Please Help Me With My Flavors!?

[Hookah809]

Hello fellow hookah lovers! I'm trying to make and market my own shisha. I have great tobacco and when I smoke it I get thick smooth smoke but I'm having trouble flavoring my product. I have extreme extracts that are 4x stronger than store bought but I can't seen to get the flavor though the smoke. So im wondering if I should add it while it drys or mix all the liquids first. Im just kind of stumped and tired of spending a lot of money on flavors that I cant taste. Should I dilute the oils and spray the leaves?Anything positive would help guys!!!!????? Thanks in advance!

[magick777]

I can't comment on how best to use the extracts you've chosen, nor how they will interact with your particular choice of tobacco.

I can offer the general observation that the flavour comes largely from vaporising the molasses/glycerine base and any volatile oils that may be in it; therefore, my own approach (as far as I've played with it) is to blend any essential oils or flavour concentrates into a 50/50 mixture of molasses & glycerine, and use that with roughly an equal weight of tobacco. I can't see what would be gained by spraying the leaves. For testing flavour liquids, you might want to look into "shiazo", popular on the hookah scene in Germany, these are absorbent mineral stones that can be soaked in a flavour mix (e.g. Jeffs 7 elements) and "smoked" as if they were shisha, vaporising the liquid without tobacco.

You don't mention what tobacco you're using, but, I wonder if the problem is that you're getting more tobacco flavour than you bargained for. A lot of popular shisha tobacco is washed, removing most of the nicotine content and some of the flavour, before it is blended, so it's often a pretty bland carrier for the fruit & molasses. For unwashed mu'assel, you'll want the relatively mild Turkish tobaccos, and using anything else is likely to get you a tobacco flavour. You might try making a mint version... that'll overpower just about anything.

[Hookah809]

Thanks. Im using Virgina flue cured tobacco. Im properly washing it and not getting an insane amount of tobacco flavor. The smoke is very smooth and not harsh at all (even though it took me awhile to get there). I'm going to try letting it sit a little bit longer to see if the flavor transfers into the leaves. Its just so frustrating when im getting this amazing smoke with no flavor. I used mint and it worked pretty well, so I have one flavor down.