Solo Stove *UPDATE* + Cook Set

     Solo Stove Review:

     Tested out the Solo stove last night and today for lunch!  Last night Ry and cooked part of our meal using the new stove.  We cooked some noodles to go along with our BBQ chicken and salad.  Before we started cooking on the stove we went to one of the many trails we have been using to train on to gather some dried up sticks and branches to use as fuel for the stove.  We collect about a grocery sized bag, bought it home, and broke them all up into twig size and small branch size.  For tinder we used some dried up grass, set it on the stove grate then lit it with our magnesium stick and knife.  That light up a little to quick but we got a few twigs light up, added more, then added some of the larger diameter sticks/twigs to the fire to get a good flame going on.  We tested it with 4 cups of water pouring it into a home titanium 12 cup pan (your average size for cooking canned soup or mac-m-cheese), we used this thick metal pan because we had not received our camping cook set yet.  Seemed like the water took a bit longer than expected to heat the 4 cups of water but we reduced the problem to the heavy pan we used and our lack of experience using the stove and adding fuel as needed.  

     Today, we received our backpacking anodized aluminum cook set.  After the excitement Ry and I decided to cook some Kraft mac-n-cheese in our new set with our new Solo Stove.  I'm going to post the specs and a picture of the cook set we got just so you have a visual then I will continue with this review.

   

Optimus Tera 1L Backpacking Stove Set:

Material- Anodized Aluminum, both light weight and sturdy
Extras- Fry pan that doubles as a lid or cup and mess bag for storage
Weight- 9.5oz

     What I love about this set:

     Why did I pick this set out of all the other options available (trust me there are many options)?  Here's why, I loved the lightness of the aluminum and the fact that it was anodized so it won't bend easy like regular aluminum pans (which suck in my opinion).  In addition, the 1L pan has heat exchanger coils at the bottom that reduce fuel usage and is supposed to increase efficiency of heating by 20%.  I was a bit skeptical at first but bought it because it got great reviews for durability and most said they could tell a difference from the heat exchanger.  Lastly, the 1L pan fits the Solo stove perfectly and we can use both pans for food and drinks... coffee, tea, whatever.  Now we can get rid of the two light weight bowls I purchased.

Continuing with the review of Solo Stove:

     So we began boiling 4 cups of water (the pot actually holds about 5 cups of water), this time we were able to build the fire up quick and keep it going by continually feeding the fire with wood.  We started the fire with drier lint from our drier which worked fantastic and is super, super light weight.  We will probably bring a good handfull of lint with us just in case for some odd reason we cannot find tinder or it's raining/snowing outside.  So the whole trick to the Solo Stove is to keep putting little sticks/twigs/bio fuel into the stove in order to keep it super hot.  The new pot we used seen above, worked awesome!  We had the water boiling in like 4 minutes which is amazing and only used maybe six, six inch sticks .25 inch diameter.  Then we added the noodles which cooked in less than 2 minutes.  We also used a piece of foil which weighed in at 2oz, we triple folded it to make it sturdy and folded both ends together to form a cilinder then cut away a square inch or two in order to access the opening to place sticks in the fire.  We have deducted that because we put the shinny side of the foil facing the pot and stove, the foil reflected 90% of the heat back at the stove, therefor, the pan heated up even quicker, add this to the heat exchange coil on the bottom of the pot and keeping the fire stoked.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

     The Solo Stove is AMAZING!!!  It burns very clean, heats very efficiently and evenly, fits in my cooking pot, weighs much less than any other cooking stove, and best of all, you do not have to carry fuel.  Now... we will be carrying a little bit (two days worth) of tinder (lint) and 4 esbit fuel tabs (2oz) just in case we have an issue with the stove or we for some odd reason cannot find fuel to create fire.  I recommend this stove highly.  I will post reviews after on the gear we used and how it worked/held up over our 2-3 week trip.  An added bonus- you can heat up water for cleaning yourself very quickly and easily for cleaning at night or in the morning, pack the stove up to go in less than 20 minutes.  I really like the idea of heating water at night for cleaning because I like to stay very clean out on the trail and having clean, warm water makes life nice at the camp site, plus you can heat your hands up if their cold.