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I recently got to test out the Solo Stove biomass backpacking stove. This little stove is very light weight and burns bio-fuels like sticks, pine cones, leaves, and other dry fuel. I put it through the standard testing and tried to boil some water on it. The stove burns really nicely. The first round I did, I didn’t keep the fuel chamber full enough and the fire wasn’t hot enough to boil my water. After 12 minutes, the fire didn’t want to keep burning, so I dumped it out and tried again. I love learning curves.
This stove does not have a very large burning chamber so you are limited in the size of sticks you can use. The design is such that the sticks actually need to be fairly short to fit in, although they can be somewhat thick in diameter. You can feed sticks in while your pot is on top of the stove, which is nice because it needed refueled frequently. On another test, using my best stick feeding skills, I got water to boil in just over 5 minutes at approximately 6000 ft. elevation. I like this stove. It is pretty compact and sturdy enough that you could put a larger pan on it, although that would make it more difficult to feed the fuel in.
Check out my video review below to see the Solo Stove in action:
If the video doesn’t load for you, you can access it here.
The Solo Stove can also hold a small alcohol stove which gives your alcohol stove a pot rest and a wind break and makes it so you can cook with the Solo Stove without hunting for sticks.
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This is another great stove for an emergency kit. I really can’t tell you how much I like the idea of not running out of fuel, so I’m kind of partial to biomass stoves anyway, and this one is a nice size for packing and burned nice and hot.
