Esbit best choice for lightweight stove?

Anything else recommended? Seems like the esbit is about as small and light as you can get.

I own an ESBIT stove, and a bunch of alcohol, and gas canister, and white gas, and wood burning. I use them all for different things. Match the tool to the job.

Yeah, I agree with food. I have several different styles of stoves and probably use most of them at one time or the other. Just depends...I really like the alcohol stove for boiling water. It is simple and very very light. It takes very little fuel to boil a couple of cups of water so the weight trade off for fuel is not that great at all. With that said I do always carry a back-up stove, even if it is another alcohol stove I usually do take a spare. They are pretty flimsy so if one gets damaged, I always have another to work with.

You pretty much got it right: I'd recommend about anything else.

It worked the times I used it, but there is little or no margin for error: use a good windscreen, and don't try to boil too much water.

It lacks the performance of a canister or white gas stove (or even a good alcohol stove), but at least it's slow and smelly.

It will work, but I quit using it after a couple of times; the weight savings were not worth the inconvenience or smell. That's all personal preference, not objective qualities of the stove. I'd say give it a try - but toss another stove in your pack the first time you try it, just in case.

+1 food's comment... it depends. Around a year ago I switched to esbits for most of my solo trips, but different conditions / situations favor other stoves / fuel option. I have written up some thoughts about stove options which you might find useful.

--mark

Good write-up Mark.

The amount of effort it takes to keep your site current is stunning. Our entire backcountry community owes you.

Glad my site has been useful to you. I would guess that on the typical day I spend less than 5 minutes making specific changes to the website. It looks like more of a time sink because it has 10+ years of accumulated notes, and I paste the content of some of my forum posts into the appropriate webpage (e.g. 5 minutes of writing to post, but just 30 seconds dropping it into the website).

--mark

I agree, Food. You may have noticed that I recommend Mark's site a lot!

Mark, Don't be so modest. It's those ten years that really matter. I sometimes spend hours trying to figure out the answer to a question that may be a simple "yes" or "no." It's not always the answer, it's how you got there.

As far as the OP's question, if you are a beginner, nothing beats a canister stove. Yes, they weigh more than Esbits or alcohol stoves made from soda cans, but they have big advantages-easy to use, simmer to full blast, rarely break, pretty cheap to run and you can turn them off any time you want.