February 28 2019

Add More Flavor And Thicker Clouds With These 3 Easy Hookah Tricks And Tips

Have you ever loaded a bowl of shisha and just wanted more?  More smoke, thicker clouds, more flavor? Everyone has been there and whether it's an issue with the hookah, shisha, your technique or bad luck, we have 3 easy tips and hookah tricks to make sure you get the best taste from your shisha tobacco and thickest clouds from your hookah almost every time.

Hookah Smoking Tip #1 - Making your Shisha Taste Better

When you first get your hookah, the flavors are so rich and delicious.  Every bowl of every flavor is amazing.  However, with each bowl a thin layer of residue begins to build up inside your hookah, base, bowl, and hose.  Little by little, the delicious flavor is masked by a process called "ghosting" due to that residue muddling your flavors. Go ahead, set up your hookah and take a full pulls without the bowl. What do you taste?  It's usually not an awful flavor, which is why you probably haven't done anything about it, but it does mask the pure shisha taste you remember loving so much.  Little by little, your shisha has been losing flavor and you probably didn't notice until it was too late!  No one likes to spend their Saturdays cleaning, and the good news is you don't have to either, but some 10 minute maintenance on a regular basis goes a long way.  Check out our general hookah cleaning instructions or our recent update on cleaning your hookah hoses. These quick and easy applications will keep your shisha flavors rich and delicious. However, if you maintain a sparkly clean hookah, there are alternative ways to enhance your hookah smoke flavor:

CocoBrico Hookah Coals - The CocoBrico natural coconut coals are some of the hottest coals on the market, no pun intended, and are one of our office favorites as well. CocoBrico's are going to be a natural charcoal that has a minimal odor and smell which allows you to cleanly taste the flavor of your shisha while smoking. These coals also burn longer than quick lighting charcoal increasing the length of your typical hookah session! 

Add Fruit - If you have a large enough base and you're smoking fruity, sweet flavors: add some real fruit! This will help improve your flavor dramatically by adding some extra natural sweetness to your inhale. This is also a great way to add some flair to your hookah as well! 

Hookah Smoking Tip #2 - Get Thicker Clouds of Hookah Smoke

Every brand of hookah tobacco has its own unique smoking properties, richness of flavor, "buzzy-ness," and smoke thickness.  While it's nearly impossible to enhance all three smoke qualities simultaneously, you can improve any one of them pretty easily.  If you want to get thicker clouds so you can blow the fattest smoke rings and do other hookah smoke tricks, keep reading.  Try the "Yeti" approach.  Fill your hookah base with ice, and just enough water to cover the downstem, then use an iced out hookah hose accessory like the Mystique or Soguk that cools the smoke just before you inhale. Here's how it works:  You can use more coals with all the ice and the smoke will be thicker without getting harsh, plus when air cools, it condenses, so you can actually fit more smoke in your lungs.  As your body warms the vapor, it expands and you exhale more than you inhale!  Dude, it's science!  You may sacrifice some flavor for these puffy clouds, but the thickness will be undeniable!

Kaloud Lotus Heat Management System - The Kaloud Lotus should vastly improve your ability to manage the heat being applied to your hookah bowl. With a little added ease of use and improved heat management, the Kaloud Lotus will help you blow billowing clouds of hookah smoke in no time flat. 

Try a Dense Pack - Dense packing is a bowl loading process that utilizes more shisha in one bowl to increase the amount of smoke output. To do so without overpacking, just load it into a bowl as you would normally, and pack the extra layer in tightly. It's recommended to use a shisha fork or perhaps a foil poker to create some pockets of air to help heat flow through your bowl while smoking. Keep in mind that this method works far better with juicy shisha such as Starbuzz or Fumari as opposed to drier shisha, so with a slightly drier brand like Al-Fakher poking holes down in to the shisha to create additional airflow is the key to success.

Add a Heba Diffuser - The Heba Diffuser is a tiny little device that will make a huge difference in the smoke your hookah will produce. Snap this little guy onto the bottom of your downstem and you will notice a difference right away. The diffuser will help to break the smoke down in to smaller particles as passes from the stem in to the water in your base allowing the water to filter out heavier particles in the smoke more efficiently. Your airflow will be much smoother throughout your hookah, and the increased airflow will increase overall smoke production. This also helps to quiet down the rumbling sound from your hookah as well.  Win - Win!

Try Different Sizes of Hoses - Not all hoses are created equal and sometimes swapping to a hose with a different diameter/gauge can help you get a better draw from your hookah. If you've been using a small washable hose or something similar and you feel that the air flow is a bit too restricted you may try switching to a larger hookah hose such as the Starbuzz Maximus Hookah Hose which can help to create a more wide open draw from the hookah. Inversely, if you are using a wide gauge hose and you feel like it takes too much lung power to get a full draw  from the hookah try switching to a smaller gauge hose like a Ripper Silicone Hose to help create a tighter pull from your hookah. 

Hookah Smoking Tip #3 - Better flavor and More Hookah Smoke, The Double Whammy!

Get back to basic fundamentals.  I have no doubt that you can load a bowl much faster now than when you first started smoking hookah. However, I'd be willing to bet you used to be much more careful about the placement of each leaf in the bowl, while these days you just throw it in there. The next time you load a bowl, take an extra minute when packing the shisha in the bowl so that it as fluffed up and loosely packed as possible to allow air to easily pass through the bowl when you inhale. Check out our hookah bowl loading blog for a quick refresher course.  You might have to puff for a couple minutes before it really gets going but here how it works and why its worth it.  

The loosely filled hookah bowl allows hot air to vaporize flavors from the surface of more individual shisha leaves without burning the top layer. You get a better vaporization with more flavor and thicker smoke before the bowl gets harsh.  Invest a couple extra minutes in your set up and reap the rewards of the better flavor and thicker smoke.  Your friends will soon call you the "Hookah Master."

Do you have any other tips or tricks that make your hookah smoke better?  Have you tried these recommendations and what was the result?

Let us know how we are doing and help our hookah community become the best online source for hookah knowledge!