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hot red coals for hookah shisha in a metal bowl with smoke on a color background

How to choose good quality coconut coals for hookah?

All brands of hookah carbons have many parameters and testable properties by which their quality can be determined. It is important to say that today’s selection of carbons is really wide and, most importantly, of very high quality. Most brands outperform each other by slow to negligible differences, but when you put them all together, they make important differences in operational needs

  1. Size – There are 3 main sizes of hookah carbons in use today. 25mm, 26mm and 27mm. Most of the time it’s a choice based on the size of the HMS, or the endurance you want to achieve, but you’ll never go wrong with a 26. The smaller ones are slowly being discontinued and you can’t put the bigger ones in many HMS.
  2. Shape – cubes, circles, rectangles … you can achieve different purposes with them, but in 99% of cases you can cope with classic cubes. Circular coals or cakes are mostly used for foil or when you want even but strong heat
  3. Residual moisture content – this parameter usually ranges between 2-4%. Hard to track any differences in quality based on this parameter. The important thing is that your coals don’t get wet. Therefore, store them in a dry environment, seal the packaging carefully and do not leave them outside. When it rains, the humidity in the air will increase significantly and these carbons can absorb it.
  4. Ash content – this determines the amount of ash you will have left from the coals. There are some coals that actually have ash everywhere, and there are some coals that seem to almost completely evaporate into the air and there is really little ash left. This is especially important in establishments where you carry hookahs to customer tables and you don’t want ash falling and blowing all over the place. However, even in the home you won’t like to have ash blowing all over the place.
  5. Calorific value – rarely given by the manufacturer and even harder to track, usually the higher the quality of the coals, the higher the calorific value and the longer the burn time
  6. Burning time of the carbons – No matter what the manufacturers state, this really needs to be tested with your own eyes. We’ve done these tests many times over and have chosen for you the ones that last the longest.
  7. Heating time – It’s not a guaranteed rule, but it can be said that better quality carbons always heat up slower because they are denser, harder, don’t have any additional chemicals in them, etc – so with this parameter, you paradoxically have to choose the “inferior” ones that heat up longer.
  8. Breakability – This parameter can vary from batch to batch, even an individual 1kg box from another 1kg box. However, some brands can break very easily, even in ticks between people, which is not very pleasant. We have selected for you the brands where we think this happens the least.
  9. “Extinguishability” – Some brands of charcoal rarely go out, but others even more often can go out during your session, which is not pleasant at all. Sometimes it’s a matter of the embers not being heated enough or getting wet, but more often than not it’s also heavily tied to the quality of the embers. Charcoals are definitely not supposed to burn out under any circumstances.
  10. Smell on ignition – Not such an important parameter, but maybe for some people it is. Some marks can be smelled for hundreds of miles, some only a little the first minute. The BlackCoco brand, also referred to as the best carbons on the market, can be said to be truly odorless. Even with poor ventilation, their smell is minimal.

We have selected the charcoals that we have had the best experience with for a long time, but you can test everything for yourself 🙂

At the moment the Bucoco brand is our price hit. They are very cheap, their calorific value is great, but their breakability is a bit higher. While the Izzy or Venookah Original 26er brand of carbons are still relatively quite cheap, their refractivity and quality is really great. BlackCoco are the best carbons you can get here and in the world in general. Their quality is already evident in their perfect cut, low odor, high hardness and durability, and absolutely minimal ashiness.

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