There is a huge range of camping stoves out there; all of them suited for different purposes. And although there are some general purpose ones a lot of them are really specialist. Some are best for mountaineering; others are good for backpacking  and short trail hiking. Others yet are good for very long expeditions and long trail-hiking trips.

The MSR Whisperlite, a well-loved and top-rated stove

I’m a little extravagant because I own several different stoves. I’m not the only one I know who does this. This is because I have just found it is more convenient to have a specific stove for a specific purpose than to try to get one that is compromise for all situations.

But it is not necessary to do what I’ve done. If money is tight you can certainly get by with just a single stove that will do perfectly well in a variety of circumstances.

The purpose of this article and talk through some of the main options that you’ve got and makes recommendations to what will probably be some of the best camping stoves for a beginner to consider. But first, some background on the different sorts of stove available. The two main categories of stores that you can get for camping and mountaineering are either gas stoves or liquid-fuel stoves.

Gas canisters stoves

Let’s first look at gas canister stoves because they are really simple and light and as a result they are also really popular. They essentially work by having a very simple burner positioned directly on top of the gas canister or occasionally next to it. The canister itself is usually filled with a mixture of butane or propane. Their main advantage is that they are really simple to use.

If you are looking for a budget version then you should consider one of the really basic and light propane burner.These cost as little as $20.At that price you won’t get a fancy igniter or any other bells and whistles (but who needs all those thing anyway). a stove this price also won’t be very lightest you can get.

On the cheapest stoves the gas canister and cannot be removed from the stove one it has been attached. This is because when it gets attached the canister is pierced and  it has to stay on the stove until it’s finished. An example of this is the range of Camping Gaz stoves that are widely available in Europe.

To go one step up in price you could consider stoves such as the MSR Pocket Rocket or any of the other wide range of stoves from other firms such as the Optimus Crux or the Primus Classic. In these stoves he gas canister comes with a resealable top. This means that you can assembler and disassemble it at will.

Stoves such as this may cost just a bit more but shouldn’t cost you much more than $20-$40 or so. They are very versatile and light. The more you pay the lighter the weight will usually be and you will also get additional features such as a built-in ignitor. I’d usually ignore those and go for a simple and cheap stove. In fact, if you’re only going to buy a single stove, one of these will probably be fit for almost all purposes.

They light really easily and you can control the simmer (or temperature) on them really easily. You can also get gas canisters for them in most places in America and Europe, and probably a lot of places in Asia. These days the gas canisters are not too expensive either.

The first downsides to gas canister stoves is that it is difficult enough how much gas you got left. You don’t have these worries with liquid fuel because you can see exactly how much is left in the bottle. But with a gas canister it is sometimes difficult to tell.

The other downside is that as the gas starts to run out the pressure gets lower and lower, and that means your flame gets weaker and weaker.

A third issue is a gas canister stoves aren’t as efficient at higher altitudes, or in very cold weather as liquid fuel stoves are. This is because the propane and butane need a certain amount of heat before they will vaporise. Some mountaineers take their stoves to bed with them, and sleep with them in their sleeping bags (off obviously – in case there are any Darwin-award wanna-bees here)  to keep the gas from getting so cold that it just stays as a liquid.

I reckon that under  these circumstances is a lot easier to just move on to liquid fuel stoves.

 Liquid fuel stoves

As the name suggests, these aren’t powered by gas powered by by some sort of liquid fuel. The most common fuel is a white gas or benzene. This is a  clear, although strong smelling fluid. It is a bit like gasoline (or Petrol for my British readers) but without some of the additives. In order to get it to work you have to go through a few more steps than you would with a gas stove.

The first step is that a liquid fuel stove generally needs to have its pressure pumped up. This is because the fuel needs some sort of pressure to get from the tank to the burner (on a gas stove, the gas provides its own pressure).

Usually there is a pump that will attach to the fuel bottle, although a few old-style stoves such as the classic SVEA don’t have a pump and use heat to generate pressure.

The second thing you have to do is you have to heat up the burner because you need enough heat to turn the liquid into a gas (or vapour). This means that liquid fuel stoves generally have to be primed. Now priming a stove isn’t too difficult, but if you’ve never done it before it can be a bit intimidating. It is also one of things that puts people off using liquid fuel stoves. The truth is, however, that most modern stoves are pretty easy to prime. In fact, you either just pour a little bit of fuel into a little cup that is built into the top of the stove and light is (that was how the old SVEA stoves used to work), or with more modern one such as the MSR DragonFly you pour fuel onto a sort of wick that soaks it up. In either case you carefully light this and allow it to heat up the vaporiser. What this does it heats up a small chamber near the burner on the stove slip that will vaporise liquid fuel as it passes through. This turns it into a gas that then jets out and burns.

There is now a wide variety of these sorts of stoves on the market. One of the most popular brands is MSR, or Mountain Safety Research. But you can also get excellent stoves from Primus, SVEA or Optimus.

As I mentioned earlier, the simplest of these just burn benzene or white gas, but you can also get multifuel stoves. These are really useful if you going on an expedition in areas with finding fuel might be a bit difficult.

Although across most of America you can get white gas pretty easily (some camping stores will sell it as Coleman fuel) you might find it harder to find in some other parts of the world.I’m talking about parts of Asia and Paul India, South America and large parts of Africa. If you are planning on travelling to remote locations, then you really need to go for a multifuel stove to be sure of burning whatever sort of fuel it is that you can find.

Good mulitfuel stoves will  have jets that will accept a variety of different fuels such as unleaded gasoline, jet fuel or kerosene, Diesel as well as are a variety of other fuels. In order to change fuels you need to open up the stove and changing the jet. In most cases this is not too complicated at all. Going for a multifuel stove really does give you a lot of flexibility and you don’t have to sacrifice much in terms of weight or size to gain this additional functionality. It will, however, cost you a few more dollars. Going from something like the standard MSR Whisperlite stove to the international (multifuel) variety will usually cost you an extra $20 or so. But it is money well worth spending.