Upright Canister Stove Reviews, StoveBench Tests, and Gear Guide

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Ryan claims to have a Engineering PhD so why did he claim that 4 out of 7 BRS3000T stove had pot supports melted????  No photos, no videos. No response to the questions we have????? Why does the cat have his tounge????  Did he rely solely on the anecdotal findings of Hikin-Jim?

an·ec·do·tal    adjective
(of an account) not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research.
“while there was much anecdotal evidence there was little hard fact”
synonyms: informal, unreliable, based on hearsay; unscientific
“the evidence is merely anecdotal”</i></div>

</div>

[Jerry Adams]

“‘Melted’ means to change state from solid to liquid. If you don’t mean that, don’t use the word.”

engineer/scientists are so literal : )

“so resorted to a long column to get the required fuel/air mixing.”

looking at ADC wind, yeah, a lot of the extra length (compared to BRS 3000) is after the orifice which would allow mixing

maybe whatever designers there are don’t care that much about saving an ounce of weight so the length is somewhat arbitrary.  Maybe that’s just how it’s done.

[Renais A]

I was camping last weekend with an owner of a new BRS 3000 who was so pleased with its low cost  compared to his Jetboil.  His first time using it was to heat about 12 ounces of water in a 1.3 l aluminum pot. He was using a low flame.  Two of the pot supports deformed by almost bending double on themselves before the water boiled. He’s back to Jetboil. My guess is that the supports bent within two minutes.

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Renais

Two of the pot supports deformed by almost bending double on themselves before the water boiled.
Can you get photos? PLEASE!
That is NOT how the originals behaved. Mine work fine.

Cheers

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Hi Renais

Two of the pot supports deformed by almost bending double on themselves before the water boiled. 
Can you get photos? PLEASE!
That is NOT how the originals behaved. Mine work fine.

Cheers

Roger, looks like Renais has no photos or video just like Ryan Jordan. Even Hikin Jim didn’t have photos. Can you imagine……Ryan purchased 7 of the BRS3000T’s and nary a photo of them.

I purchased 7 and I’ll post a photo later.

[Jerry Adams]

that’s funny they’re so cheap you can purchase 7 of them

when you look for BRS 3000 there are many sellers.  Are these all the same or are there different versions?  Maybe some of them are different and more likely to fail.

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

Further testing seems like a moot point (my 3 Cents). The BRS-3000t  has a fair amount of field failures that it has earned a black eye.  It could be operator error, but that really doesn’t matter as compared to other stoves it still failed.  It could be cheap knockoff but again, if you can’t tell the difference it doesn’t matter.  Best luck with the testing, though I don’t think that it will change the overall belief that the BRS is unreliable.  Again, my 2 Cents.

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Ryan claims to have a Engineering PhD, he surely would have been able to tell if they were a knockoff and if they had melted or or just bent a little out of shape caused by repeated use under a heavy load of water. Roger has stated repeatedly that canister fuel does not produce heat high enough to melt titanium. Hikin Jim and Ryan were in a position to have the BRS taken off the market due to anecdotal findings if they had an interest in the health and welfare of their membership/readers and the nations backpacking communities. The BRS was the most popular upcoming, totally lightweight stove with the backpacking light aficianados. I think it received an unfair bad rap by those that committed “operator error” or had alternative motives.

I have had no problems with my BRS and suspect there will be no major meltdowns with the 6 new ones that I will be testing in the future. These are the ones I will be testing:

[Roger Caffin]

Dan

It would be interesting to test the strength of the arms on a new stove. This could be done by grabbing one arm in two places between the pivot and the top pot support region with some narrow pliers, and seeing if you could bend the arm while it is cold. If you can, then the metal has probably been switched from a good alloy such as 6Al4V to CP (commercially pure) metal – which is much softer.

Somewhere or other I have a photo of two bit of 0.5 mm Ti sheet bent at nearly 90 degrees. One is badly cracked: that was Ti 6Al4V alloy. The other bent smoothly with no visible problems: that was CP Ti.

Cheers

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Roger, That will be one of the first tests that I will do. I’ll set up a video to record the bending.

 

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Roger can you explain how it could possibly happen?  what Renais said:

His first time using it was to heat about 12 ounces of water in a 1.3 l aluminum pot. He was using a low flame.  Two of the pot supports deformed by almost bending double on themselves before the water boiled.

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Dan

I have made several long posting in this thread explaining what I think has happened. I won’t repeat them here.

In a nutshell, I think someone (bean-counter?) in production has replaced the good Ti alloy (6Al4V?) with CP Ti (unalloyed). This has a much lower softening point, is cheaper, and is more easy to work. Pity it is not suitable.

I have tried to contact BRS but my emails have been ignored.

Cheers

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Thanks Roger.

I can’t see that a bean-counter is at fault. I’m to beleive it’s operator error and observer error. Renais did not observe the deformation….it was just hear say. No photos…..it never happened. ;)

Ryan could have tested the 7 he had purchased to determin if the metal was ti….never happened. Too bad he did nothing further to determin the exact cause. Many have stated in this thread that their BRS’s never had a problem.

 

[Roger Caffin]

Right now, we simply do not have enough data to be able to positively tell what caused the problem.

Operator error is possible, but I am not convinced. I suspect instead the following:
BRS-3000T developed with Ti 6Al4V alloy
BRS-3000T made, sold and customers find they work fine.
THEN
Ti arms changed to CP for lower cost and greater ease of mfr
Arms cannot take the heat and sag in use.

It’s a time thing: early models all seem OK; later models do not.

Cheers

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Ok Ryan, here is a photo of the 7 BRS I purchased so please show us the 7 you purchased and tested to also include the 4 that became disfigured or melted as you have said.

Yes, Roger, you have told us many times they did not melt. We want to hear from Ryan what exactly happened and what the 4 look like. Thank you very much.

[Roger Caffin]

You know, this does become interesting. I searched on Amazon for “BRS-300′, and got a huge number of hits (including other types of stoves, which is stupid).
EDIT: but you should see the huge number you get on eBay! Some very strange versions too.

There were at least a dozen different brands of BRS-3000 listed. In principle, same stove with different printing on the base. BUT, there several stoves called ‘BRS-3000’ which had different pot supports and the centre tube looked like brass rather than titanium. Well, brass coloured, anyhow. I think it is a copy, or a ‘fake’. Even more curious: the listing for that model had photos of the two different sorts of pot supports.

Going on from there, it gets even more interesting. The genuine BRS-3000T stove has ‘engineered’ pot supports: they are a bit more solid and have ribs for strength. The fake stove has flat ribs with no engineering ribs, and the metal looks slightly thinner. These pots supports would be weaker, and there is no reason to believe the pot supports are the stronger 6Al4V alloy rather than the cheaper CP stuff.

The page for the fake stove has a photo of it in use – flaming. The pot supports on the fake seem to be extensively glowing over a much wider area than the pot supports on my BRS-3000T ever do. I suspect the flame pattern on the fake could be slightly different from that on my genuine BRS-3000T.

Even worse: the fine details of the burner head on the fake look more like an FMS-3000 than a genuine BRS-3000T. It very much looks as though the backyard cloning industry is alive and well in China.

The specs for the genuine stove are 2700 W, 25 g, Ti alloy. It has the correct BRS logo. The specs for the fake one are weird, and seem to be a mixture of BRS-3000 naming and MSR Pocket Rocket data, and a piezo ignitor is mentioned in the data (but not in the photos). The logo on the stove says BRS, but it is not afaik the genuine BRS logo.

All this leads me to wonder whether the stoves Ryan tested really were the genuine ones, or whether he was testing fakes of some sort or other by mistake. That would explain a lot. But without seeing one of the tested units in my hand, I just don’t know.

Edit: Hikin Jim said some way down in this thread https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/brs-3000t-another-one-bites-the-dust/ that he could bend the bent pot supports in HIS unit back with his fingers after uset (I assume they had cooled). I will state quite categorically that you can NOT bend 6Al4V alloy by hand once it has been taken up to red heat. I do enough work with that alloy to know that very definitely. So they were NOT the alloy they should have been. All vellee strange.

Cheers

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Still waiting on Ryans photos.

I’ve read the BRS3000T reviews seen at the folowing sites and have come to the conclusion that it is operator error that has caused the pot supports to bend, not melt. I suspect the same is true with Ryans 4 failures.

169 rating – 18 answered questions

303 ratings – 25 answered questions

https://us.gearbest.com/camping/pp_116350.html 109 reviews

If you read all of the revues, you will come to the same conclusion.

An example of operator error from one of the reviews:

Tall, heavy, narrow 1ltr stainless steel pot off center of pot support. Once water came to rigorous boil, vibrations caused pot to slip off stove. Curvature of pot bottom wedged between 2 of the support causing one to bend.

 

[Ben H.]

I agree, it would be nice to see Ryan’s failed stoves.

Dan, What is the user error you are claiming that is common among failures?

[Bill in Roswell]

Stop staying its operator error when the real issue is manufacturing rip-offs. Thru hikers have successfully used a real BRS 3000 for thousands of miles. Caveat emptor.

[Roger Caffin]

Part of this whole problem is Chinese culture.
Many of us can remember a discussion of cheap Western-branded windshirts and jacket available on eBay. Well, they had Western brands sewn into them, but they were pure Chinese backyard copies. I think I remember someone saying that they were told by one of these ‘clone’ mfrs that they used the Western brand labels because they looked good and were easily recognised.

The wide range of ‘BRS-3000’ stoves available seem to fall into two categories: OEM versions (different brand applied or printed on in BRS factory) and real copies. (How does one have a ‘real copy’ I wonder?) Then there is the possibility of a meld of those two: rebranded copies!

Caveat Emptor indeed. But my original BRS-3000T stoves work fine.

Cheers

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Did Ryan purchase manufacturing ripoffs???? we won’t know till we see photos of his 7

 

These are manufacturing ripoffs listed on ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Brs-3000t-2700w-Folding-Titanium-Camping-Hiking-Outdoor-Cooking-Burner-Gas-Stove/362715766760?_trkparms=aid%3D555018%26algo%3DPL.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D60256%26meid%3D435570e94697486e8b9ea7d3a20a97bf%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D12%26mehot%3Dpp%26sd%3D183894315053%26itm%3D362715766760%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D0%26pg%3D2047675&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Miniature-Portable-Gas-Stove-Ultralight-Alloy-Outdoor-Burner-Camping-Gas-Stove/183591495136?epid=1074810059&hash=item2abee7e5e0:g:VVIAAOSw86BcGABQ

https://www.ebay.com/itm/BRS-Titanium-Stove-Outdoor-Camping-Burner-Gas-Stove-Big-Power-Ultralight/163819707222?_trkparms=aid%3D555018%26algo%3DPL.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D60256%26meid%3D01b94108aeac4aad9cfd0f855b3702b3%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D5%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D173321877130%26itm%3D163819707222%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D0%26pg%3D2047675&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851

https://www.ebay.com/itm/BRS-3000T-2700W-Folding-Titanium-Outdoor-Cooking-Burner-Gas-Stove-25g/113490733364?epid=1074810059&hash=item1a6c932934:g:AXkAAOSwpkFY5Zo1

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Only-25g-Titanium-Stove-BRS-3000T-Parallel-Import-Goods/223513427899?epid=1074810059&hash=item340a703fbb:g:sacAAOSwadlc2Eh8
https://www.ebay.com/p/694821277?iid=163868075858

https://www.ebay.com/p/694821277?iid=273930932103&_trkparms=aid%3D555018%26algo%3DPL.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20170810094027%26meid%3Df18a93c0f8954f52917c8f392bd4889d%26pid%3D100855%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D1%26itm%3D273930932103%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D0%26pg%3D2349526&_trksid=p2349526.c100855.m4779

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Brs-3000t-Folding-Titanium-Outdoor-Camping-Stove-Cooking-Burner-Gas-Stove-2700w/143389430788?epid=694821277&hash=item2162ad1404:g:0a4AAOSw8S9dhZA7

[Roger Caffin]

Just so.

Cheers

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Roger said: All this leads me to wonder whether the stoves Ryan tested really were the genuine ones, or whether he was testing fakes of some sort or other by mistake. That would explain a lot. But without seeing one of the tested units in my hand, I just don’t know.

Yes, I agree Roger, that’s why we are asking Ryan to post a photo of his BRS’s. @bzhayes would like to see them also. We will be able to recognize if they are knock-offs easily.

Andrew Marshall and Chase Jordan were also involved in the Stove Bench testing. Somebody should be able to take a couple photos of the stoves. Small task, I’ll even donate a 20 dollar bill to the first that posts photos. Yes, I’m really curious…It’s the stover/stovie in me :-) Actually, many years ago I gave BPL $100 to be a lifetime member, a few photos is not too much to ask.

@bzhayes. one of the critical operator errors is bending the pot support arms when opening and closing the supports. Read what one person said about that:

https://www.amazon.com/BRS-BRS-3000T-Ultra-Light-Titanium-Miniature/product-reviews/B06XNLSNFR/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews

A photo Thomas included shows a kidney shaped pot on top of the BRS in a precarious position, almost ready to slide off the stove.

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>By Thomas on May 13, 2018</span>

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>I’ve been using the “etekcity” style burner with piezo for years. I originally got it off deal extreme before it became popular probably 7 years ago. It served me well through week long elk hunts and camping excursions. I got this one to save a little room and weight. It actually boils water much faster than the etekcity stove, which just makes it all that much better. It also seals to the can without any leakage while putting it on. The etekcity always let’s out a “hiss” of cold gas.</span>

 

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>Pros:</span>

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>Tiny and light weight!</span>

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>The supports get red hot but hold the weight of a pot with 1L water just fine.</span>

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>No gas leakage on installing on the can.</span>

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>Fast boil.</span>

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>GREAT construction.</span>

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>Cons:</span>

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>No piezo. A small inconvenience more than anything, as anyone who camps will have other forms of ignition. I just hold a bic lighter to the burner as I turn the throttle.</span>

 

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>**EDIT**</span>

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>I’ve noticed that one of the fold-out supports, in order to fold away properly, has to be pushed against the body a little bit. After several foldings, it bent out the support a little. It easily bends back, but I wonder if it will cause fatigue over time. Simple solution, don’t fold the support all the way in, causing it to bend. It still folds enough that it doesn’t affect the compact size.</span>

 

<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>https://www.amazon.com/BRS-BRS-3000T-Ultra-Light-Titanium-Miniature/dp/B06XNLSNFR/ref=mp_s_a_1_1_sspa?keywords=Brs+stove&qid=1561006352&s=gateway&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1#customerReviews</span&gt;

 

 

[DAN-Y/FANCEE FEEST]

Jun 10, 2019 at 11:34 pm#3597101

Roger Caffin

What we really need is a good photo of a failed BRS-3000T and the pot supports. Just give me one photo and I should be able to tell what happened.

Cheers

I agree Roger,

Ryan, come on be a good guy…..just one photo of the 4 deformed BRS 3000T’s

 

 

[Roger Caffin]

We now have more info.

the failure was in the tiny little piece of metal that supports the pot support. It has a rivet through it. The pot support leg itself didn’t fail. The metal in that riveted piece slowly creep(ed) as it heated, until the pot fell off the stove during operation. Same mode of failure for 4 of the 7 stoves I bought of a single batch. I haven’t been able to replicate since. So, possibly a batch defect resulting from improper tempering of this particular part.

This from Ryan J.

Some photos to explain it all follow.

This is an undamaged BRS-3000T stove (mine) heating a Ti pot.  Please note carefully the pot support arm which is connected to a ring under the burner head by a rivet. That little ring must stay ‘flat’ (albeit with right angle bends) for the pot supports to be at the correct angle.

This is the only photo I have of one of the damaged stoves. It was provided to me by Ryan J, to whom thanks.  Please note the way the pot support arm sags down at an angle highlighted by the blue line. The pot support arm itself is NOT bent or damaged: it is the support ring (with rivet) which is bent or twisted.

How did this happen? I have no idea, although to me it looks as though the riveted support ring was bent down by force. This might indicate serious ‘trauma’, or it might indicate a really soft bit of metal as Ryan suggests. In the latter case, the ‘force’ would be that of gravity on the pot. Plasticine metal. But there is more.

What is curious is that some units seem to have kinked pot support arms, as shown here. My BRS-3000T stoves (I have several) do not. Is this damage or a fault? I don’t think it is either: I think the kink was part of the manufacturing. However, if (IF) this is a genuine BRS-3000T it suggests that there has been some variation in the production process, which leads on to this photo.

I found this photo on the web (author unknown). The pot support arm has that possibly genuine kink, but the bent part of the support ring shows a bad crack as highlighted. This sort of crack looks to me as though the metal was bent up after it had been tempered. I have made similar cracks in test pieces of Ti 6Al4V myself. Once again, some variation in production, and definitely some deficiencies in Quality Control.

What this leads to is that the QC on this support ring may have been lacking, at least for a batch or two. Not enough tempering, too much tempering, tempering at the wrong time, … whatever. If you have a ‘good’ unit, then that’s fine: keep cooking. After all, Ryan did find 3 good ones in his batch of 7. If you have been unlucky enough to get one from a bad batch – go back to your supplier with photos and demand a refund.

If you are thinking of buying one – do so, but test it carefully as soon as you get it, and only buy from someone you could go back to in case of a problem. Remember: many of us are very happy with our units.

HTH
Cheers

[Author]

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