Caravansarai Hookahs

Innovations in a traditional industry don't come easy, especially when those innovations involve a cultural icon that is manufactured in a country with a history of traditions as long as Egypt's.

When customers kept coming to our shop in search of an authentic Egyptian hose that they could wash, being the honestly amazing dude that he is, Ali would always explain that our hoses have a metal coil wire base and that washing them would cause that coil to deteriorate much faster than it would under normal use. So what's a traditionalist like Ali, the amazing Egyptian dude, to do? Innovate, of course!

On his last trip to the family business in Egypt, Ali set our hose makers to work with a new twist on a traditional design. He put them to work making truly washable hoses in the traditional Egyptian style. What they produced is nothing short of amazing. The Caravan Grand Washable Hoses are about 75 inches long, come in a variety of colors, and smoke like a dream!

Who said that the last really great Egyptian innovation was a pyramid?!

So you've got a new shisha flavor in the bowl, the hookah is fired up, and you take the first hit. You may have been expecting to taste the juicy sweetness of summer watermelon or the bite of sour apple, but instead you taste yesterday's flavor du jour! What did you do wrong? What's up with the aftertaste that has taken hold of your hookah hose? The problem with lingering flavors is one that we frequently discuss with customers who call or email us wondering how they can remove the taste that some flavors leave as a calling card in their hookah hoses.

Because hookah hoses are made with porous materials, they will and do absorb flavors. Mint, Double Apple, and Black Licorice are the primary culprits of this phenomenon due to their strength and flavor longevity. Once the flavor is absorbed into the fabric of your hose, you have two choices: (1) just deal with it until another flavor masks it, or (2) use a different hose. Remember, hookah hoses are not washable, so don't think that rinsing a hose with water or a cleaning solution will solve the problem. It won't. In fact, you'll end up creating an even bigger problem as your hose deteriorates much more quickly than it should and will have to be replaced sooner than you had anticipated.

Hookah lounges and cafes, well aware of the issue of lingering flavors, use a separate hose for certain flavors to avoid the problem altogether. Some of them even use a separate hose for every single flavor that they serve! While you don't need to have as many hoses as you do flavors, it is a good idea to follow the first example of using a different hose for flavors such as these:

• Licorice / Aniseed family, including Double Apple
• Mint family, including any flavor mixed with it
• Mixed Drinks family, including Pina Colada, Margarita, and Sex on the Beach among others
• Coconut

Because I didn't focus on a specific molasses brand, there may be other potent flavors on the market that your hoses will absorb. This is easy enough to determine on your own based on how long it takes for the last flavor you smoked with the hose to be replaced with the new one.