Guide To Hose, Bowl, And Hookah Flavor Dedication.

Dedication is basically the assigning of one unwashable hose or one unglazed bowl to a single flavor or group of flavors. The reason for doing this can range from wanting to taste nothing but one flavor to intensifying a flavor. This is something you only want to do with one or two of your favorite flavors. A good for instance of this would be using an unwashable hose for black tobaccos, tombac, or double apple in my case.

Bowls:

Dedicating an unglazed bowl to one tobacco basically serves the purpose of intensifying  the flavor, unglazed bowls are designed to suck up flavor. For the most part you aren't going to want to use the same unglazed bowl for multiple flavors as the flavor will transfer from bowl to bowl.

Hoses: 

Dedicated hose basically do the same thing as dedicated bowls in sucking up a particular flavor, in my opinion it seems to be the best use of an unwashable hose. Using an unwashable  hose for multiple flavors tends to transfer the flavor of the last thing you smoked and allot of the time it takes a few bowls of one flavor to get rid of the flavor of the last thing you smoked. Unwashable hoses can be rededicated to different flavors if need be but if you smoke one flavor out of it for a long time the remnants of whatever you where smoking may be hard to get rid of.

Hookahs:

Hookahs can also be dedicated if you have multiple hookahs. Although hookahs don't suck up flavors much unless they are wooden, it cuts down on the amount of cleaning you have to do. In this case if you enjoy more than one of the 4 categories of tobacco you may want to dedicate one or more hookah(s) to your favorite flavor(s). The four categories that I use for tobacco are: Sweet (Mainly fruit flavors), Spice, Black Tobacco (Black leafs and strong tobacco), and Jurak/Tombac. This will greatly reduce the amount of washing needed. In other cases strength of tobacco could take on categories. Flavors like vanilla and similar flavors will be hard to taste if you just got done smoking zagloul or mint.

New Section And Work On Buyers Guide

Just posted up a couple of dokha reviews and a few on pipe tobacco and snuff, which now has it's own section... I will once again be making a number of changes to the site in order to clear up some more page space. I should also have a hookah buyers guide up by the end of the week so stay tuned.

What To Expect This Week

I started off with a quick review of Al Fakher Double Apple today, there should be a number of new materials up for review here in the next couple of days. A couple of new posts on hookah styles and bowls should be up this week as well. Here is the list of new products I should have up for review this week.

Vortex Bowl
Nirvana Dokha
Tangiers Indian Summer
Tangiers Lucid Horchata
Tangiers Welsh Creme

I doubt that will be all of it, but my memory escapes me on some of the others.

Traditional Moassel, Jurak, And Tombac: Explanation and Experiences

It has occurred to me that a large number of hookah smokers in north america have never been in contact or even heard of traditional style hookah tobaccos. I feel this to be an important thing as it is interesting to know the roots of hookah smoking, tradition, and educate. Over the next few night I will be covering several topics related to the origins, smoking methods, and ingredients of traditional tobacco.

Tombac
This is laterally as traditional as one can get, this was the first form of tobacco smoked out of hookahs. Tombac is a fairly simple tobacco, it is compressed into large sized bricks and dried, sometimes contains a few spices and flavors. The tobacco is soaked for a short while in preparation, then the leaves are squeezed to remove any left over water and then stacked on each other in the bowl. With this form of hookah tobacco the coals are placed directly on top of the tobacco without the use of a foil or screen. This produces a much stronger and harsher smoke that cannot be inhaled like typical molasses and honey based tobaccos that most people are used to. In my experience smoking tombac is a very interesting experience that I find to be enjoyable on occasion but is not something I often smoke for the simple fact that it will start to irritate the lungs if smoked on a daily or regular basis.

Jurak
Jurak is another very traditional tobacco, which is ground down into a paste and flavored with spices and on rare occasion fruits. Jurak contains no kind of glycerin and because of the thick pasty consistency can be quite the pain to get smoking. Smoke from jurak is normally rather thin, and is enjoyed for its complex and spicy flavors rather than for smoke clouds. In my experience with jurak it can be a bit hard to work with but it is a truly unique and amazing smoke.

Traditional Moassels And Tombels
Traditional style tombels and moassels while not terribly common or well know are much easier to find than juraks and tombacs. In fact chances are most hookah smokers have at least seen them in a shop. Included in this group are a number of amazing tobaccos Nakhla Khan El Khalil, Nakhla Zagloul, Desi Murli, Al Faker Soft Black, and Saloum plain are some of the more common traditional tobaccos around. Most of these tobaccos are merely a blend of tobaccos and molasses or honey with no added flavors except for maybe a couple of spices. Glycerin is also lacking in these tobaccos making their smoke output less than impressive but normally very in for face as far as flavor goes. In my experiences with these kinds of tobaccos I have learned that while fruity flavors can be good there is nothing like a good simple traditional smoke.

Hopefully this post has intrigued you in some way or at least been helpful. I feel that it is important for people to branch out in the hookah world and try things that predate all of this commercialized chemical soup that is being sold as premium tobacco. Hookah are something that have been around for a good amount of time and have a rather interesting history and tradition. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post I will be posting a number of post like this one in the next week in an attempt to educate on different kinds of tobacco, hookahs, bowls, hoses, and to share with you all the unique history of the hookah.

New Features

In light of expanding the site and opening it more to users there is now a chat box, which any of you are welcome to use for suggestions, comments, or small talk for that matter. I will be frequenting the blog as much as is possible and expanding on the information on the site greatly in the next few weeks. So stick around and don't hesitate to pipe in.

Chamber Deigns

When buying a new hookah it is important to note the kind of hookah it is, whether it be chinese, syrian, Egyptian, turkish, or whatever else. Some hookahs purge better than others, some have no purge at all. This is especially important if you are new to the hookah scene. A good purge will help salvage a session if your smoke goes harsh or stale.

Common Chambers

Common chambers are perhaps the most common style of chamber found on hookahs, these are found almost exclusively on chinese style hookahs, which just so happen to be the most readily available hookahs on the market. Because of the shared airspace of the hose port and purge valve being in the chamber rather than in the base of the hookah common chambers make it literally impossible to purge smoke in the base of the hookah, witch obviously is where the majority of the smoke is held. The reason for their inability to purge is because instead of the air flowing through the base where the smoke is held it merely travels across the metal chamber and out the purge port leaving the smoke in the vase untouched.

Traditional Chambers

Traditional chambers are found on a wide verity of hookahs, though they are much less common in terms of availability, especially in the states. Traditional style chambers are most commonly found on Egyptian hookahs, but are not uncommon on syrian and lebanese hookahs. Traditional chambers are noted as being the best kind of chamber not only because they allow for all of the smoke to be cleared out of the vase but also because they are much easier to clean, though they do require a brush of some kind to be cleaned. The reason these kind of chambers work so well is because of a shared air space in the chamber its self they have a tube that runs from the hose port and purge valve to the bottom of chamber. The air space is thus shared in the vase rather than the chamber and allows for all the smoke to be purged from the vase.

Lack Of A Purge Valve

Some hookahs lack a purge, but to be honest this is not a common thing to see on most hookahs, this is something that is mainly seen on turkish or lebanese hookahs. This is basically self explanatory, you have no ability to purge because there is no valve with which to purge with. It comes down to they way the turkish smoke, the way they see it, if you cant manage your heat well you shouldn't be smoking.

Below are a few pictures of chambers from a number of common brands on the market so that you can distinguish between chamber designs just by looking at the bottom of the chamber.

Open Common Chamber

Most commonly found on Mya Saray Hookahs, witch are considered top of the line as far as chinese hookahs go. The main advantage to this type of chamber is that it can be easily cleaned and if necessary they can be modified to purge.

Plated Common Chambers

These are the more commonly found chambers on chinese pipes and the kind of chamber that I have on both of my chinese rigs. They are literally impossible to clean out. The most recognizable trait of these chambers is that they have more holes than ports usually. They normally have 4 or more holes on the bottom.

  

Traditional Chambers

These chambers are considered the best purging chambers and are mainly found on Egyptian hookahs and on some syrian and Lebanese hookahs. They have the same number of hoses on the bottom of the stem as there are ports on the hookah. This normally means that there are two holes as most egyptian hookahs have only one hose port and one purge.

Hopefully this post has been helpful. I should have a new section on identifying different hookah styles and their advantages sometime late this weekend. Stay tuned.

Other Information Section... And more...

Just posted a section called "Other Information". This section will be used for links to older posts that have some importance so it isn't necessary to dig them up. As I mentioned I should have a bowl packing section up tomorrow... I may do a bit more reorganizing tomorrow to try to uncluttered the set up of the page. None the less at the moment I will not be posting anything new as far as tobacco reviews go for at least a good week so I am going to take the time to get things organized to my liking. Again feel free to ask questions make a comment or make a suggestion, weather it be a tobacco you would like to see a review on or just a question about a hookah you are looking at... What ever it may be I am here to inform and answer whatever questions you may have.