Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I added the BioLite stove to my Christmas wishlist this year, not really thinking anyone would get it for me. Well, my 76 year-old mom did (go Mom!), and I was very surprised and excited to open the stove on Christmas morning. Not wasting any time, I took it with us for a family trip to the Washington coast on Christmas Day and tested it out several times on the patio of our friends' beach house. After collecting a variety of twigs and sticks from the yard and forest that seemed sufficiently dry (amazingly, it hadn't rained in a few days), I lit a fire using some dry grass and a firestarter stick that came with the stove. The initial results were *very* smoky. But the instructions specifically mentioned that damp wood produces a lot of smoke. So, the next time around, I created my own dry wood by microwaving the sticks I'd collected. Yep, microwaving. But it worked splendidly. Obviously, I wouldn’t be microwaving wood on a camping trip or during a power outage, but I was eager to see how dry wood would work in the stove. With the dried wood, I was able to produce a fire with much less smoke and boil about 2 cups of water in about 10 mins. But I was using farily small twigs, with no larger chunks of wood, and I had to constantly feed them into stove to keep the flames going. Back at home a few days later, I decided to start anew and try working with larger pieces of wood that were dry from the get-go. I took a 3/4” x 3/4” x 2 ft. long piece of an old cedar trellis and chiseled it into pieces of various sizes–from about 1/4" x 1" long to 1/2" x 3" long. I mixed the cedar pieces with some leftover twigs I'd collected from the coast. In total, I probably had about 1/2 lb. of material. This time, I used my own homemade tinder material: dryer lint (with copious amounts of dog hair mixed in!). I built a fire in the stove with layers of lint, sticks, and wood chunks, then ignited it with a single flame from a flexible neck butane lighter. As soon as the lint caught fire, I turned on the BioLite's fan to the low setting, and the fire took off. In less than a minute, I switched to the high fan setting and the fire was a raging inferno, ready for my aluminum pot with 4 cups of water. I stoked the fire about 5 times over ten minutes with increasingly larger pieces of wood, and the water came to a rolling boil within that period (sorry, I didn't measure the exact time). A couple minutes into the fire, the green light around the USB port illuminated, and I began charging my iPhone 5S through the port with a standard USB to Lightning cable. Since I was taking photos and videos of the process the entire time, my phone didn't charge much, but it did go from 85% to 87% in between photos. This time, the only significant smoke produced by the fire occurred when I introduced a larger stick from the coast that wasn't completely dry. When you add damp wood to the BioLite, it will smoke quite a bit, but once it dries, it will basically reach a flashpoint and ignite, and the smoke will instantly disappear. So, it *is* possible to use damp wood, but be prepared for everything and everyone to get smoked out for a while. If you're camping from Oct to May in Western Washington, for example, you'll have a hard time finding dry material to work with, so you'd probably be better off with a gas stove, unless you don’t mind lugging in dry wood. However, used as an emergency cooking and power source in an urban/suburban environment, most people should be able to find ample wood-based material for for fuel around their homes and in their recycling bins. Cardboard works fine, as does any type of combustible scrap lumber cut into small pieces. Heck, in a longterm power outage, you could always start hacking down your wood furniture and cabinets! A little wood goes a long way with the BioLite. The BioLite stove is a marvel of ingenuity, but what's really amazing is how little ash is left when you're done using it. From my roaring fire that lasted about 20 minutes from start to finish, there were only a couple tablespoons of ash, which I dumped into my raised bed garden. Also, note that the BioLite cools down very quickly once the fire is out, and the interior is cool to the touch within a few minutes. Thanks to its insulated design, the exterior of the unit never gets even warm to the touch. It’s a very safe device. For my next fire in the BioLite, I intend to introduce increasingly larger pieces of wood to see how well they burn. Ideally, it’d be nice to spend less time adding fuel to the fire, although it’s actually kind of fun to watch the little furnace in action. I can’t think of any major negatives to the stove. As someone who deals with product QC issues on a regular basis, it’s obvious the the BioLite stove is extremely well designed and manufactured. It’d be interesting to see what the company could do to turn the stove into a general heating device rather than simply a cooking implement. It definitely puts off heat, but it’s mostly confined to the space directly above the combustion chamber. Perhaps the grill attachment would radiate more heat horizontally. Anyway, I’m in love with the BioLite, and I highly recommend it for gadget freaks, outdoorsmen/women, survivalists, and junior pyromaniacs.