Home-made Shisha

[Cerritus]

I keep seeing posts with people asking how to go about making their own shisha, so I thought I'd post how I make mine. This is not the only way by any means, but it works well for me.

You'll need:
a quality dry tobacco (I use good pipe tobacco)
honey (molasses works too)
flavoring (ground cloves, cinnamon, any spice you want to try)
if you want a fruit flavor seedless jam works

What to do with these:
Put your tobacco in a bowl, cup, anything that you can wash later. Add the honey (about 2/3 the amount of tobacco). If you're using jam for a fruit mix use less honey, if not put in the spices you picked. Use enough to cover the top of your mix, any more and they burn and taste bad. Mix it all and add more honey if it looks too dry. Put it in your head and smoke it normally. Sometimes it takes a bit more heat than normal shisha, you'll need to experiment there.

I hope that'll help. If you have anything to add I'd be glad to hear it.
Happy smoking

[AKammenzind]

You forgot glycerine for clouds, makes a world of a difference.

[Rafflersauce]

Whoa! i didnt even know you could make it yourself, how is the taste/quality compared to other premium tobaccos?

[Dirk Skene]

You forgot glycerine for clouds, makes a world of a difference.

I had no idea that was a factor. I suppose it "thickens" it all up? Just a guess on my part.

BTW guys. I have never tryed mixing my own, BUT I do remember this. Pipe tobacco was just mentioned. Tennessee Burley absorbs more moisture than the more common Virginia. If you buy unflavored Burley your luck should be good with the above recipe.

[AKammenzind]

You forgot glycerine for clouds, makes a world of a difference.

I had no idea that was a factor. I suppose it "thickens" it all up? Just a guess on my part.

Well... I've been making my own for a while now, and I find that honey adds kind of a base sweetness and heavyness to the smoke, as well as making the shisha somewhat clumpy (really the main reason I add it is to lend some mass to the shisha so that it packs easier). Glycerine is what really makes the shisha put out a lot of smoke.

Without glycerine it'll smoke, but you won't get nearly the clouds as with it. To serve as an example of why glycerine is so important you can take a spoonful and pop the remains of a coal onto it. Just a little spoonful of the stuff will put out a big column of smoke for a couple minutes.

[Dirk Skene]

Hey Cerritus, getting back to your recipe. I'm sure it's jut the anial retentitive chef in me but since you did not give quantities, let me ask: Just enough honey to totally soak in to the tobacco and no more that a Tablespoon of spices to 1 pound of finished mix? And what about the gleserin (d*$% I can't spell tonight) that AKammenzind mentioned?

I'd like to try this.
Edited December 27, 2008 by Dirk Skene

[Cerritus]

Hey, sorry I didn't respond sooner, I'm on vacation and just found an internet connection. As far as amounts of honey go, it really depends on your own taste. If you prefer a dry shisha you'll want to use less, if you like it wet add more. I always start off with a lot less than I think I'll need and add it slowly until it's the mixture I want. The less you use, the harsher the smoke will be.

The glycerin thickens the smoke a good bit, but it smokes just fine without any. If you want less of the sweet flavor honey will give then use less honey in your mix and make up for it with glycerin.

I got a decent camera for Christmas so I'll post up some pictures when I get home in a week or so.

If you've got any other questions or comments I'll try to be on again soon.

Happy new years all

[Dr. B]

I've made my own a few times. I figure I'll share my process.

Start with good tobacco. It can be pipe tobacco, rolling tobacco, cut dry leaves, whatever. Wash it. If you want it more like unwashed tobacco, only rinse it, but you need to moisten it up to begin with with water. After you strain it lay it on a cookie tray and either bake it at a low temp or leave it in the sun to dry. Once it's about 75% dryer than when you strained it, add only enough honey to coat it lightly. It should not be gooey, it should not clump up, it should just be coated a little bit. Continue drying or baking until most all water is removed (but it is still pliable)

For flavoring I usually reduce fruit pulp into a glycerine-based tincture. There are reduction recipes online and it isn't hard. Glycerine is multi-functional, so you need it for good shisha. Not only does it absorb flavor concentrate without using alcohol (though alcohol is more powerful) but because you're adding flavored glycerine to your tobacco you don't need to add more later for the clouds.

I havn't really recorded weight/volume tobacco/glycerine ratios or anything, but I've had good results adding it in slowly. add enough to moisten it a little then wait an hour. repeat till it is well saturated. acclimate it for a while and if it looks like it can absorb more of your tincture, add it. worst comes to worse, you can squeeze a little extra out before you load it.

If you flavor calls for it, add a few drops of alcohol based extracts before you acclimate for easy flavor enhancement. For instance, I've added vanilla extract to strawberry and coffee flavored tobaccos for that cream flavor and it was great.

dont be afriad of trial and error or trying something unconventional. When I made coffee flavored, I washed the tobacco in a weaker coffee from my pot and let it soak for a while before drying. when it came time to flavor, all I added was the vanilla extract and it worked well. you can do most of it by instinct if you smoke enough hookah. Good luck, have fun, hope my story helps.

[bradleyclark86]

Where could I find glycerine? I went to my local pharmacy and I was directed to stool softeners. Felt like an idiot...

[ToncSTAR]

you could replace the pipe tobacco with tombak. i think it was south smoke, or sahara smoke or something like that that had it. $17 for 250g. which im sure you can make at least 1kg of shisha after the whole process was done.

[Dr. B]

glycerine is usually used in making skin lotions so check with those in a whole foods store. make sure it is food-safe (bottle might say something about herbal extracts) and make sure it is 100% glycerine. A little goes a long way. I got a 16oz bottle and havn't dented it heavily from 3 batches of shisha.

Try to play it off like you're buying vegan lube - what's life without laughs? Edited January 4, 2009 by Dr. B

[bradleyclark86]

Try to play it off like you're buying vegan lube - what's life without laughs?

LOL. You just made my night. Thanks for the help too.

[bradleyclark86]

Got my honey and glycerine today. I've got some good pipe tobacco I'm going to work with. One is cherry vanilla flavor and the other is called "Mrs. Buttersworth" (has a maple syrup smell/taste to it). Hope this turns out well.

[Cerritus]

Ok I promised pics so here they are. This is only enough for one bowl, but you'll get the idea. They should be in order and there's a penny in each pic to show proportion. I used clove spice and cinnamon for flavoring in this batch. I also added about half a tea spoon of vanilla extract, but that wouldn't show in a picture.

edit: After the last pic I mixed it all up again. At this point you can add glycerin for bigger clouds. Edited January 10, 2009 by Cerritus

[head_in_a_cloud]

Tennessee Burley absorbs more moisture than the more common Virginia. If you buy unflavored Burley your luck should be good with the above recipe.

I'm glad you mentioned that. I know a couple of fellas who grow tobacco and can probably collect a paper bag full of leaves. I'm gonna give this a try next season.

[Dr. B]

I used to use American Spirit rolling tobacco with decent results. The downside is that it is pretty stringy and doesn't saturate well. Now I'm looking for a hand of tobacco to chop myself. I checked the local cigar shop and they've stopped carrying them, so I guess it's off to the farmer's market.

[Jeff_T]

I found some glycerin today in the pharmacy of Walmart and while looking at the bottle it said for skin protection or used for skin lotion, is this right? I asked the people there if it was fine to ingest or would be harmful and they had no idea. The bottle didn't have any warnings about ingesting, but it did warn against getting in the eyes... Was I not looking at the right stuff?

[Jeff_T]

For some reason I can't edit my post...
Is this like the glycerine that should be used?

[thecyrax]

Yeah, that looks fine to me.

[Jeff_T]

Found some other stuff at the health food store, here goes nothing... You guys think some kind of tea would work or would it burn?

[Cerritus]

Give it a try and let us know. I'd assume that it's behave the same as tobacco, they're both leaves. Just make sure it's nice and wet.

Also if it doesn't work you can put the tea in the base and get the flavor.

[Jeff_T]

Thought I'd throw an update in...
Finished mixing the blend about 30min ago and currently smoking it. Its not bad, not harsh at all. Used a packet of vanilla chai tea, all i'm noticing from the tea is a slight chai taste. I used about 50g tobacco, no real flavor, its an african blend I think. A little spicy but good smell and flavor. I rinsed the tobacco once with water and rung it out in a paper towel. After that, mixed it with 1tbs molasses and 1tsp glycerine. Seems to have pretty thick smoke, doesn't need too much heat. I'm going to experiment a bit more this weekend and see what I can come up with. Probably going to try some vanilla extract with some and some jam with some other stuff. I'll keep updating with what I experience.

btw, 666 post. Eerie... Edited January 30, 2009 by Jeff_T

[thehelios]

I went to Whole Foods and was directed to the skin lotion isle. They had "vegetable glycerin" and wasn't sure if it was food safe. Had a kosher symbol on it so yay, food safe. Ginormous clouds here I come!

Note: Whole foods was selling an 8oz bottle for .92 cents per ounce. Michaels was selling a 2oz bottle for 2.20 something. So the best deal is Whole Foods. Even better, they sell a 20oz bottle at 64 cents an ounce if your willing to buy more.

[Dr. B]

TO Jeff: I don't advise using Jam - it's too polluted. Look up reduction recipes on the web and make a tincture out of raw fruit. I wanted to ask, what kind of tobacco did you use?

I got my 16oz bottle of glycerine for like $6.50. It was at a local place, but my friend found the exact same bottle at Whole Foods. It's purple and looks like lube.

[samx]

I have A question It May seem Stupid to some
But Can U Also Use Cigarette Tobacco
Like Cutting the Cigarette open And using that tobacco cause a friend of mine quit smoking and he gave me like 7 cig packs??