Why does hookah smoke weakly, choke you or have no taste? How to get thick and tasty smoke from a hookah?

We all know it well … we go to make our first shisha, we’ve studied all the instructions, we’ve consulted a friend, we feel like we’ve done everything right and yet you get just a faint smoke or, on the contrary, you absolutely choke on it. What mistakes could you have made? Sometimes it really can be just a small thing, so we’ll go over all the possible problems and solutions

Why does the hookah smoke poorly or not work?

Whether you are starting out with hookah or making your 1000. shisha, you may still find that your hookah smokes suspiciously poorly or hardly goes at all. We’ll go through all the mistakes from beginner to the most tricky ones

Poor sealing of components

Perhaps the most basic mistake, especially with older or cheaper hookahs, can be that certain parts of the hookah are not properly connected and sealed. Older cheap models used poor quality seals made of rubber rather than silicone, which could dry out or tear very quickly. They also required gaskets between the hose and the hose hole. Their threads could easily become damaged or the gaskets in them could also become damaged. When extra air enters the hookah, it immediately reduces the smoke output to less than half

Problem with the hookah bowl and tobacco

Assuming you know what you’re doing and you’re not loading tobacco into the hookah bowl for the first time, you can skip this step. If you’re a beginner, let’s go over a few mistakes you might have made

1. You picked the wrong hookah bowl – the most problematic hookah bowls are silicone hookah bowls. Extremely long to heat up, extremely much smoke will probably never come out of it but you can do some magic with it, you just need to be patient for more than 5 minutes while it heats up.
2. Poor tobacco loading – Unless you have loaded 3g of tobacco, a small amount of tobacco will never be a mistake, rather the opposite – you may have clogged the holes in the hookah bowl and are finding it hard to draw smoke. Look in the hookah bowl to see if the air is flowing as it should.
3. Too little heat – like the first point, it takes a while for the tobacco to heat up, you need to give it at least 2-4 minutes on ideally 3 coals before the hookah bowl and tobacco are properly heated, only then will you get a proper smoke full of flavour
4. Poor HMS fit – Maybe the HMS has shifted on the hookah bowl so that air is getting in, or the air vents in the hookah bowl are clogged, or maybe there is so much tobacco in the hookah bowl that the air can’t flow through the vents

The wrong amount of water in the vase

Although this mistake won’t change the amount of smoke you draw very much, it will still make you draw strangely. When there is too little water in the vase, so that it doesn’t cover the diffuser, the draw will go too easily and it will be very strange for you. When there is too much water, it will pull too hard for you, you may be able to stretch it all the way to the hose, and you may blow water all the way to the hookah bowl when blowing heavily. It’s called hookah bowl flooding, it’s almost unbelievable that water can get that high, but especially with small hookahs it can happen

Missing ball in the heart of the hookah – the most common mistake

If you don’t have a lot of experience, and can’t figure out why your hookah isn’t smoking even though you’ve done everything right, it’s probably going to be missing balls. This is both quite common and tricky, because most of the time those beads are hard to get out of the pipe, but sometimes they miraculously manage to fall out. Most of the time you can find them by looking at the heart of the hookah from the bottom, but in some hookahs they are right in the blow and pull valves and need to be opened. Every model has it a little differently, so you have to be a little creative in your repair. These balls can also be purchased in our shop

Why does my hookah choke me or have no taste?

When we have overcome all the technical faults with the hookah we take it to the next level. How to make your hookah produce smoke plumes and intense flavor? That’s the million dollar question 🙂

Let’s go over some tips and tricks on how to get better at making the best hookah you’ve ever made

Choosing the right hookah bowl

If you want to get the most out of your tobacco, you need to use quality hookah bowls and ideally match them to the tobacco you smoke and what you want to achieve. Some people prefer more strength and smoke puffs, others prefer to enjoy the full flavour. And, of course, you can also achieve a great compromise between the two pluses

If you smoke light tobaccos and smoke them primarily for flavor, use either punnel-type hookah bowls or thick-walled Turkish hookah bowls. Both on 2 carbons, the third carbon will already start to spoil the flavour and start to burn through the tobacco

When you smoke dark tobaccos, you want to get the strength and smoke plumes out of them, it’s better to use unglazed Turkish hookah bowls with thinner walls. 3 coals are absolutely spot on, and some extremists can do it with 4

The right choice of tobacco

Quality tobacco is even more important than the hookah bowl. There is definitely more poor quality tobacco on the Slovak market than quality tobacco. People usually bring the good quality ones from abroad. Poor quality tobaccos have a poor taste, often their flavour is not pleasant at all and they burn extremely quickly and easily. Therefore, you have the feeling that you are smoking a burn with some disgusting aftertaste. Take care in your choice of tobacco to make your experience the best it can be

You may even find that 2 very tasty tobaccos can come together to create something that tastes absolutely disgusting or tasteless. It doesn’t happen often, but some tobaccos exceptionally don’t fit together at all

Correct loading of tobacco into the hookah bowl

We’ll cover this topic in a separate article, because it’s a whole science. However, it is important to say that you must adapt the method of loading to the tobacco you have chosen. Most tobaccos perform best with the fluff method of loading and the point-to-touch touch with the HMS, but this is not always a guarantee of the result

The right number of coals – the right heat

Some tobaccos can tolerate more heat and even need it – these are primarily dark tobaccos. Conversely, other tobaccos can’t even touch heat management because they lose flavour immediately. You have to be very careful to maintain their temperature so that the smoke comes out and at the same time they don’t burn. All you have to do is not watch them for a while, and they are already burnt practically irretrievably. But it’s also a bit to do with their quality. Good quality tobacco shouldn’t have this happen and should be resistant to higher temperatures

Lest we forget to omit, use good quality 100% coconut charcoal, not the quick burning kind. Quick-fire charcoals have a chemistry in them that not only harms you but also degrades the flavor of the tobacco

Correct choice of heat management

Again, heat management is also related to the topic of tobacco heat regulation. Aluminum HMS were the first on the market and although they don’t make as beautiful a design as stainless steel, they still hold the top spot in popularity among HMS. Aluminum regulates heat better and is not as aggressive on tobacco. Therefore, you will achieve more stable and better quality results with aluminum HMS. Stainless steel HMS is only suitable for black tobaccos with thick-walled hookah bowls. In that case it can work quite properly

Proper cleaning of the hookah

We mention everywhere how to take care of your hookah and we won’t forget it now. Especially if you don’t use your hookah on a regular basis, it can develop a lot of mould. You need to store your hookah 100% clean and dry. And even then, you should wash it before the next time you use it. If you use the hookah frequently, you may face problems with limescale or grease and tobacco residue. All these elements can impair the flavour of your smoke and also harm your health