How Do You Get Your Multi Hour Sessions Out Of Your Phunnel Bowl?

[Stuie]

So the big reason I love the mini phunnel, is i waste less shisha. Here's what I wanna know...how do you get multiple hour sessions out of your phunnels (any Size)?

I know there must be some trick I don't know or forgot. But lately it's hit or miss with new coals...mostly miss. When I put a second set one I always taste ash. A hit is when I can smoke through it. Always happens no matter what shisha.

So how do you do it?
Bowl size?
Foil?
Hole Pattern?
Coals?
Heat Management?
Wind cover?
Shisha?
Prayer to shisha gods?

[joytron]

So the big reason I love the mini phunnel, is i waste less shisha. Here's what I wanna know...how do you get multiple hour sessions out of your phunnels (any Size)?

I know there must be some trick I don't know or forgot. But lately it's hit or miss with new coals...mostly miss. When I put a second set one I always taste ash. A hit is when I can smoke through it. Always happens no matter what shisha.

So how do you do it?
Bowl size?
Foil?
Hole Pattern?
Coals?
Heat Management?
Wind cover?
Shisha?
Prayer to shisha gods?

I have been using 2 cocos lately (have had difficulties with tasting ash on some coals about 45 mins in) and i have them hang way off the edge at the very beginning because I have found if i am patient and let the shisha warm up the sessions last a lot longer than if i jsut throw them right on. I dont use a windcover anymore because i swear i can taste the metal (mine is a ghetto rigged shrimp can). I poke quite a few holes in reynolds heavy duty foil, as fewer coals means more heat and idk the flavor just seems off when i add more heat and less coals (even though im getting the same amount of smoke). Most shisha i can get a long session out of some are hit and miss, K-cherry is always good but horchata i get that problem a lot. (really need to cut back on the heat on that one)


My shisha prayer is kinda personal but if its for your benefit hear it goes.




Let my the bowls of today be packed with love from the third eye. Let your all seeing heart guide my hand, as we guide the coals as one. Let the clouds be plentiful with no sacrifice to taste and longevity. Let the flavors blend as one just as our being, and please dont let me fuck up because i am having people over and i talked up my hookah skills and it will be really embarrassing if i burn this bowl.

[Stuie]

Do you blow your ash off? ... the bowl that is. When moving coals or between coals?

Do you need to put new coals on before the old ones go out? Find have a better chance when doing it that way.

[freezerburn456]

Typically I use a small phunnel. I use a single layer of heavy duty foil, and poke the holes with a dinner fork. I mound the tobacco in, and then push it down to just at or above the rim and clean out the hole. Put the bowl on and put 2 3-kings on the bowl. I put them opposite of eachother, with the inside edge just about to touch the phunnel. I then rotate them a half coal width every 4-5 minutes untill they are dead. I tell that by the smoke quantity diminishing. The second set I put on so that the coals are a quarter turn from where they were when I took the first set off. That is generally around an hour in. The second set is around another hour. The third set I break the coals in half and use 2 halfs, rotating them every 5 minutes. Those last around 30 minutes and I keep that up untill the bowl is dead. I have been able to keep up 3.5-4 hour sessions before the flavor started to die away.

One thing that we teach to our waitresses is that heat management is key. 2 coals is perfect for most bowls, and rotating the coals every few minutes will stop you from charring the tobacco.

*when I am rotating the coals I just blow the ash off the head.* Edited April 27, 2009 by freezerburn456

[delSol_si]

Thank you for making this thread Stuie. I am having similar problems. It seems like I get awesome flavor in the beginning and then it turns to crap. I also have a hard time not burning the shisha. With a regular bowl, I use like 1-2 coals, with phunnel, if I use 3 coals the smoke isn't great, if I use 4, the smoke is great, but the shisha burns really fast. As much as I love my phunnel, I am almost thinking of switching back to the regular clay bowl.. Also seems like I almost always have unsmoked shisha in the bottom of the bowl even when I am not getting good smoke or flavor anymore. Anyway, its nice to know what other people are doing to get good results, I'm looking forward to reading more posts in here!

Freezerburn, do you work in a hookah lounge or something like that? From the way your posts sounds, it sounds like you do. I know there have been others on here that have posted that hookah lounges are always able to get great smoke, its nice to hear how you do it. I have a friend who visited a hookah lounge awhile back and he said they take a towel and dry out the shisha before loading it in, and I know we had a discussion on the forums awhile back about this. What is your take on that?

[Scoop]

Bowl size? phunnel small or medium
Foil? reynolds heavy duty
Hole Pattern? all over
Coals? 3kings out doors or golden canary inside
Heat Management? none? i just wait till the coal dies
Wind cover? no
Shisha? only the best; tangiers


when i smoke outdoors i start new coals as soon as the smoke gets thinner than i want. i just blow off the old coal, put the new ones on.
when i smoke indoors, i add golden canary to the top of the bowl and have them start on each other. i just move them onto the surface of the bowl after.

i dont really know if theres any trick involved, but if the coal isn't fully started, it will taste bad obviously.

[ilikemyusername]

sounds to me like you need to forget what you know and start over.

[evilded777]

Bowl size: phunnel small or medium
Foil: generic HD
Hole Pattern: lots of small holes over the phunnel, 3 concentric rings around the center and out to the rim
Coals: 3-4 halves of coco or ch
Heat Management: not to the point of OCD, but def
Wind cover: yes
Shisha: AF, Tangiers, Nakhla, AW

Well, I bombed on a bowl of Tangiers just the other day...; well, one out of two.

I had a bowl of Apple go for 2+ hours; but the Guava, which should have smoked fine the next morning was absolute dreck.

I've been hacking off lately, and using full Coco's or CH. Not recommended, unless its on my mini glass.

4 halves on a medium, 3 halves on a small. Windcover generally.

Definitely brush the ash off (you are still gonna end up with a bunch in there, but you can at least try to keep it down).

I don't like to OCD heat manage, which is why I find the halves to work better for me.

Had 4 people on my KM last Friday night; medium phunnel with AF Gold Esk Apple. Started with 4 half Coco's (? ahh, it mighta been CH), and when they had died down around 45-60 minutes later, I lit two Exotica QL's and the bowl was still going strong when I had to put those out cause it was time to go home.

I pack everything tight, and I really think that makes a difference. Obviously some are easier to pack tighter, but I aim for the same rough consistency each time, and try to pack evenly.

I wonder about holes and hole patterns frankly. I think the idea that the holes allow the heat to travel down is really a misconception. I think the conduction of heat from the coals to the bowl and then to the shisha is far more important than the convection of heat from air drawn over the coals to the shisha. We are dealing with solids here, and the conduction is really what matters the most....

[inino]

if you are using cocos or gc's i find its important to wait a minute between taking them off the burner and putting them on your bowl, let the bottom get a little black so it doesnt instantly roast your bowl in that spot and make the whole thing taste bad. and if you dont pack your phunnel tight, dont be afraid to. you can pack the hell out of it and get long sessions. i stuff my mini with 40-50g of tobacco and get sessions that average around 4 hours.

[chromecarz00]

My formula
Custom scalli mod
Windcover
coals that STAY LIT
loose packing
thin foil
less coal, more windcover
evenly spaced holes

[redjako]

I typically get 2-3 rounds of coals on all of my Medium phunnel bowls, regardless of shisha. That works out to ~2 or 2.5 hours. I haven't tried doing 4 rounds of coals, as I want a new flavor, or I'm smoked out..I need to try this crazy 8 hour crap I always hear about

Bowl size?
Tangiers Medium Phunnel: I overpack it (SLAM the phunnel into the shisha, clear the middle, clear it till its ~1/2 cm above the bowl and over compressed) or I use the fork method (but I fail 1/5 times with this method).

Foil?
Singe HD foil

Hole Pattern?
Toothpick: all the way to the bottom on TANGIERS (OG and Lucid), tons of holes, including in the middle.
AF and Fusion I use SMALL holes all the way around (not including the middle, but I don't think this effects it too much)

Coals?
Exotica or recently Golden Jap or Coco's
I use 3 coco's for AF / fusion, or half a stick of coco's.
For tangiers (OG AND LUCID!): I start with almost a full coco, or four Golden Japanese coals.
This works its way down to 2 coals after ~15 min: OCD heat management, if theres no smoke, I add a coal, windcover, or I move the coal "in" the bowl from the edge more. If too much harshness remove a coal.
Round 2! I use half of what I originally started with, so 2 golden japanese coals, or 2) 1" pieces of exotica, or some coco's.

Round 3! Same thing, roughly half of what I started with, but sometimes on this round I'll just use a SINGLE coal with a windcover and moving it in / out of the rim of the bowl.

Heat Management?
See above: note on coco's, for Tangiers, I stand the coals on their edges, and if I need more heat, ill lay them on the edge.

Wind cover?

Shisha?

Prayer to shisha gods?

I just curse my own hands for loading a bad bowl..then reload it if it fails

[jeremyk]

i just lite two naturals and leave them in the same place the whole session untill they go out then put two more natural on the sides that didnt have coals and then go at it again ive smoked the same bowl 2-4 hrs doing that. renyolds hd with two out rings of holes and one in the middle

[Stuie]

sounds to me like you need to forget what you know and start over.

Isn't that what the question implies?

[sportsfan6216]

Bowl size? Small Tangiers Phunnel
Foil? Reynold's heavy duty
Hole Pattern? Two rings of holes. Outside ring being 12-15 holes inside being 6-8 and then holes poked in between the two rings in the gaps (you'll see like 4 whole rombus's and in the middle of each rombus i poke a hole). poked with the poker on my tongs, all the way through the shisha
Coals? 2-3 CH Nats or 2 thirds of a bar of exotica
Heat Management? With the CH's i start with them on each third of the bowl. After it starts I pull one off. With Exotica's I start with 2 thirds mostly on the bowl way out on the edges. then i turn one to be perpendicular to the bowl after it gets going with half of 1/3 hanging off.
Wind cover? when the coals get small i throw it on till i get the next batch on the stove
Shisha? Tangiers OG
Prayer to shisha gods? None. my friends call me the shisha god. lol

That always gets me at least 2 hours out of a bowl...... 2-3 sets of exoticas with solid flavor dying off on the third set. If you want pictures of the load, the foil or the coal use just let me know and i'll throw some up..... best of luck stuie


Oh and quick edit. I scrape all the left over ash off between coals with the side of the tongs. i have in the past taken off the bowl and shaken the ash off tho.... as long as it goes away it doesn't really seem to affect me. Edited April 27, 2009 by sportsfan6216

[Victim026]

Bowl size= Mini Phunnel
Foil= Reynolds HD
Hole Pattern= 2 rings with a toothpick
Coals= 3 Starlight Coconut coals in a triangle shape
Heat Management= Rotate and flip coals over once
Wind cover= Windcover is at your discretion when the clouds start getting smaller, i usually add it when I hit the halfway mark on the coals and do the coal flip/rotate
Shisha= AF
Prayer to shisha gods = Only when I've had too much to drink


I should mention that I will do two sets of coals on most bowls and sometimes I can push 3 sets, so I can get about 2 1/2 - 3 hours out of a bowl usually.

[Sonthert]

Too much coal, slightly underpacked.

There are about 12 things I do to go for the long-haul smoking. Since nobody talks about them, they're difficult to describe in text. I trim gaskets, bore stem pieces and head pieces, "squeeze clean" the hose port, pack the bowl flawlessly, use heavy duty foil, use purified water, Japanese coals, use something I call "heat balancing" in rotating coal, use three-piece hoses, use a large, narrow-channel phunnel and super-seal all the gasket points.

I NEVER use: common chamber hookahs, open bell hookahs, one-piece hoses, stock head gaskets, small water jars, thin foil, hot or large charcoal, move charcoal around, ash the bowl, use non-phunnel or non-super chief bowls.

[thecyrax]

Sonthert, you never touch the coals after placing them on the bowl? (unless they need to be replaced)

[Sonthert]

Correct. I rarely use tongs, I just use larger 1/2 bars to push the other ones around.

[thecyrax]

Interesting.
Could you elaborate on your heat balancing?

[Sonthert]

Try to imagine the size of the charcoal. Realizing that a charcoal that is X size puts out more than half as much heat as a charcoal that is sized 2X. Arrange the coals to keep the relative size balanced, so that the heat flux is approximately equal.

[DarkParade]

pics or a vid please =)

[Stuie]

Try to imagine the size of the charcoal. Realizing that a charcoal that is X size puts out more than half as much heat as a charcoal that is sized 2X. Arrange the coals to keep the relative size balanced, so that the heat flux is approximately equal.

...damnit... where's that algebra book?

[inino]

Try to imagine the size of the charcoal. Realizing that a charcoal that is X size puts out more than half as much heat as a charcoal that is sized 2X. Arrange the coals to keep the relative size balanced, so that the heat flux is approximately equal.

...damnit... where's that algebra book?

I think he just means use small coals and balance the heat evenly, so the bowl gets cooked equal at all parts. to prevent one spot from getting burned and making the whole thing taste bad.

[Stuie]

Try to imagine the size of the charcoal. Realizing that a charcoal that is X size puts out more than half as much heat as a charcoal that is sized 2X. Arrange the coals to keep the relative size balanced, so that the heat flux is approximately equal.

...damnit... where's that algebra book?

I think he just means use small coals and balance the heat evenly, so the bowl gets cooked equal at all parts. to prevent one spot from getting burned and making the whole thing taste bad.

it's called a joke.

Maybe it's too early for me to try to be funny.

[Sonthert]

Try to imagine the size of the charcoal. Realizing that a charcoal that is X size puts out more than half as much heat as a charcoal that is sized 2X. Arrange the coals to keep the relative size balanced, so that the heat flux is approximately equal.

...damnit... where's that algebra book?

I think he just means use small coals and balance the heat evenly, so the bowl gets cooked equal at all parts. to prevent one spot from getting burned and making the whole thing taste bad.

it's called a joke.

Maybe it's too early for me to try to be funny.

Yeah...too early...that it.

Thats about the size it. Even heating.