I couldn’t decide which hookah tobuy so I bought them all.

The Mizo line of tobacco from Nakhla is one of the best products on the market. Let’s just get that statement out of the way. I love this line of tobacco and I think that it’s one that every hookah smoker should check out. Recently, Nakhla released some new flavors for their Mizo line and it’s about time I actually try some of them. I started with the raspberry.

The smell of Nakhla Mizo Raspberry, in the box, is a combination of raspberry candy and natural raspberries. The slightly artificial notes are not over powering but this smells like some kind of raspberry dessert that has been made with a combination of raspberry preserves and raspberry baking flavoring. I wasn’t all that surprised by this smell, as it is a more modern style tobacco.

The clouds are pretty great. Being a tobacco in the Nakhla Mizo line, this tobacco is a very wet product with a fairly high glycerin content.

The flavor is similar to the smell but not the flavor bomb that I thought it might be. Nakhla is known for being very flavorful and fairly accurate. I believe that they have succeeded, but I wish the flavor could be a little stronger. I would be worried that adding additional flavoring would cause it to taste artificial and cloying so I am fairly happy with this tobacco as it is.

7 out of 10 I had very high hopes for this tobacco an I do not feel slighted. I do feel that it could stand to be improved upon a little bit. But I think this is a solid tobacco that’s worth checking out. If you like raspberry flavors, which I do, this is a good option. Just don’t expect it to knock your socks off with the flavor you would get from a mouthful of raspberries.

My work area:

If you have been following my reviews for any period of time then you have likely realized that I love spice flavors and a lot of offbeat tobaccos. I have discussed some of the Kashmir flavors from Tangiers before and, in general, I love them. I have also talked about the Tangiers peach flavors, which I think are some the best peach flavors on the market. Let’s combine the two for ultimate victory, shall we?

Tangiers Kashmir Peach is exactly what it sounds like. It’s Kashmir and peach. The smell is spicy and slightly floral with a nice fruity sweetness. The room note of the tobacco is like spiced, baked peaches with a pastry crust. My girlfriend actually said that the room smelled like blueberry muffins when I was acclimating the tobacco.

The actual flavor is a bit weaker than I thought it was going to be. With the punch of Kashmir flavor that Kashmir Cherry and Kashmir Prune were, I thought that this would be similar. The peach flavor is similarly strong. Overall, I would say that this is a medium strength flavor where it could have been a very strong one. Perhaps they pulled back on the Kashmir to not overpower the peach. I’ll have to run some experiments and see what kind of blend I can make.

This flavor is only available in the Noir line so expect a bit of a nicotine kick.

7 out of 10. This is by no means a bad flavor. In fact, I really like it. The flavors are well balance, very pleasing and smooth. It is hard to describe the flavor of Kashmir, but if you like Kashmir and peach then you will like this one a lot. My only complaint is the strength. I think that instead of buying Kashmir peach, I am going to buy plain Kashmir and one of the Tangiers peach flavors and mix my own for a more intense flavor experience.

Hookah did you know it was a hookah? Did you peak?

(I admit, its pretty cheesy)

My husband, much like the hookah he’s building, is a constant work in progress.

Nakhla Double Apple is a staple in the hookah smoking world. It is the most smoked hookah tobacco on the planet but some people don’t really like the flavor of aniseed. Personally, I love it if it’s done right. For those that on’t like the aniseed flavor, there are other options. Bahraini Apple is one of the best options.

Bahraini Apple is more of a true apple flavor. It is a red apple flavor through and through. There are still some spicy flavors and a little bit of aniseed but it’s muted and more in the background. I really enjoy this flavor and this is a solid change of pace for the double apple smoker.

This flavor is a little hard to find because only a few vendors carry it but if you can find it it’s worth the purchase.

8 out of 10 I think that this is one seriously solid flavor and it’s a great step toward double apple. Even if you really don’t like double apple, this is a solid apple flavor. It’s one of the best apple flavors on the planet. It doesn’t have that waxy flavor that so many apple flavors seem to have. I really suggest buying it and keeping it in rotation.

This is a bit of an experiment that I ahve been wanting to run for a while. I finally got my hands on some Charcos charcoal and I wanted to see if it could be used for hookah. First, a little background.

This brand of charcoal is designed for grilling but I was curious to see if it could be used for hookah as well. I contacted the company and discovered that they make a version of this charcoal for hookah but they don’t distribute it in the US. I was assured that the recipe was practically the same between the two lines and that the grilling charcoal would work fine for hookah and that it wouldn’t cause any health issues. So, I ordered 10 kilos of charcoal. That is a lot of charcoal, but I figured if it didn’t work for hookah I could still use it in my grill.

The coals themselves are very large. They are about three times the size of a Coconara flat. They are, understandably, about three times heavier as well. This makes sense considering that they are designed for grilling. You are going to want larger pieces of charcoal than you would with hookah. This had me worried about overheating my bowl so I decided to go with my Tangiers Small Funnel because it is so large.

I lit a good number of these coals in the traditional way, with a charcoal chimney. I also lit a Coconara on the pile of red hot charcoal and the Charcos took about three times as long to light. That’s not surprising in the least.

Taking a single Charcos and the one Coconara, I placed both pieces of charcoal on my bowl. I was very careful about balancing the Charcos on the edge of the bowl so as to not overheat my tobacco. Once the bowl fully warmed up I actually got decent clouds and didn’t experience any kind of charcoal flavor. I never got any headaches or other symptoms associated with bad charcoal and carbon monoxide poisoning.

The big problem is their durability. Once they are lit, these coals are very fragile. The first time I ashed the Charcos it broke into three pieces. Two of those three pieces shattered when I tried to move them a little later and became useless piles of charcoal dust. I’m glad that I smoke outside.

2 out of 10. The final conclusion is not a positive one. There was no flavor or toxic fumes coming off these coals, which I will be happy to use when grilling. But the fragility of the charcoal makes them pointless for hookah smoking. If you are really scrapped for money then I could see using these outside but never inside your home. The price would be amazing if these were better for hookah smoking, but they aren’t so don’t bother.

I’ve been severely lacking in any kind of double apple in my life recently and I have been feeling those familiar cravings. To satisfy this I broke my usual trend of only buying hookah tobacco online and decided to visit a local shop. the only shop I could find with some DA was a little place that wasn’t really a hookah shop or smoke shop, but just a kind of convenience store that stocked some tobacco. The only option I had was Al Fakher 2, which is a double apple flavor.

This blend was released to compete with the wildly popular Nakhla Double Apple, which is one of the most commonly smoked tobaccos in the world. It’s also considered the gold standard for double apple, or two apple flavors.

The smell is good. It’s a light apple standing behind a decent licorice and anise scent. The presence of a distinctly licorice type scent was a little disconcerting but I found the smell to be nice and pleasant.

I found the flavor to be a little bit of a disappointment. The flavor started with a strong licorice flavor that I am no longer surprised by with DA flavors, but it’s not what I want. This flavor remained dominant with just a little apple-like flavors poking through mid session. The licorice mellowed out a bit and became more enjoyable, but it’s not the aniseed flavor that should be coming through with a good DA flavor.

6 out of 10. All in all, I don’t think this is the competition for Nak DA that AF was hoping for. It’s not bad and for only $10 for 200g it’s not overly expensive. If you like DA then you might want to give this one a try. If you like licorice then you should definitely try this one but I want the complexity associated with aniseed rather than the single note of licorice. I know some people that really love it, but for my money I am sticking to Nakhla Double Apple when the craving hits.

There are three piece n a hookah that are the hardest to clean. The vase, the hose port and the purge. With a little finesse you can clean them pretty easily and tonight I am going to tell you how I get my vases looking s good as the day I bought them.

We’ve all had a vase that forms a ring of residue around the waterline. It’s a combination of molasses that has dripped down the stem, smoke particles, nicotine and other gross stuff from the smoke. Hookah smoking isn’t healthy. Stop kidding yourself. So what do we do to remove this?

Of course, you can use a vase brush but they usually don’t reach the shoulders of the vases and you can’t quite get the angle right to clean every nook and cranny. There are some vases that are almost impossible to fully clean with just a vase because of their design. Vases with sloping sides are the easiest but anything with a square shape or other angles are a pain.

You could get a whole set of high-grade bottle brushes and try to clean those hard to reach places but that’s going to cost a pretty penny and might not even do the job well. I have another suggestion.

Uncooked Rice

I’m serious. It’s an old trick for cleaning hard to reach areas in glass that I learned about through my use of glass carboys in brewing. Those can build up some sticky fun that you need to get out and most things short of a pressure washer aren’t going to do it. The process is simple. Put a little uncooked rice in the bottom of your vase, maybe a handful, and cover it with just enough water so it sloshes around. Then cover the mouth of the vase and commence the sloshing. make sure the rice passes over the dirty areas and you’ll be surprised how clean it gets.

The principle is pretty simple. The rice is harder than the gunk but softer than the glass so it doesn’t scratch the vase. It is abrasive enough to remove the left over residue though. After the cleaning is done just rinse out the vase and discard the rice. Simple as that.

Make sure to use this trick before company comes over so they don’t see your rig and turn up their noses. A clean hookah makes for a clean smoke so make sure to give the whole rig a good once over regularly.

Hookah-Shisha.com has a good selection of hookah cleaning kits too. Check them out.