Jetboil Flash
Camping Stove Review
Now you’re not going to cook up a meal for six people with a Jetboil flash, or roast a turkey, but this little critter will bring two cups of water to a boil in less than two minutes, start to finish. Which is all you need for heating up the type of dehydrated foods that most of us use on kayaking and camping excursions. And at 15 ounces and about 4" x 7," you won’t even realize you’ve got a stove in your backpack or dry storage bag.
What It Is
If you’re familiar with the Jetboil Flash personal cooking system (or PCS
for short), you know that it looks nothing like a conventional camping
stove. The Jetboil is a fist-sized burner that attaches to a 1 liter
aluminum Jetboil cooking cup, or an optional 1.5 liter cooking pot. The
insulated cup or pot connects to the burner via a Jetboil “Fluxring” that
focusing the heat and keeps it from escaping during cooking.
The Flash is powered by a Jetboil fuel canister that’s sold separately from
the stove. The fuel canister only weighs about 4 ounces, and is small enough
to store away in the stove’s cooking cup. Jetboil claims that the canister
will boil up to 100 cups of water, but in my experience you’ll be lucky to
get 70 cups out one, which is still pretty darn good. I’ve gone on 4 day
hikes and come back with plenty of fuel to spare.
The stove comes with a set of stabilizer legs that attach to the fuel
canister, but you’ll want to find a flat surface to set it down on. I made
the mistake of setting it down on an uneven surface once, and the stove
tipped over in the wind, spilling the water and spoiling my mood at the same
time.
Another nice feature of the Jetboil Flash stove, and no available on earlier
versions, is a temperature indicator that’s built into the heating cup. This
takes the guesswork out of things, and as soon as the indicator turns
orange, you know that the water will soon be at a boiling temperature.
If you’re worried about lighting the stove in adverse weather conditions,
don’t be. The Jetboil stove comes with an electric igniter so you won’t be
fumbling to light matches in the wind, and the adjustable-flame burner has a
a built-in windscreen that keeps the elements at bay as well.
There are also a bunch of optional accessories you can add to your
Jetboil
Flash cooking system, including a Jetboil coffee press, a set of three
eating and cooking utensils, a Flux ring frying pan (just don’t expect big
pancakes!) 1.5 or 3 liter cooking pots, an igniter maintenance kit, and
more.
My only real complaint with this stove (and
it's not a deal-breaker) is that I've occasionally had trouble getting the
igniter to work. This has happened to me two or three times, usually when
the wind was gusting pretty good. So you'll probably want to bring a
wand-type lighter or waterproof matches just in case.
So there you have it. I give this little camping stove a big thumbs up, and
it’s been well worth the money for me. Another suggestion is to buy the
Mountain House brand of dehydrated food packs. These taste much better than
other brands, in my experience, and you won’t finish your dinner thinking
that you just ate a plate full of tree bark!
The Best Place To Buy One
The Jetboil Flash personal cooking system is available in most of the major outdoor recreation stores like REI or Dicks Sporting Goods. You can also buy one online, and the best price that I've found on this particular camera is on Amazon.com.
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