Bark is worse than its bite.

By dcp2815223 Ranked #139 - Stoves January 16, 2009

I purchased this stove to update/replace my still functional Coleman 440 (1994) with a lighter more compact unit. I'm not an avid hiker/camper but now that my kids are getting old enough to comfortably introduce them to the outdoors I want to get back into it. After reading many reviews I settled on this model. It arrived and I immediately set it up. I'm 35 and "gadgets" still make me feel like a kid. :) The stove is solidly built and extremely easy to set up and very stable. I set the stove to gas and hooked up a canisters I ordered along with it. Cracked the valves and lit it. Yep! It's loud, although I'm not looking for silent cooking so it wasn't a concern. I mainly wanted a stove I could burn nearly anything I could find in it. First water boil trial....1L water in a 2L heavy bottom stainless steel kitchen pot (don't tell the wife), sounds impressive...4 minutes later, fully expecting this thing to outperform my 15 year old stove, I'm only seeing small bubbles form. This thing should have been just about boiling given the published 1L boil in 3½ minutes. Well, it finally boiled...total time 15:38!!!! I was sadly disappointed, figured it was because I was using a very heavy 2L kitchen quality pot so I broke out my trusty Coleman and repeated the test. The Coleman brought the water to full rolling boil in just under 7 minutes (6:58). Fully disheartened at that point I grabbed my normal 1.5L light aluminum pot and repeated the tests checking the temp. this time and recording when the water reached 100°C to be accurate. Results: Vapor AF using white gas, 9:59, using kerosene, 9:04, using Brunton canister fuel, 14:50. I attempted to use denatured alcohol, after an email from the company saying it should work, but it vaporizes the fuel to fast and won't run for more than a few seconds. Using my old Coleman stove and the thin wall pot I was able to boil the water in 4:54 and its about 1/5 as loud. So far I'm not at all impressed with the Vapor AF. Simmer ability is fabulous and the Vapor AF can be adjusted from a mere flicker of a flame to a full out blast. My old Coleman 440 simmers well but tends to have 'stages' of flame height adjustment when set low. I wasn't able to test a SVEA 123 that I have because of pot stability. That test will follow once I have a pot to use on it, I'm curious since the Vapor AF operates on the same principle.

View Details: Brunton Vapor All-Fuel Stove

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