There's a lot of high-tech gear you could haul into the outdoors these days, but there's also plenty to be said for solutions that take a simpler approach. The Singapore-based designers behind the Ember Stove aren't ones to complicate things, taking to Kickstarter with a compact two-piece cooking solution designed to fit in your pocket and fire up with just a handful of twigs.
The stainless steel Ember looks a little like a miniature dog bowl when packed up, with a diameter of 10 cm (3.9 in) and a height of 3.5 cm (1.4 in) meaning it should slide into a regular pocket without too much trouble. Inside that body it hides a separate upper component that can be pulled out and attached on top, providing a three-pronged cooking platform to hold pots and pans.
Ember is designed to work with natural materials such as twigs, sticks and other flammables you might find around your campsite. Much like other biofueled cookers we've seen recently, such as the Kombuis or the Yukon, it relies on carefully placed air vents to create longer-lasting flames.
It works by drawing air in through its slightly elevated base. Some of that air continues upwards to create the fire, just as normal, while a portion of it travels separately through chambers inside the walls. As it reachers the upper level, vents push it out across the flames to create what the designers call a "fire vortex."
This design is claimed to make flames that burn hotter and longer, while also producing less smoke. This is, again, very similar to the benefits promised by both the Kombuis and Yukon, as well as more technical solutions like BioLite's backyard FirePit.
But the Ember does pack this functionality into a particularly pleasant and compact design. If that is warming your cockles then early pledges of US$89 are currently available. If the crowdfunding campaign runs as planned, the team hopes to ship the stove in September of 2019.
You can check out the team's pitch video below.
Source: Kickstarter