Hello folks.
Paul here once again with another video for you.
This one is a how-to video about heat management.
Most of the time when I hear people talk about not getting enough smoke from their hookahs
or having a harsh smoke or burning their tobacco, the most common cause of that is improper
heat management.
It’s really tough to give overarching or universally true guidelines for heat management
because every bowl is different and every tobacco is different.
The combination of a bowl and a particular tobacco will call for something different,
just a little bit of fine-tuning.
The things that I can say, general guidelines, are pretty simple.
Small bowls obviously require less heat.
This is a mini funnel bowl that I had made for me a long time ago that really only requires
two coconut coals at maximum.
If you put any more than that on here, you're going to burn everything that you put in it.
In general, I tend to use two coals for just about every bowl underneath the capacity of
a tangier small.
Tangier smalls tend to need three coconut coals and that’s because they're so large.
The other guideline is what you can see me doing right here, which is placing the coals
on the edges of the bowl.
A lot of people, their instinct is to put the coals dead center.
What that does is usually concentrate too much heat because the very center of the foil
is where it’s going to sag the most and you have the highest chance of the coals contacting
the tobacco directly.
Starting your coals on the outside for low heat is best for pretty much every bowl I've
ever come across.
Even things like the Crown Classic, which has the holes on the outside; I still suggest
starting with the coals to the edge.
What you want to do as you're smoking, as the smoke starts to die down, you take the
coals, tap them off if they have a lot of ash on them, flip them over and move them
just a quarter turn, or potentially a half turn, to the uncooked areas, and that'll expose
the uncooked tobacco to the more direct heat and revitalize the smoke.
Knocking off the ash will increase the heat just a little bit.
Some people like to keep the ash on because they feel that it buffers the heat and helps
you get a smoother smoke, but I haven't necessarily found that to be true, and I think that you're
actually losing a bit of the potential from the charcoal if you do that.
As the bowl continues, you just move the coals around the bowl every few minutes, maybe 15
to 20 minutes as you notice a need for it.
Once the heat really starts to die down, you can move the coals a little bit farther in
from the edge.
This again concentrates the heat more and will also revitalize the smoke.
The other way to increase heat as the coals are dying down is to use a wind cover.
This is a big tangier style wind cover that I have, so it’s taking up most of the frame,
but you can see that the increased heat from the
concentration of the heat air around the bowl increases the smoke even further.
If this gets a little harsh, all you have to do is take off the wind cover, rotate you
coals again, and keep smoking.
Let it sit for a little while to reduce the heat and allow some of the potential heat
to dissipate.
That’s really about it for basic coal and heat management.
It’s a lot simpler than many people think, but it can be hard to fine-tune the finesse
of it which each individual bowl and each individual tobacco.
It takes some experimentation, but if you start slow, don’t go for big clouds right
from the first puff and plonk your coals down in the center.
That’s really where you're going to get a lot of nasty harsh burnt flavors.
It really is best to start your coals on the edge, start with low heat and increase only
if you need it, only if it is absolutely necessary.
If you follow these guidelines, you'll be able to fine-tune your techniques with each
bowl and tobacco and hopefully you'll get better sessions on a regular basis.
That’s about it.
This is Paul for hookah.org saying thank you very much for joining me today.
Please go down below, like and subscribe.
Give us that thumbs up and let us know what you'd like to see in the future.
Make sure to check out the forums and make sure to check out our YouTube channel if you
are not on there.
Talk to you guys soon and I’ll be back with more how-to’s in the future and more information
coming every week.
See you then.
Happy smoking.