Biolite Stove

Anybody have a chance to play with one of these? It looks to be a simple rocket stove with some sort of thermal generator to make electric power built in.

Is it useful, or just a gimmick?

It is a bit heavy (2 lbs, one oz-nearly a kilogram) and expensive ($129) for backpacking, but it does get favorable reviews at REI. It is probably better for car camping applications that for hiking/backpacking trips.

If one is into burning wood, just go to a traditional campfire. I started using stoves and commercial fuel in order to be able to go out 1)above timberline 2) in any weather and 3) avoid safety issues involved with a campfire.

Like most of us,I drag along various electronics trips these days. i make sure batteries are fully charged, or I carry spares. Usually the extra weight is only a few ounces.

There was a thread about them sometime back:
http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=256698

I recieved one as a gift last year. The heat of the stove charges a battery that runs a fan to provide draft for the stove. When it gets hot enough it will also charge an iphone. It actually seems to work pretty well, both in terms of heat output and charging an iphone. (I haven't tried to use it to charge my ipad.)

The main drawback is that it is rather heavy if one is backpacking. For that reason I haven't used it much. It would probably be OK as long as you don't need to carry it in a pack. I'll be doing a bit of car camping in the near future, and I may take the Biolite along and see if it works to charge my ipad.

It's bulky but I've had mine for a while (got it right when they came out). It does seem to work as advertised but I haven't used it a ton. It does burn very hot and with virtually no smoke.

If you have a car would you not use that to charge items?

I have always thought this was a solution looking for a problem.

I was looking at the car camping trip as just a convenient opportunity to play with the biolite. When driving I would of course use the car to charge the phone. However, if hanging out in a campground, starting the car just to charge a phone would seem like a rather inefficient method?
Perhaps. As noted I recieved it as a gift. I probably would not have bought it on my own.

The biolite could be useful in a couple of situations. Once it gets going it burns hot with very little smoke. I keep it stashed with our emergency supplies at home. In the event of a power outage I can make some coffee or soup, and keep my phone charged. I also have a flashlight that can be charged with a USB. As noted, the main issue is that the biolite is quite heavy.

The Biolite works really well as a stove, that's the edge it has vs your car. And while it's kind of heavy for what it does it's not too heavy to pack.

After having the stove and using it I do think it's a non-essential piece of gear, but a useful one. While it seems to be well made I would be leery of trusting it as my only stove and means of electricity. Anything with forced-induction would be useless if the fan died.

But I do like messing around with mine. And when the new, larger "Base Camp" version comes out I think that might be a winner.

I thought the Basecamp version would be a little bigger, but that's a much bigger stove and the electrical output is also higher. Nice.

It really would be useful for a base camp! A little spendy but I bet it's gonna be awesome to cook on. The heat that comes off my small Biolite is impressive, that new one must really get hot and it's big enough for serious cooking.

My wife and I just spent a few days doing a bit of late season sea kayaking. We were across Kachemak Bay from the town of Homer, Alaska. Due to the relative nearness of Homer, we knew we would have fair cell coverage from several places in and around where we were paddling. It seemed like a good chance to do some realistic field testing of the Biolite stove I recieved as a gift sometime back. What we found was that it would charge our phones, but it is a rather slow and tedious process.

As noted previously, the Biolite has an internal battery that runs a small fan to enhance the burning of small sticks. A thermal-electric device converts heat to electricity which keeps the stove's battery charged. Excess electricity is available to charge small electronic devices via a USB port. The problem is that the stove's internal electronics periodically diverts power to keep the stove battery charged. During this time, no power goes to the USB port. Thus your phone only charges part of the time the stove is burning. I didn't keep close track, but it seemed like the phone would only charge about half the time the stove was running.

My iPhone 4 was only partly discharged, and I could, over about an hour, top off the charge on my phone. My wife had let her iPhone 5 run way down. We were able to charge it up enough for her to retrieve some text messages. To fully recharge her phone would have been possible, but would have taken a loooong timmmme! Previous testing (at home) has shown that the Biolite does not put out enough power to recharge my iPad Mini, which requires more juice than a phone.

Key Takeaway Points:
1. The Biolite works fairly well as a small stove to boil water. Because of the fan, once you get it going you can even burn slightly damp wood.
2. It is too heavy for backpacking, but is OK if you don't need to carry it on your back.
3. It is reasonable to use the Biolite to top off a smart phone battery after modest use of the phone.
4. To fully recharge a very low phone batter would be possible, but would be tedious in the the extreme.
5. The Biolite would not recharge my iPad Mini at all. It just doesn't put out enough juice.

Reading your account, I couldn't but help mull over the alternative option of carrying a solar panel, like Goal Zero's Nomad 7 or 3.5, and the relative tradeoffs. Instead of the Biolite, one would have a cartridge stove - say a canister hooked up to a Pocket Rocket.

I have seen the biolite at my local REI, and I agree, it is too hefty for backpacking. Thinking of another recent thread, maybe it would be something for Jeanette-Isabella to consider. She might get a charge out of it...

With a solar panel, the prevailing opinion seems to be that it will not charge well when on he move, so you really need to be stationary for the rig to work well.

Keeping electronics charged seems to be more and more necessary. Is there anything that uses leg motion?

I'm planning on checking into the various solar panel options. From what little I know of them, solar panels also take a long time to fully charge a phone. The advantage seems to be that you could set the panel out in the sun with the phone plugged in and be doing other things while it charges. With the biolite you need to keep feeding wood into the stove. The other disadvantage with a solar panel is that they seem to require sunlight, which is not always in good supply, at least in my part of the world.

Perhaps some of our other readers can shine some light on the topic of solar panels?

I have the Goal Zero Guide 10 Plus ... -- I like it. I keep a set of "white" NiMH rechargeable batteries in it and have used it to charge my iPhone 4S a few times. No issues, but then I live in the solar friendly (lots of sun) southwest.

There is another thread here on the stove:
http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=17949&Number=255389#Post255389

I have owned and used the BioLite stove since it was first available, in July 2012.

I use it regularly at home with and without the separately purchased grill attachment. It is, in fact, my home grill, and I have found the stove and the grill to be consistently reliable, with well thought-out design (folding legs, nesting power supply). It came in handy for cooking after several storms with power outages.

My location has maybe 20 trees, and storms always provide plenty of fuel for the stove (dropped branches). Many of the other places I frequent have an abundance of twigs and sticks just laying everywhere. When I see it all, I think "free fuel." It is normal to have a good long, hot burn sufficient to cook a meal with two large handfuls of wood that are no longer than 6".

I also use it for heating food while car camping, but mostly we cook over the campfire.

The CampStove has two speeds for the fan. The faster speed burns fuel hotter and faster. You can also vary temperature by the amount of fuel you add over time.

As for charging devices, it doesn't require a sunny day or hazardous fuels, and I have used it to charge a smartphone and USB-chargeable flashlights. I have no problem sitting around after dinner, feeding twigs to this stove while my phone is being charged, and I can easily add 20% to 60% to a smartphone's battery while cooking and hanging out.

It is not the stove to take on your above-treeline hikes, both because of weight and lack of local fuel. Nor should you try to charge any iPad with it.

For me, it has been sturdy, reliable, and useful both as a stove and for USB charging.

I just spent some time on the web, looking at solar and other options for charging my iPhone when I can't plug it in. I'm starting to think one of the small battery devices might be the best fit for my needs. The Morphie Power Station looks especially interesting.

I too got a Biolite the week it was released. Overall I agree with most of what has been written here. It will charge a phone as advertised but not unattended. With the induction fan on HIGH it devours wood at a rapid rate. I will say that it burns very hot and with virtually no smoke; there's nothing left but a very very fine ash. But while it does work it's more of a cool toy than a useful item. I think one of the cooking pots with a bio-thermic generator would be a bit more useful.

Still I think the upcoming Base Camp model is promising.

I don't have the Mophie power station, but I do have a Mophie Juice Pack Air for my 4s -- I like it. The Mophie iPhone case is a reserve power source if the switch is in the red position. In the green it's on and charging the iPhone continuously until it's depleted, so the meter on the iPhone will show 100% until the Mophie starts to deplete. I keep it in red so the Mophie maintains a full reserve charge; switch to green and it dumps into the iPhone.

Nice thing about the Mophie is it takes a standard mini-USB connection and isn't as selective with source. The Goal Zero solar system plugs into the Mophie to recharge the iPhone. I haven't used the proprietary Apple connector in years.

The Mophie is indeed interesting, and it inspired me to look around a bit. I ran across yet another Goal Zero gadget - the Torch 250 - http://www.rei.com/product/880088/goal-zero-torch-250-flashlight

It charges from an integral solar panel, a usb port, or a hand crank (perfect for masochists) and has slightly more capacity than the Mophie Power Station...

The advantages of the solar (and hand crank) devices is that you could use them in the field indefinately, recharging your phone multiple times, without ever needing to plug into into a line or other power source. On the downside, they tend to be bulkier and heavier.

The morphie will allow you to recharge your phone one or perhaps a couple of times, but then you need to plug in the morphie itself somewhere to recharge it. On the other hand, the morphies appear to be very compact and relatively light weight.

For my needs, the morphies look like the better deal. I can see carrying it when traveling. If I run down my phone listening to music on a long flight I can still recharge it to use when I get off the plane, without having to hunt down a place to plug in. And when out in the boonies (but still within cell range), it gives me at least one recharge of my phone. All this for very little weight/bulk.

If I were planning to be out in the woods (but still within cell range) for an extended period, then the solar devices would probably be the better choice.

The GZ Guide 10 recharger holds 4xAA rechargeable batteries and the NiMH AA batteries I have in mine are 2000 mAh each for a total of 8000 mAh; the spec sheet shows four 2300 mAh batteries for 9200 mAh total. The Mophie Powerstation holds 6000 mAh.

IMO the Guide 10 Plus Solar Kit is a better deal. It has the recharger and it comes with a solar panel if the opportunity arises. You can always carry additional AA batteries.

For the record, no affiliation with either Mophie or Goal Zero.

You can't add up mAh and compare like that. Or you can, but only if the voltage is the same.

Let's say you have those nice 2000mAh AA at 1.5 volts, (it's slightly below 1.5v, but it doesn't matter). Put two of those in your GPS, and now you have a two cell (two AA's) battery pack, rated at 3 volts. But that 3 volt package still holds 2000 mAh -- NOT 4000. Same mAh, twice the energy content, because the voltage is doubled.

I guess the batteries inside the Morphie powerstation is about 3.7 volts (that's fairly typical for lithium based rechargeable batteries). That's roughly the energy content of somewhere between 6 and 9 of your 2000 mAh AA's at 1.5 volt.

ahh, my bad. When the GZ website indicated 9200 mAh it also stated at 1.2 volts which would be different than the 6000 mAh at the Mophie's unspecified voltage, but it's safe to assume it's higher than 1.2 volts.

These figure do not tell the whole story.
The voltage of a battery or cell is as important as the mah capacity. The Mophie powerstation is said to be 6000mah, at a voltage not specified but probably 3.7 volts from a single lithium ion cell.

AA rechargeable cells are typically 1.2 volts each, or 4.8 volts for 4 in series.

6000 mah at 3.7 volts is a lot more energy than 4.8 volts at 2000 mah.

Yep, MostlyHarmless pointed that out yesterday -- upthread a couple posts. The Mophie Powerstation looks like a good piece of gear for those without reliable sun.

I'm a big fan of the Waka Waka Power for a compact phone recharging solution that has excellent solar capability. I was a Kickstarter backer of it but otherwise have no affiliation.