BRS-3000T Review: A Year and a Half With the $15 Backpacking Stove I Still Carry
I’ve owned the BRS-3000T for about a year and a half, and it’s been on pretty much every trip since. It just lives in my pack with the rest of my cook kit and comes out whenever I want coffee or hot water. I paid something like 15 bucks for it on Amazon. For a budget backpacking stove, I think it’s great, and you really can’t beat the price.
It’s a tiny titanium burner that screws onto a fuel canister, weighs almost nothing (around 25 grams), and folds down small enough to disappear in a pot. If you’re comparing the little pocket stoves and trying to figure out whether the cheap one is good enough, this is my honest take after a year and a half of using it.
What I actually use it for
Mostly coffee, and boiling water for meals. That’s what a stove like this is built for, and it does it fine. The boil time isn’t insanely fast, but it gets the job done, and when you’re standing around a trailhead waiting on water, another minute doesn’t really matter.
I’ve heard people cook more elaborate stuff on these little stoves, scrambled eggs, steak bites, actual meals. I haven’t gone that route. If I want to really cook, that’s what my Coleman 2-burner and cast iron are for, off the truck. The BRS is the setup that goes in the pack when weight matters.
The wind, and the tinfoil trick
The honest downside is wind. If there’s a lot of it, good luck. The flame is small and exposed, and a breeze will fight you on both lighting it and keeping a boil going. That’s the one thing people warn you about with the BRS, and they’re right.
I figured out the fix in Zion. I was just outside the entrance, it was super windy, and I was trying to boil water for coffee. Nothing was happening. So I built a little barrier out of tinfoil around the stove, and it worked. It blocks the wind enough to light easily and hold a boil. Now a strip of tinfoil rides in my cook kit as a windscreen. It weighs nothing and it fixes the one real problem this stove has.
Pot stability and fuel
The pot supports look tiny, but honestly they work great. I set my pot on it and it holds fine, no wobble that’s ever worried me. For fuel I run the small MSR canisters, mostly because my whole cook kit nests inside my pot with the canister and the stove, so the whole thing packs down into one tidy bundle. That’s a big part of why it stays in my bag. It takes up almost no room.
Would I buy it again?
Yes, with one caveat. I bought this one because I was on a budget, and for the money it has been hard to argue with. If I were buying again today with a little more to spend, I’d probably step up to something a bit nicer. But that’s not a knock on the BRS. For a cheap, ultralight stove that boils water and packs into your pot, it does exactly what I need.
If you’re backpacking on a budget and you want a stove that weighs nothing and costs about 15 bucks, the BRS-3000T is an easy one to recommend. Just pack the tinfoil.