [Tested] 106g [titanium] 86g Wind Rating: 4 Goats; it works in any wind, even if you need to cook some pancakes outside your car window at 70mph. Gusting rain without kettle: 3 Goats; Snow Peak designed their flame spreader so only about half the stove would ever flame out, and the whole thing came back as soon as the gust died down. Gusting rain with kettle: 4 Goats; could stand up to anything. Freezer test: 1 Goat; took all afternoon to thaw in our break room before we could get it to spark. Price: [Titanium] $74.90

The Goat says: The Snowpeak GigaPower Auto performs like a champ in the nastiest weather. It charged through any condition, a garden hose probably wouldn’t even put it out. The fire department wouldn’t let us use one of their high-pressure hoses, but I suspect it would even hold up to that. If you cook in adverse conditions get this stove. The utility of the Piezo-electric auto light is debatable. It works well, but you’re going to bring a lighter wherever you go anyway, right? If you take it winter camping expect it to work in gnarly conditions, but don’t expect to be able to melt snow if you forget to cover it up before crawling into your sleeping bag. The Brunton Crux Foldable Butane Canister Stove is a super-compact stove. An ingenious ball joint allows the top to fold sideways so that it fits in the canister’s indent or inside your coffee cup. Boil time: 3min 39sec Burn time: 1hour 49sec Boils per canister: 16.6 Weight: 90g Wind Rating: 2 Goats; will only work in a light wind; if it gusts at all, the stove will get blown out. Gusting rain without kettle: 1 Goat; doesn’t work at all. Gusting rain with kettle: 3 Goats; works well. Freezer test: 1 Goat; frozen solid, this thing fills up with water. Price: $68.95 The Goat says: If you’re a neat freak, this is your stove. It packs and stores the best, and it’s on par in terms of weight with the other stoves tested. It’s finicky in adverse conditions, and it won’t light for a long time if it gets frozen. But that doesn’t matter if you’re a compulsive gear lunatic—you’d never forget your stove outside anyway. The Crux redeems itself with its wide flame spreader; it works well with a fry pan or larger kettle if you’re using it for real cooking instead of just boiling water. Jetboil has the distinction of being the only company that wouldn’t send us a stove to use for this test. Maybe I’m bitter, but the Jetboil PCS looks like a cheap, hokey piece of garbage. A nerdy alpine climber I once met told me alpine climbing is all about style. This stove definitely lacks style, but it’s impossible to argue with its results. We borrowed one from our Inventory Manager; he uses and loves it. Boil time: 4m 5sec Burn time: 1hr 49min Boils per canister: 26.9 Weight: 402g Wind Rating: 3 Goats; it burned well in a steady wind, but suffered during gusts. Gusting rain without kettle: 1 Goat; this thing won’t stay lit when you take the kettle off if there’s any precipitation. Gusting rain with kettle: 4 Goats; the Jetboil stayed lit no matter how hard the wind blew. Freezer test: -1 Goat; Ineligible, I don’t think our Inventory manager would be stoked if we soaked his stove then froze it. It’s safe to assume it would soak up water worse than the Brunton Crux because both have wide flame-spreading burners. Price: $69.95 The Goat says: This is absolutely the best setup if you travel light and eat dehydrated food. It works very well for boiling a lot of water. If you want anything to eat besides boiled water, get something that works well with normal pots and pans. Jetboil makes an adaptor that allows the use of normal pots, but its output is so weak it doesn’t work very well. Jetboil relies on the efficiency of its cylinder-to-stove interface to allow it to boil water without burning much fuel. This setup might weigh more than others, but your weight savings will come from carrying less extra fuel; one canister should be enough for a weeklong trip. I thought watching my home stove in the boil test would be like watching a bullfight—you know who’s going to win. I couldn’t believe my Caloric Heritage 4-burner gas stove took longer to boil than any other stove. It came in dead last at nearly twice as long as the backpacking stoves. Boil time: 7min 24sec Burn time: Tough to say. The direst predictors call for a shortage of natural gas and petroleum products within a hundred years—sooner if my roommate forgets to pay the utility bill again this month. Boils per canister: I considered putting a canister in the oven to see if it would explode, but ultimately decided against it. Weight: I lifted it and shook it around, like I used to do with kegs in college to predict how many beers were left, and I would say about 15 cases of beer. Wind Rating: Top notch Gusting rain without kettle: Couldn’t get it outside, so I sprayed it with the hose from our sink. It seemed to work okay. Gusting rain with kettle: Probably good. Freezer test: Wouldn’t fit. Price: It’s old and belongs to my landlord, but if someone in the Salt Lake area wants it, I’d be willing to part for a few hundred dollars when I’m moving out. The Goat’s final word: The Snow Peak GigaPower Stove is the coolest, and the Brunton Crux is the best to use for gourmet backcountry cooking, but the practical choice is the MSR Pocket Rocket; it’s cheap, reliable, and works in almost any condition. * Boil Time Burn Time Boils per Canister Weight Wind Rating Gusting without kettle Gusting with kettle Freezer test Price MSR 4min 3sec 56min 17sec 13.9 86g 3 1 3 3 $39.95 Snow Peak 4min 39sec 1hr 10min 15 86g 4 3 4 1 $79.90 Brunton 3min 39sec 1hr 16.6 90g 2 1 3 1 $68.95 Jetboil 4min 5sec 1hr 49min 26.9 402g 3 1 4 1 $69.95 Home Stove 7min 24sec * * * * * * * $250ish