Coleman  PEAK1 2-Burner Camp Stove

This stove is heavy and too bulky for real backpacking, but it packs a punch in BTU’s on the table at a picnic place or at your Tailgater. It will boil a half liter of water in 6 minutes at 7 C, and can simmer or boil easily. The removable burner rings allow easy cleanup after that bacon and eggs breakfast. The cast-iron rings help with heat distribution and give a stable base for small and large cook-pots. The zippered case makes transport and storage easy, and the separate pocket for the fuel-pipe (and a lighter - more on that later) is a really nice touch. The knobs allow easy regulation of gas flow, and a built in igniter is, while standard on most drives, still a nice feature. On the other hand, the burners are a bit small for larger cast-iron pans (I have a 14” I used for testing), though the are perfect for a kettle of water or a 8” fry pan. The stove can be used with both burners, but in colder temps (<10C) this will overtax the 1lb gas bottle. Fine tuning the flame takes some practice as it is hard to see in daylight. The flame ring distributes the flame me well in the center zone. I do miss the wind-guards you could create out of life and side-shields on the old liquid fuel Coleman’s. In be a windy climate like Illinois that feature would be a real boon! The stove worked well for the three weeks I tested it, but the igniter on the right burner was not 100% reliable - hence the lighter. Perhaps Coleman will optimize this feature. Unboxing was a easy and pretty intuitive, though taking the stove out of the case before use was not well communicated - especially as the case makes a nice smaller wind wind-break.

I returned this item after trying to use it camping several times. It would get way too hot on what should be low settings and efforts to adjust it down to something I could cook pancakes at was nearly impossible. I’ve cooked on camp stoves (white gas and propane) for over 30 years and never had a problem dialing in the right setting for lower temp things like pancakes. But on this stove, I could only burn them or turn it so low the flame went out (no wind). So then we got a temperature gun to see if we could figure out roughly where the temps were at on various settings. The control knob turns around twice on this stove, so theoretically, one turn (or thereabout) should be something of a medium temp. But at just the halfway point of the first turn, the flame got the cast iron griddle to around 600 degrees. Same for our cast iron pan. Then, adjusting it down was a problem because it would make very little difference initially, but then the temp would drop 200 or more degrees with just the very slightest turn. Turn it back up just a tiny bit and it goes up 200 or more degrees. Trying to get it down to a temp that would cook pancakes without me wanting to rip my hair out was too much effort. It’s camping—I’m supposed to be relaxed and having fun! I returned it and got a different brand stove and it works like a charm. No burned pancakes.