Propane or Butane for camp cooking?

I’ve got a single burner that runs off of butane and I take it for a quick overnight or in my drift boat.

It’s nice for certain things.

I’ve got a Eureka camp stove that runs off propane that hardly sees any action.

Typically I’m bringing my 22” Blackstone griddle and use my Jetboil to make coffee on most camp trips.

I have a coleman double that runs on the 1 lb propane tanks and a smaller single burner that runs on butane. I only use butane if I'm just making coffee or reheating food I already cooked

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have a coleman double that runs on the 1 lb propane tanks

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It doesn’t have to.

I loathe those tanks.

If you're car camping I'd go ahead and get a double burner coleman style (there are many decent brands making similar these days) and be done with it. Sure you'll only use 1 burner 90% of the time but you've got a second if you need it (coffee and bacon) and you're not carrying it so not really any penalty. They're also way easier to cook on than some little butane backpacking stove. The little green tanks are cheap and easy and you can always get an adapter for a bigger tank if you wanted to.

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. I refill then 1 lbers myself so dont mind using them

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My buddy does that but I still don’t see the point in wasting my time to fill them.

I carry a 5 lb or 20 lb tank depending upon the trip.

To each their own.

Thanks to all. Ended up picking up the little Butane one from Academy.

LINK

I went by thinking about the double burner Coleman, but they didn't have any in stock. The only double burner setup they had was a big one with legs that used a 20 lb propane tank, and that is just too much to deal with. We have plenty to set up on our scout camping trips, but I think this one will be fine when I just take my boys.

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Something to think about is the cold. Butane gets near useless at low temps because the vapor pressure is so low it will barely flow. A butane lighter or striker is miserable to try ti use in sub zero temps.

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You won’t find that often in central Alabama and when it does happen I wouldn’t be camping anyways. In fact this weekend is probably the coldest we’d see on a camping trip. Low 40s at night and upper 50/low 60s in the day.

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I've used one of these for years.

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That's what we had the most of at the campout we went on. I think there were three of those, and two of the Coleman fold and go models. I was hoping they'd have either one of those, but all out of stock. I'm going to test out the butane one I bought tonight. I may end up eventually getting a dual burner one, but if this one works great for our needs I'll probably just keep using it.

Update, the camping trip was a success. The little butane burner worked great. I have that same Stanley french press coffee maker, and it got the water to a simmer pretty quickly. Then we cooked a package of bacon and fried some eggs. I took a cast iron skillet and it fit perfectly. I'll probably take my larger one next time just to be able to put more bacon in at one time. Even with it being in the low 40s Saturday morning, it put out a decent flame and worked great. I may upgrade to a dual burner at some point, but for now this little $35 one did the job.

Sidenote, my boys are 6 and 11, and while they share some of the same interests, I told my wife after we got back that I may want to take them separately once to really let each of them do what they like without fussing with the other one. We went to a nearby state park and just stayed one night. The older one is great at helping set up the tent and haul stuff from the car, and the younger one sort of gets in the way. But the younger one wants to go and do things like hiking, fishing, hitting up playgrounds, while the older one is content to sit by a campfire, holding our dog, and just relax. I'm thinking on a Friday night I'll take the older one, and have my wife or daughter bring the little one out and let them both hang out for a while, then come pick up our older son before sunset.