Most of the best camping stoves are in the 20,000 to 30,000 BTU range. That gives you plenty of power for quick boil times and high-heat cooking while staying compact and fuel efficient. Perfect for those times when trail mix just won’t cut coleman stove it, the Cascade Classic Camping Stove makes it easy to cook great meals outdoors. Its compact design makes it easy to bring along on your adventures, and its chrome-plated grate and aluminized steel cooktop are quick and easy to clean.
BTUs are closely related to cooking power, but they’re not everything. In our tests, the stoves with the highest BTUs weren’t necessarily the quickest to boil water or cook food. Wind resistance and the distance of your cookpot from the burners make a big difference. Still, BTUs are a good place to start to determine the cooking power of a stove. Without any kind of windscreen, the Gas One struggled with our wind test. Surprisingly though, it still beat out both of the Coleman camping stoves, bringing water to just a few degrees below boiling in 15 minutes of high wind.
This Coleman Model 527 stove has a gasoline roarer burner that generates 2,500 BTU’s. The wrench on the chain also serves to operate the stove. Two extra generators are in the tube under the tank at the right end. This stove, in John Bell’s collection, includes the instructional booklet with a printer’s date of Dec. 1943. Michael Hawks acquired this unmarked from a retired Coleman engineer who told him that there were two of these prototypes of the 520 stove made in early 1941.
Joe gave the stove back to his boyhood friend, Tim French; the stove had belonged to Tim’s father. Note the two different grates on this model – on “open type” on the left and “no burn type” on the right. Joe notes that the left grate is nearly identical to the center grate on the Bungalow Cooker above. After WWII the Coleman Speedmaster, Model 500 stoves were made with green painted brass founts through the first half of 1946. After that they were made with nickel plated brass founts and after the first half of 1951 the founts were again made with green painted brass .
After 15 minutes, it had only brought water up to 155 degrees. The Coleman Classic, which was second to last, had the temperature up to 184. We never thought we’d describe a camping stove as “fun,” but coleman camp stove that’s exactly what the BioLite is. The wind screens provide some help against breezy campsites. However, the Coleman Classic only heated water to 184 degrees in our wind test — a far cry from boiling.
This stove, in Dana Kennison’s collection, was less expensive than 413C above and had a smaller cooking surface. The tip cleaner valves are above the fuel control valves on these Military Heating Units. These military heating units have fittings in the top of the tanks for supporting a grate as on Models 521 and 522 above. The dimensions of the Coleman Dual Fuel 2 Burner Stove are 6.5”H x 13”W x 20”L and it weighs 10 lbs putting it a little lighter than the rest of the group. Overall, it’s a little more compact in size so it won’t accommodate as large of a pan as some of the other 2 burner stoves.