I picked up this Coleman Hyperflame 2 burner stove a couple years ago as we have been doing more and more boil-ups for more and more crew members on our outdoor adventures. The small portable mini stoves are great for a couple hands, but when cooking for a larger crowd with bigger pans & more food it's nice to have a larger sturdier stove.
This stove happened to be on sale when I purchased it at Crappy Tire and had a lot of great features. First it looked easy to clean, had wind blockers incorporated into the pot rests surrounding the burners and had lots of BTU's; as its rated at 22,000 BTU's with both burners on max.
It also came with grill plates that install in place of the pot rests turning half or all of the stove into a small BBQ. I haven't used these yet as we usually have a BBQ with us, either French's Charbroil mini, or my Webber 14" Smokin' Joe.
To date we have used the hyperflame extensively, fall, winter and summer. From cooking in the woods, on the hood of the Argo, or set up in the salmon fishing camping trailer, its worked great in all conditions.
The unit comes set up to run on 1lb disposable cylinders. They work fine but in some conditions need to be thawed with hot water as they frost up and decrease BTU's. I picked up a portable 5lb refillable cylinder and adaptor hose which lets the stove run much better in all conditions year round.
Periodically I take the stove completely apart by removing a half dozen or so screws, particularly when Bassan has pasta boil over while cooking. This keeps the stove looking and smelling brand new for as long as I own it. Overall it's an easy stove to keep clean.
The only thing you have to watch our for is running the burners on low for simmering stuff. On low setting sometimes they pop and go out so you have to re-ignite. This is greatly reduced when using the 5lb tank vs the 1lb cylinders. Keep stirring any item your simmering such as sauces, rice and pasta. The burners put out a lot more heat than most stoves even at their lowest setting so keep the food moving. With that said, its one of the fastest stoves I've ever used to boil a pot or kettle of water. All in all its been a great unit, the only improvement that could be made would be better performance and better control of low heat settings on the burners.
Cheers, Mike
Copyright © 2011 Michael Smith
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