Hi all,
I have just returned from a weekend camping with the family, it was all good apart from boiling a kettle for two cups of tea took an absolute age 🙁

I bought a cheapo £16 halfords single burner stove & it seems to take about 20 minutes to boil a kettle in the open (using a camping kitchen with a wind shield) & about 8 minutes at home indoors.
So to the point, I want a stove that will boil water much quicker, but it will also be used to cook eggs, heat beans, etc. We did all of our other food on a portable gas BBQ & that worked really well, so I really don’t want to get a proper camping stove with a big bottle to cart around, the car was packed as it was.
I was looking at the Jetboil helios but the wife seems to think that poring water from the pot in to a cup would be messy as we cant see a spout/lip in any of the pictures. So is there a better solution, or a nearly as good one for less money?

What have you used to good effect?

Many thanks in advance.
Cheers.

More expensive n means fuel difference ,but peak petrol stoves are fantastic n simple to light as long as you follow the sequence n very fast too .

Or you could go for a meths burner like the TRANGIA with integral pots etc.

hope it,s some help.

Meths is too slooooow. Go for petrol.

Tanks Paul & DH, but for simplicity I wanted to stick to the small gas canisters my BBQ takes, quick & easy to change, I like easy 😉

Depends what you want it for?

Light stoves costs a bit, but tend to be more efficient and you can get spare parts.
MSR are good. We’ve got one for bike touring and backpacking.

If you’re after something to carry around in the car, just get something cheap.

I like Trangias, but they take ages to boil owt and they can be a bit smelly.

Wind is always the problem with gas , if you get out of it n shelter thats the secret.. 🙂

I have one of These…Its awesome… 🙂

I’d go for the Helios. Nice stove.

I find small gas stoves to be OK when the gas bottle is new and if you can keep them out of the wind. when its cold / windy and the gas bottle is half empty they get very slow.

Trangias on the other hand work better in windy and cold conditions and I have found them little slower than gas in good conditions but faster in poor.

The best camping stove I have used is a optimus petrol burner

Ooh, this is getting expensive, how about this?

If you are car camping go for one of the 2 ring burners which use a gas bottle. I know you wanted to avoid this but you can get smaller bottles which take up less space.
The solutions above are good for lightweight camping but for a family you want 2 burners and even a toaster.

2unfit2ride – Member

Tanks Paul & DH, but for simplicity I wanted to stick to the small gas canisters my BBQ takes, quick & easy to change, I like easy

Ah well – you need to suffer the consequences then.

i had a gas burner (well still have actually) but have “downgraded” to the marginally slower trangea.
so much easier to control, i found i was burning stuff on gas, heating the pan to quickly.
trangeas are nice and stable too, set it up with the kettle on and leave it for 5 mins and go and do something else while it boils (not too far away)

they work best when used properly, most people i know dont know to turn the vents into the wind to create a through flow of air for the burner.

they also dont have to black the pans, adding a dribble of water to the meths makes it take a bit longer to boil, but stops the pans sooting up.
1 vote for a trangea here….

These work fine for car camping.

Thanks all for the replies, Rich thats what I used, just halfords branded, not impressed at all.
I think it will either be the jetboil, or my new favorite seems to be the Primus eta power ef, its cheaper ;o)
Anyone know of a decent discount stockist of either?
Thanks again everyone!

Drop me a line…

MSR Windpro.

Because the burner is remote from the gas cannister you can use a heat reflector and windshield which vastly reduces boil time.

http://cascadedesigns.com/MSR/Stoves/Basecamp-Stoves/WindPro/product

Teetosugars,
Dropped, cheers.

Pinkstiffee, thanks, both the jetboil & the Primus are remote & come with ‘heat exchangers’.
Cheers.

Ours is the same as above and works far quicker once you have a windshield round it. We have a Towsure camp kitchen thingy that is stands on.

We’ve got one of those cheap’n’cheerful aerosal can stoves. Seems to work pretty well for doing frantic 8 cup bialetti during races. Needs to be kept out of the wind though.
Better though more disturbingly dangerous is a MSR Whisperlite which on full burn can be heard about 100m away.

I’d chose Jetboil over the Primus eta…

I used one of what rich suggested this weekend. Not as fast as my MSR whisperlight, but I used it all weekend and couldnt be bothered to set up the MSR… how windy was it? They need to be used in shelter.

Well it was chuffing windy on the beach, but not on the campsite.
I tried the cheapo stove a little earlier & it wasn’t bad, about 7 minutes to boil 2 decent cupfuls, it just doesn’t seem to work outside 🙁
I’ll try it outside in a bit, but I don’t hold out much hope.
Cheers.

When people say you need to shelter it from the wind, they really do mean it. Ours heats stuff up fine, for a cheap stove which doesn’t set fire to people like an MSR Whisperlite can do.

you want one of these babys 😉

The one as per Rich’s pic is a good powerfull stove. Probably what you already have.

When boiling water, just put what you need in the kettle rather than filling it right up and put the lid on.

Keep the stove out of the wind (stick a coobox or something similar in the way to act as a windbreak).

Teetosugars sorted it for me, top chap, many thanks for that.

Cheers all, as always some sound advice & help 🙂

“which doesn’t set fire to people like an MSR Whisperlite can do. “

if your a mong …..

you can cook inside the tent if you have half an ounce of brain power with a whisperlite … did so on three or four occasions on the west coast of NZ.

Used it for 4 months nearly 2/3 times daily without setting anyone on fire ….or the tent

I’ve got an Optimus Stella and it’s fantastic. Packs up small, it’s really light, the cooking set is actually usable and it’ll boil a kettle very quickly. I use it for overnight fishing trips and it’s not let me down yet.

You can find a more indepth review of it here\. There’s also a whole load more reviews including MSRs etc.

“which doesn’t set fire to people like an MSR Whisperlite can do. “

if your a mong …..

you can cook inside the tent if you have half an ounce of brain power with a whisperlite … did so on three or four occasions on the west coast of NZ.

Used it for 4 months nearly 2/3 times daily without setting anyone on fire ….or the tent

Bit harsh!! I wouldnt light it in a tent but once its going its fine

jetboil pours fine without a spout

We use this and this

When we go away for any longer than a couple of nights.

you can cook inside the tent if you have half an ounce of brain power with a whisperlite … did so on three or four occasions on the west coast of NZ.

You can indeed. But I stopped doing so myself when I had a nice flare from it. Fortunately I was using it outside at the time. Would have been fine if your tent was over 3ft tall inside though 🙂

I’ve heard tell of a family who only camp on ‘proper’ campsites (cater for caravans) and take a microwave with them. I think it takes away some of the fun of camping though.

After years of doing this with Trangia, MSR multifuel stoves, propane/butane gas etc etc. I definately would go for a simple Propane/butane gas stove, which is what you bought, just you bought a cheap sh1te one from Halfords. Go to a proper outdoors shop and be prepared to spend £50 for something that will boil a litre in 3 mins, works properly and will not fall apart.
The only problem with some proper camping stoves is that they are designed to be light and pack down small, so can be a bit unstable with a pan on top.

And as said above, use it out of the wind. I also have a homemade wind shield which wraps around the pan and stove, so in theory, keeping the heat in for a faster boil.

I’ve heard tell of a family who only camp on ‘proper’ campsites (cater for caravans) and take a microwave with them. I think it takes away some of the fun of camping though.

Most cam sites have electric hook ups now – the one we were at in Boot at the weekend had loads and caravans aren’t allowed on that site.

My wife and I used to camping holidays before junior M came along and we started camping again when he was about 4 years old – oh how we laughed at all those fake campers with their electric hook ups – oh how we laugh now at all the ‘real campers’ freezing their bollox off wilst we are cosy in our tents 😉

That MSR LPG one in your link looks just the thing, that’s assuming LPG cans are readily available and a reasonable price to replace the cans (i’ve no idea). There’s no point in buying the stove, then finding you’re struggling to get a fuel can, and when you do get one it costs the earth (anthing MSR generally is expensive). It comes with a wind shild aswell.

The advantage with propane/butane is you can buy them everywhere, there are lots of companies producing them, the cheapest I’ve found being trade hardware stores.

Cheers all for the extra replies, but as I said above I bought one the other day, I got the Primus Eta power, & very nice it is too 🙂
It arrived today & a quick outdoor test showed it can do 1/2 litre in just under 3 minutes, & just over a litre in 5 minutes.
The thing has an awsome flame on it, and they claim 80% efficiency so it supposed to cut down on consumption.

Thanks again to Teetosugars who gave me a discount code, top bloke!

Cheers.

Another happy Primus Eta Owner here. 🙂 Great ain’t they?

Watch out for scratching the pan with the burner itself when you put it away. The thin bit of felt stuff they provide isn’t man enough for the job esp when its wet. (says he with a scratched pan 🙁 ). If you can fit a plastic bowl or two in there its fine.

TM

Mmmmm… I’m sure they’re very nice, we have a MSR (Whisperlite, I think it’s called). Now I dare say the Primus is more advanced than our older MSR and they claim to ‘minimize pre-heating time’, but that fact still remains that for a quick brew you still have to pump up the preasure, pre-heat the stove etc. Which kind of defeats the object of the exercise IMO. We still use the MSR for general cooking jobs for which it’s good (and cheap), but reaching out of the sleeping bag in a morning and wanting to get the kettle on quickly and simply, we always use the cartridge propane/butane stove for instant simple heat.