Caravansarai Hookahs: Hookah Tips

Showing posts with label Hookah Tips. Show all posts

REVIEW: 3 Kings Charcoal

Most hookah fans have heard of 3 Kings charcoal, even if they haven't used it. In the wonderful world of hookahs, the 3 Kings brand is known as the best of the best as far as instant lighting charcoal goes. I like to call it the Rolls Royce of hookah coals.

Ali, the amazing Egyptian dude and our resident hookah master, didn't like to use the instant light type of coals. Ok, so he's a bit old-fashioned because he prefers the natural wood type coal that is used in Egypt. But with so many customers stopping by our shop for a chat and a hit, it became necessary for him to find a coal that he could start and use fairly quickly. Enter 3 Kings -- no, not the guys riding on camels through the desert night! I'm talking about the charcoal brand. 3 Kings comes from Holland, where it was originally made for burning incense. Ease of lighting and lack of aftertaste soon made the 3 Kings brand a popular choice among hookah users, too.

3 Kings comes in tw

o sizes: 33mm tablets and 40mm tablets. For the 32" tall hookahs that we use at the shop, Ali uses the smaller size most of the time because it fits so nicely in the center of our charcoal screens. No matter which size tablet you prefer, both of them come in a box with 10 foil-wrapped rolls with 10 tablets in each roll.

The coal can be started easily with a torch type cigarette lighter, but Ali gets them going by putting them on the coils of an electric hotplate so that he can do other things while they heat up. These coals don't smell, burn evenly and consistently, produce a smooth ash that isn't super messy, and leave no aftertaste in the shisha. A single 33mm tablet will last 25-30 minutes; one 40mm tablet lasts about 45 minutes to an hour.

Ratings:
Quality = 10/10
Price = 8/10

Hookah Etiquette: East Meets West Halfway

The Middle East is a region rich in tradition and custom, where certain behaviors govern social interaction, so it should come as no surprise that a set of expectations, or etiquette, surrounds smoking the hookah, too. As the hookah's popularity spread across the ocean to the West, the rules of etiquette evolved to suit the different lifestyles of the smokers. I thought it would be interesting to see how the East meets the West when it comes to hookah smoking behavior.

Eastern Hookah Etiquette

*First and foremost, smoking hookah is about social interaction. Smokers gather around a hookah, whether by sitting around a table together or in a circle on the floor, thus enabling them to see one another face-to-face and to communicate comfortably.

*Relaxation is key to hookah enjoyment. Smoking hookah takes time, moves slowly, and is never hurried. Enjoy a cup of tea Middle Eastern style, Turkish coffee, or Arabic coffee and share the events of the day with friends. Alcohol is not part of the hookah tradition in the Middle East.

*Keep the competition for the soccer (football) field. There's no need to compete with friends for a turn with the narghile, so smokers take their time with the hose and pass it along only when they are satisfied.

*Don't blow smoke! In the faces of others, that is. Watch where those smoke rings go because it is considered rude to blow smoke at or near others. It is best to exhale in an upward or sideways direction, allowing the smoke to go over the heads or away from the faces of the others in the group.

*Hoses belong in the right hand. Because people in the Middle East use the left hand for personal hygiene, it is considered unclean and should never be used to smoke hookah.

*The hookah belongs on the floor not the table. As a service object, the argile should never be placed on the same level as those whom it will serve. The average height for an authentic Middle Eastern hookah is 32" (81 cm) to accommodate its placement on the floor while making the hose(s) and head easy to reach.

*Don't pass the hose directly unless absolutely necessary. The proper way to indicate that the hose is available for another smoker is to place it on the table for someone else to pick up. If the hose must be passed to the next user, hold it in the right hand and keep the tip pointed at yourself.

*Although not a common practice, smoking a cigarette during a hookah session is rude only when the cigarette is lit from the narghile charcoal or the ashes dumped on the hookah tray.

Western Hookah Etiquette

*Smoking hookah is an individual as well as a group activity, thus it is not unusual to find people who enjoy their pipes without sharing.

*Relaxation is not always of prime importance to a smoking session. Hookah lounges in the U.S. often have loud music or a television blaring in the background, making conversation challenging at best. Many Western smokers mix argile and alcohol which sometimes causes raucous behavior and a total loss of manners.

*Competition is an issue only when it comes to who gets the biggest smoke cloud or makes the best smoke rings. Smokers typically take only a puff or two before passing the hose off to someone else.

*Blowing smoke directly in someone's face is rude, but sharing smoke mouth-to-mouth is cool. Go figure!

*Holding the hose in the right or left hand doesn't matter. Individual smokers typically use their dominant hand.

*Smokers may still gather around a hookah, but the pipe is often placed on the table instead of the floor. Although this practice breaks with the traditional rules of etiquette, it does elevate the hookah to a place of admiration so that smokers can marvel at its beauty. This practice also allows for the use of shorter hookahs.

Whether you follow the traditional etiquette or enjoy the adaptations of the rules made in the West, smoking hookah is meant to be an activity that allows you to escape from the hectic and often frantic pace of everyday life. So enjoy the hookah experience with or without these rules!

Hookah Hoses: A Separate Peace

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.

To Tip or Not to Tip: Hookah Hose Hygiene

The social aspect of smoking hookah means that at some point, multiple users will be sharing a hose. Unfortunately, that also means that you'll share all the germs from the other users as well. Eeeewww!!

The best way to avoid the germ issue is by using a plastic mouth tip on the end of your hose, but how can you tell whether your hose needs a male or a female tip?

To determine the type of tips you need for your hookah hose, it's best to think in terms of anatomy. Hoses that have a metal tip protruding from the end are male hoses and need female tips. If your hose does not have a metal tip sticking out at the end, it is female and needs male tips (shown above). Although this is the general rule, here's a nice tip to know: male mouth tips will actually work on both types of hoses!

Hookah Repair

In the long history of hookahs, using rubber or lightweight plastic gaskets to seal off air is a very new phenomena. So if you have problems with air leaks, they can be fixed quite easily. All you have to do is return to the traditional way of assembling the hookah.

To seal a leak between the shaft and the base when the rubber gasket is missing, wrap electrical tape around the shaft at the portion that sits in the neck. Use as much as you need for the shaft to sit snugly in the base. Although this method works like a charm, the electrical tape doesn't last long because it gets wet and loses its stickiness in a relatively short time.
The traditional way to seal the shaft at the base is to use strips of cotton fabric. Cut the strips about 1" wide and wrap them around the portion of the shaft that sits in the neck of the base. Again, use as much as you need so that the shaft sits snugly in the base.
If you have lost the grommet that holds your hose securely in the shaft, replace it with electrical tape, masking tape, or a piece of fabric wound around the non-smoking end of the hose. Whenever possible, use the fabric as your first option.

Many people in the Middle East still use these traditional methods of assembling a hookah, and many of the coffee shops there have continued this practice.

Cultural Device vs. Drug Paraphernalia

The funniest thing happened at our warehouse today! A very nice young man who bought a hookah from us on Friday came in looking rather flustered. Since Ali was busy preparing a huge order for a wholesaler, I went to the showroom to greet the poor fellow. It turns out that he needed a replacement glass because his was already broken. When I asked him what happened, especially because he hadn't had the hookah very long, the guy tells me that he and group of friends spent the weekend at another friend's beach house. He took his brand new hookah with him to share with his buds. The guys had a great time on Saturday night mixing different shisha flavors with each bowl and judging who had come up with the best mix. All was great until early Sunday morning when our customer was awakened to the sound of shattering glass. Thinking that a robbery was underway, the guys all jumped out of bed and went running in various directions through the house. Imagine our customer's surprise when he dashed into the kitchen and found his friend's mother with a hammer in her hand and his hookah smashed to smithereens! Turns out the mom thought that her son and his buddies were using drugs in that thar hookah and wanted to let them all know that she wasn't going to tolerate it, especially in her home. Feeling rather embarrassed when the guys explained all about the hookah, the mom gave our cusstomer money to replace the one she destroyed.

All's well that ends well, I suppose. . .

But still, I am left wondering how many people still have that 60's mentality about the hookah? I'm not so silly as to think that there aren't people who use the hookah for substances other than what it was intended for, but surely those folks aren't dumb enough to drag a 32" pipe with them from house to house while they party, right? And hello, from what I remember of my younger days, pot and shisha have vastly different aromas! Since when was the last time you smelled pina colada flavored marijuana, LOL?!

Caravansarai Hookahs

Recent News