Looking for a replacement for my old Dragonfly ultralight gas stove, I thought hard about how a single worn gasket could require the replacement of a $125 burner and pump due to product obsoletion. I've got canister stoves, but have sometimes had difficulty finding the expensive canisters, and it's not easy to guage how much cooking time is left. This led me to two types of biofuel stoves: wood and alcohol. I now have both, but this review is of the wood-jet stove.
I bought the Anself Wood-Jet stove from Amazon for a whopping €23, and it's available under many different brand names at slightly different prices, or name brand for about €100. It is made out of good quality steel, and comes with a handy bag to keep everything else clean in your pack.
The stove is quite a bit heavier than my Dragonfly, though similar to the Dragonfly with 1/2 liter of white gas. With this stove, you don't need to carry fuel, though, it burns twigs and pine cones you find lying around.
Cooking with the wood-jet stove is not like cooking with gas, it's more like cooking on a campfire, meaning wood type and how you feed the fire makes a big difference. With a small handfull of twigs, I was able to boil 3/4 liter of water in about 8 minutes. The wood pile in the photo lasted me about 3 hours, I made pasta and coffee, then just burned what was left.
Overall, I like this stove. It's going to take me some time to learn how to use it well, but it can go for a quick boil or a 2 hour simmer with no fuel costs- try making dry beans into soup with a canister stove! It does turn pots black and does need cleaning a bit, but for me that's an easy trade for wood fire cooked dinners.
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