Best/lightest propane cannister stove?

I don't know if that Montauk is the best cooker, although it appears to be the lightest one. If it cooks great, has stable pot supports, holds up, etc… then maybe lightest and best are coincidental. If so, awesome.

I read a lot of reviews, played with some stoves and took the opportunity to watch others using a variety of isobutane/canister stoves before I took the leap away from my tried and true XGK. I came in suspicious, having long deemed all canister stoves to be "just another Bluet".

The low weight, convenience and output won me over. I went with an Optimus Crux as part of a Weekender HE kit, and we are STOKED with it. The stove, large canister, cook kit, matches, mini-bic and ti-spork, stuffed inside the provided bag, all weigh together less than just the stovehead on my XGK. It lights easily, boils fast and is, in fact, adjustable down for simmers and such (but less so in the presence of a breeze), which is something the XGK doesn't excel at. The pot supports are good, and grippy, and it seems to work great.

So great that I am having great difficulty finding the motivation for even the few minutes a full maintenance on the old XGK will take me.

Now, if that Montauk or some other silly-light stove turns out to be functional, too, then it turn out to be the hot ticket. For me, the plain old Crux is doing great and it's my "best".

@ Jerry…..

I don't think you saw the point of the ice water…
I have a Soto and no I never intend on putting my canister in ice water, however I do plan to use it while the temperatue is below freezing, at high altitudes and also plan on using it in the snow. The canisters are made of metal and the liquid gets cold inside a metal canister the same way beer gets cold in an aluminum can during the winter time. The coldness of the liquid gas affect the vapors therefor affecting your stoves performance. However the Soto still performs the same with a cold liquid gas as warm gas proven by the ice cold water. Also the Soto burns the ssame flame with the canister almost empty, while others without a microregulator suffer under the same circumstances. The Soto burns hot ,is extremely effecient and works just as well at high altitudes and cold weather. Can't say the same for snowpeak,msr and optimus…all of which I've used. Also people complain about the igniter being on the Soto. Mine has not failed yet.A mini bci weighs about .4oz . S0 take that from 2.6oz and you have 2.2oz. I know people will say you have to carry a mini bic as a backup with the piezo igniter anyways so that negates the weight. However I carry a endless match with me everywhere I go anways so that is not the case for me.

The Optimus Weekender HE mentioned above weighs 10oz by itsself. In using it I found that the heat exchanger on the bottom did not increase performance at all. I gave it to someone starting out to save them money. Was a waste of my money.

The soto will smoke any simple stoves like the gnat pocket rocket giga power when at elevation cold temps or on a low canister. And I know this from field experience on a 5day trip at 9,000-12,000 in december in the santefe national forest in new mexico my friend was using a pocket rocket and I was using a soto. We both were using snowpeak 900 mugs and cooked side by side. Boiling the same amount of water and melting the same amount of snow his 200gram canister ran out day4 mine then pulled double duty for the last day and still had a good 50grams "yes I weighed it" of fuel left so yes the micro regulator works. And works well

I'm just being a troll about this – no experience with Soto – you shouldn't encourage me by responding…

But, the problem with upright canister in cold is the iso-butane is too cold to evaporate. It doesn't matter what type of stove you have. Maybe a bigger orifice for the iso-butane to go through would help. Maybe apart from the micro-regulator the Soto is a good design.

The way a regulator works is that it automatically makes the valve open up more or less, as conditions change. I can do that manually because I'm sitting there watching it anyway. No need for regulator. Extra complexity of a regulator is just asking for a higher failure rate.

As far as efficiency goes, maybe the burner design could effect that. a regulator wouldn't.

Sorry buddy, but you can sit there and watch all day if you like. You cannot regulate pressure with a needle valve. You can allow more isobutane through but not control pressure.

Isobutane's boiling point is 11 degrees F.

Check this guy's video out. It's not mine, but it may shed a little light for you on a needle valve stove vs. a micro regulator stove.

"You cannot regulate pressure with a needle valve. You can allow more isobutane through but not control pressure"
How could you control output flow but not control output pressure?

The video does show the soto off rather nicely but it didn't look like he ever turned the JB stove wide open (never seemed to adjust the valve towards full open after initial start).

Needle valves do suffer from a large pressure drop at full open relative to other types of valves but I doubt if the soto's "regulator" valve is any better.

A couple years ago at Sky Blue Lake and Crabtree Meadow in early Oct. the temps dropped into the single digits, two nights in a row. I had no issues the first morning with my PR, maybe the lighter fuel was burning off that morning. The second morning, I had to warm the canister down my pants, then twice in my water while it was warming up. The second dunk warmed the fuel instantly and I had no more issues that mornning. How do I know it was that cold? My tempermental zip-o-gauge and the ice covering the small flow of water by camp validated the temp. Also, a small NeoAir is good into the single digits too, using a WM Apache, 15 degree F bag.
Duane

Okay, I looked at the video.

That was very good – it compared a needle valve and Soto at low temperatures and the Soto worked much better. The valve must have a bigger orifice to let the low pressure cold iso-butate through than a regular needle valve.

Their marketing emphasis is on "consistent flame in cold temperatures and throughout the life of the canister" where what would influence me would be if they said their stove is usable down to 15 F (or where ever) where other top canister stoves p o o p out below about 25 or 30 F.

Heh, heh, heh.

That's a pretty good ad. Of course even ice water is at 32F or more, otherwise it would be ice. And since canisters are good down to 30F, the ice water is actually making the canister run better than trying to run it without water in 35F ambient temps. At 35F air temp, you'll generally see the condensation on the canister start to freeze solid, indicating that it's below 32 F (this is much simpler in Metric by the way, where water freezes at 0C……what a concept) Immersing the canister in liquid water, even ice water is actually warming it up.

Then we have the altitude thing going on. As already discussed, the higher you go, the better a canister stove works.

Efficiency is a slightly different beast, and I wouldn't rate my PR as great for this (it's horrible!) but my SnowPeak isn't too bad. Unfortunately the less efficient the stove is, the faster the canister cools down, since this is largely a function of the rate of escape of the gas and the pressure drop. Which is why you can chill down your can of beer while you make dinner in camp!!

Still, clever ad.

@ Rod….
Could you explain how the water would act as an insulator please?

@ James…
It works the same way as an oxygen or acetylene tank with regulators on top of the bottle. You can set the output pressure and then on your torch you can control the amount of flow. A needle valve does not allow you to maintain back pressure from the source side.

Also in my experience with converting outdoor lawn equipment and tillers to run on one pound propane cylinders, I can tell you that regulators are key! Operating with out a regulator at full throttle in 95deg ambient temps the one pound steel container will have frsot on the outside and stop evaporation in about 10 minutes. Now, add a regulator in line , adjust the regulator along with air mixture and it will rub until the cylinder is empty. I've tried it without and with regulators to test fuel efficiency. With a regulator you use just under half the fuel then you do without a regulator . Without a regulator , as soon as you get to full throttle, in about a minute you start losing power as the propane starts to cool and get closer to its boiling point well before you see frost on the can.

The Soto regulator is just that – a regulator. It *reduces* the flow of gas to some reasonably stable level. Soto then compensate by having an oversize jet, so it still has a good flame when the pressure in the canister is low.
However, the fundamental limit for *any* canister stove is governed by the pressure in the canister. If the pressure in the canister is at or below atmospheric pressure, *no* gas is going to come out, regulator or not.
The temperature at which the vapour pressure of a liquid equals atmospheric pressure is called the boiling point and how this is affected by the gas mixture and in particular, as the gas mixture changes as the canister is used up, is discussed at length in the BPL article "The Effect of Cold on Gas Canisters".
In short, most gas canisters have enough pressure to operate any stove at 0F when full, but this minimum temperature rises rapidly as the gas is used up (because the propane gets used faster).

A P-regulator has no cabability to adjust supply pressure. For our discusion internal canister pressure is independant of valve / regulator setting. A regulator (just like a needle valve) does have the ability to control output orifice area (and thus output pressure/flow) if the Soto wide open has a lower pressure drop than another stove then its performance, as it approaches canister temperature limit, will be somewhat better – but that relation would be on a stove by stove basis.

Re: water acting as an insulator….As you use a canister, liquid fuel evaporates causing a cooling effect w/in the canister — b/c air is poor heat conductor the canister could tend to drop below ambient air temp. With the canister in a bath maintained at ~35F the canister isnt allowed to cool much b/c of water's, relatively, high conductivity and heat capacity.

Yep. The ice bath is smoke and mirrors.
Duane

Your photo shows a stove with a piezo igniter. The Kovea models without the piezo are supposed to be 60 grams. Do you know the weight of your stove with the piezo? I'm thinking of getting one through Amazon for $36. I really like the piezo on my trusty old Snowpeak Giga Power titanium. With the piezo it weighs 92 grams.

Didn't the person who started this thread ask about a propane stove? Yes, there are many small lightweight stoves that use small isobutane-propane, but i don't think that is the point. There are places in this world where all you can buy is those heavy coleman propane canisters and I have often wondered the same thought of the best lightweight propane stove options for those trips. The 6.5oz stove mentioned above seems like the best option and one Id never heard. Anyone know of anything lighter?