Grill Boss - I've Changed The Way I Do The Burn

This is another post I wrote sometime in 2023 but never released. Since everything in here is still relevant I figure it might be time to clear it out of the draft que and release it back into the wild.

BTW, I did just update it with a short video now that I've (sort of) figured out how to use YouTube.

OK, Yeah. This, and the next two photos, have absolutely nothing to do with the subject of today's post - Other than the fact that on my way out to The Van today (March 4) to take the real photos for this post I got distracted.

This one was taken with my trusty Canon SX50 with articulating screen so I can see what I'm doing pretty much no matter how the camera is oriented. In this case right down on the ground shooting horizontally with the screen tilted up so I didn't have to lay down on the ground to see what the lens was looking at.

You can see that this camera does a decent job of getting up close.

In case you are having trouble figuring it out, that's the thorax of a bee hanging upside down with its head stuck deep into a blossom and her stinger-end bent for balance.

 This one was taken with my Galaxy A32 phone.

I had to shoot this blind because A) the screen is fixed and was almost facing the ground and B) in sunlight it's difficult to see the screen even when looking straight onto it.

The Galaxy does a fair job of shooting up close but obviously is a little harsh about rendering edges. The depth of field is tight, rendering all except the immediate subject as soft. Something the artist in me likes.

This one, last one I promise, was again taken with the Canon SX50.

I sometimes struggle to get it to focus on the desired subject so I often wish it had a decent manual focus, (Digital cameras in my price-range don't) but with the Canon I do have easy control over the depth of field by selecting an aperture between 3.4 and 8 at a focal length of 24 so if I want to, like here, I can choose, to a degree anyway, how much to soften the background without turning it into amorphous blobs. In this case choosing an aperture that softens the background but still retains enough detail to "read" what's back there.

One last note here. Two days ago that bright green oak in the upper-center-background  was bare-branches covered with probably literally millions of white flowers so tiny that you have to get up very close to see them  (The bees love them and and the tree buzzes constantly for a few weeks as if it's a hive. And if the wind is right you would swear you just walked into a mall and got ninja-spritzed by a minimum-wage olfactory-terrorist wielding deadly perfume.) It's always one of the early trees around here and true to form has exploded into green almost overnight.

Alright, now to get back to what the hell this post is supposed to be about!

This is the single burner stove I have been using for close to twenty years.

This is the stove

I've been using for about four months now. (Actually about 3 years now in 2026)

There wasn't really anything all that wrong with the Coleman, in fact it continues to work just fine, but the impetus for change was all about footprint. 

Here's the Coleman sitting on two sheets of standard printer paper laid side-by-side.

Clearly the stove itself fits just fine with room left over, but that somewhat awkward feeder pipe/angled-gas bottle combination spills over by quite a bit, greatly increasing the practical footprint of the stove.

Here's the Grill Boss sitting on the same two sheets of paper, gas bottle and all. A significant decrease in consumed counter-space.

Setting up/stowing the Grill Boss is a one-handed single-step operation of moving it, gas bottle and all, from storage shelf to counter and back.

But setting up/stowing the Coleman is a two-handed, multi-step operation.

The Coleman stow operation requires first unscrewing the gas-pipe from the stove.

Fortunately, because of the push-valve in the end of this pipe it can be left screwed onto the bottle cutting out one additional step.

Then tucking the Coleman's bottle with attached pipe into the elastic that keeps it in place inside the cupboard, and finally sliding the stove-body onto the shelf.

Retrieval is just the reverse, still a three-step process.

As long as we're talking about gas bottles. Yes, the two different stoves use two different types of gas, and bottles. -- With an exception I'll get to in a moment --

As of right now the 16 oz green propane bottles can be bought for about $5 apiece, or 31.25 cents per oz, while the 8 oz butane bottles run about $3.10 each, or 38.75 cents per oz. Which means using propane saves me 7.5 cents per oz.

I can't deny that the propane route is more cost effective, especially since I refill my own bottles which cuts the propane cost down even more.

But what is the real cost here? Yes, the propane solution is cheaper. But considering the minimal rate I use gas in my stove, (butane bottles last me about a week and a half of several-times-a-day use, propane bottles last a little short of 3 weeks.) is that 7.5 cents really important in the overall picture of my spending?

Much like using up 30 minutes of your time, not to mention the pint of gasoline which I'm going to ignore here, to drive across town and back for fuel that is 2 cents cheaper per gallon in order to save 30 cents on a 15 gallon fill-up, which means you are paying yourself an eye-watering 60 cents per hour, the real-world costs of propane verses butane need to be put into context - because that's where we live - in the real world - - OK, that's where most of us live - -

For me the increased cost per oz. for butane is not much of a factor in my overall financials-over-time picture so isn't worth getting my panties in a wad over considering the other advantages of the Grill Boss, footprint being only one of them.

As for the argument that propane burns hotter than butane - well that may be true, but my own testing shows that either fuel will bring 12 oz of water to a whistling boil in my teapot in about the same 2 minutes and a few seconds, so I don't care.

As for the argument that the butane bottles can be harder to source - yes, that's true, at times, although at other times it's the propane bottles that can be hard to come by, but at the rate of less than one bottle a week and the ability to store 1.5 times more the fuel in the same space I used to store 2 bottles of propane, at least two months worth, I have had no problem keeping myself well stocked by buying when available.

And I still have storage space left over for one propane bottle.

Wait! Why the hell would I do that!

Well, though I try to avoid inside temperatures below freezing out of personal preference, it has happened a couple of times and butane will not vaporize, which is what you need to light the stove, below 30.2F. Propane will vaporize down to about -40F. So I keep a bottle of propane as backup just in case I screw up - climatologicly wise.

Although the Grill Boss is designed primarily for butane, it's actually a dual-fuel stove and ships with the propane adapter hose coiled up inside. (Of course you don't want to leave it there when using the stove!!)

If things get too cold on me the adapter hose screws into the stove's regulator and then onto the propane tank. (If it's below -40 F rendering the propane useless too I'm probably dead anyway so who cares?)

Of course, since the stove runs on vaporized propane and not liquid propane and this hose is flexible you need to ensure that the tank sits vertical or near vertical when using it this way.

Another thing to pay attention to when using the stove with propane is to ensure that the hose connection to the regulator stays tight because the swivel fitting on this end of the hose is a bit snug and when moving the propane tank around  to get it vertical it's easy for the stiff hose-to-knurled knob connection to loosen the seal with the regulator enough that the resulting leak drains the propane tank slowly enough that your nose or even a nearby propane detector won't notice.

Yep - personal experience - - -  

Because of the design of the butane bottle - stove regulator interface, there is no screwing involved with these tanks.

It's just a matter of laying the tank down into the stove's cradle with nozzle pointed towards regulator, then pushing down on a lever on the front panel to pull the bottle forward and seat and lock it into the regulator.

Yes, again, the stove runs on vapor so the tank must be oriented properly, but even that is a no-brainer with this stove.

You see that notch in the rim of the butane tank? You see how it's turned slightly away from the 12 o'clock position here? Well the design of that little spring-latch thingy resting on top of the rim is such that you can't seat the tank into the regulator this way.

 

That can only happen when the notch lines up with the spring-latch thingy. This is done because inside the tank is a short L-shaped pipe with one end hooked to the nozzle and the other bent towards the side of the can. With notch up that means the inside end of the pipe is at the top of the horizontal can where vaporized butane waits.

Oh, and if the temperature control valve on the front of the stove is anywhere other than in the fully off position, the design of the Grill Boss prevents depressing the lever to seat bottle to regulator, preventing unintended accidents.

Another cool thing about that front-panel lever is that it works in reverse too. Flip it up when not actually using the stove and the butane tank is disconnected from the regulator.

Because of the awkwardness I used to just leave the propane tank connected to the Coleman all the time unless I actually stowed the stove for driving. Now, with virtually zero effort, I can be just a little bit safer with regulator and bottle separated unless I'm actually using the stove.

In a couple of the earlier photos of my Coleman stove you may have noticed a makeshift wind-shield made out of aluminum foil.

Without that, in any kind of breeze I had to close the side door of The Van to prevent the flame from blowing out.

The Grill Boss, shown above with my tea-pot sitting on it, which may be hard to decipher if you weren't the one that took and chose this photo, comes with a 360 degree wind-shield already built into it.

For some reason I take particular delight in this last advantage of the Grill Boss over the Coleman. Maybe because lighting the stove is done several times a day which adds up over time, or maybe just because I'm easily amused. 

Lighting the Coleman is a two-handed, multi-step process.

Open the drawer with one hand and retreive the fire-stick, light the fire stick and hold the flame close to the burner with one hand, while turning the valve on with the other hand, drop the fire-stick back into the drawer and close it.

Lighting the Grill Boss is a two step, one-handed process.

It has a built in, battery-less igniter, doing away with the fire-stick altogether and opening the valve and clicking the igniter is done with the same motion of the same hand. So lighting the stove consists of using one hand to flip the lever down to engage bottle with stove, and with the same hand turn the valve until it clicks once than back to wherever I want the flame set to.

All that is why, other than pulling it out for a photo-op for this post, the Coleman has been living on a shelf for the past four months with other unused gear. (2026 edit: which has since all been dropped off at the resale shop on town during our "death cleaning")