Romman Natural Lump Coals

[cafesaden]

Romman Fingers (actually they might not be considered "fingers" as they are natural lemon wood i think)

smell: none

taste: none

longevity: very short-lived

lighting: put them in the fireplace on top of other red-hot coals, and they light fully within 30 secs - 1 minute.

pros: same pros as other fingers, shisha taste better, better for your health, etc

cons: LOTS. bought these expecting the same quality as their tobacco. The bag is like a flimsy grocery bag, and i opened it up to see that all the coals were smushed into lots of little pieces. I think i salvaged 10 good pieces. Overall, not worth the money, they don't even last that long. so far nour takes the cake, but I just ordered 5 bags of stargate coals, and from what Ive heard, and tried at a lounge, these are the best.

[lazria]

Romman Coals (lemon wood coals)
[attachment=181:RommanCoals_Medium.jpg]

Smell: Slight metal tang - burns off fast
Taste: None
Lighting: 4-6 min on gas stove
Length: depending if lit proberly - 45mins to an hour. Often goes out, so can be as short as 15 min.
Overall: Not happy with them. No taste, but so hard to keep lit and useable. Uneven "chunks" - hard to find good size of bowls. Tends to break apart. ALOT of ash.

Order again - No. Other than price was good (hookah-shisha.com 5.95 for 1lb 2oz) I do not like these coals. Will try other finger type or go back to Japanese Silver blocks.

[KillZedKill]

I just got my hands on two large bags of Romman natural coals, takes about ten minutes before you want to actually use them, so what i do is light a chunk, then let it sit somewhere safe and go light a couple quicklights, and smoke till they burn out, then the natural coal should be ready. Great coals, you get a bit of a wood taste if they're not ready yet.

[The fabulous Ian]

Romman Natural Lemonwood Coals / 1 is poor, 10 just needs handcuffs and lube to get better.

Ease of Lighting - 4, God these are annoying. When I don't have fuel for my kitchen torch, I can't really light these without getting my grill going. You'll have an easer time with a gas stove, or an electric stove with coils (not ceramic flat-tops). Even with the kitchen torch it takes a good five minutes to get them going strong.
Smell - 8 An initial blast of campfire-like smoke until they get good and glowing, and after that almost nil, although I wouldn't reccomend using these indoors if you don't like being reminded of camping the next day.
Taste - 10, Others disagree, but I couldn't taste anything but shisha. Of course, I've only ever used quicklites before this bag. Regardless, I couldn't taste anything off the coals.
Heat - 10, Much hotter than quicklites, two knuckle-sized chunks of these kept my hookah happy.
Ash - 8, I'll never find perfection for ash, but these ash slowly and as such it's easier to keep down on ash falling into your bowl.
Longevity - 8, Small chunks are best for this coal, so it's understandable each piece doesn't last terribly long. With that said, compared with equal sized pieces of other coals, these seem to burn out much more slowly.
Price - 6, Not shabby, but a little more than I'd care to pay for what you get out of a bag . Then again, I'm cheap.
Size Consistency - 5, In one bag you'll get chunks ranging from cigarette butts to fists. That's the nature of natural coal. but bearing in mind this is made for hookahs, one wonders why they'd let in such huge chunks.
Overall - 7, Nice coals in my opinion. Affordable, and once you get them down to useable sizes and finally lit, they really allow the flavors of your chosen tobacco to come through well without being tarnished by an overly-campfire aftertaste.

[dcrooksjr]

Romman Natural Lemonwood Coals

Ease of Lighting - 6, gas stove they light like a charm. but they tend to pop and crack and send out sparks, they are un-predictable

Smell - 5, camp fire like smell when you light them

Taste - 1, ash is to fine contantly going through the holes and into the tobacco giving it an off flavor.

Heat - 7, very hot

Ash - 1, ash is a fine powder

Longevity - 5, for the effort required to light the things its not worth it for a long smoke

Price - 10, $4.99 a bag in NH.

Size Consistency - 5, range from large chuncks to branches and every thing inbetween


Overall - 1, their poor lighting and fine powder make these one of those coals that I absolutley cannot figure out how to get them to work. I also don't like how hard they are to handle, I dropped some to night and melted a few areas of my mothers kitchen floor, so If I dissapear it means she killed my ass-lol.
I'll stick to my three kings and japenese coals, that is if I'm still breathing when they arrive.



Add on to review, I ran out of three kings and japense coals. I still had a bag of these lying around and decided to give them another try. I stand by how much of a pain they are for a long session. If your with friends these are still a bad coal. But if your alone or with one other person their not to bad, I just had to train my self on how to use them properly. I 'm smoking Pharoahs Mango with them now and I have to say these coals really bring out the flavor in the tobaco, the pharoah is much smoother and I can taste more mango flavor with just a hint of lemon at the begining.

I was too quick on judging these coals, I still prefer golden or three kings but I'm no longer only going to use these out of desperation. Edited July 23, 2007 by dcrooksjr

[stryet]

Romman Natural Lemonwood Coals

Ease of Lighting - 7 - drop them on an electric coil stove on high, come back in 5 min, turn, use 2 min later, or they break apart

Smell - 4 - smokes while lighting, but that's it. Turn on your range fan.

Taste - 10 - I've had the best taste with these coals, they don't affect the shisha one bit.

Heat - 8 - not the hottest i've seen, but probably the best, while it lasts...

Ash - 2 - it ashes pretty terrible, goes everywhere.

Longevity - 2 - requires a lot of maintenance, if the coals get too hot, they tend to break apart, and that kills your smoke time.

Price - 7 - I try to support local businesses as much as possible, $10 a bag, but as others have said online, its cheap.

Size Consistency - 4 - you can't use about a third of the bag, after breaking the large chunks and the already small ones.


Overall - 5 - While these coals make good taste, I've realized after going through 2 bags they need waay to much maintenance to be enjoyable. Its a real pain when you're with friends and constantly have to ash the coals and put on new ones. Edited July 10, 2007 by stryet

[Alademuerte]

Romman Lemonwood Coals

Ease of Lighting - 5, I have tried using a portable butane stove to light these buggers, but the only way I can get these lit is to fire up the side burner on my gas stove and put these coals around and wait for a while until they are glowing red and blow on them a little bit to have them stay lit.

Smell - 8, Not too bad, upon lighting them they will give off a little bit of coal-kind-of type of smell, but after that there is no smell.

Taste - 10, I have not noticed any taste off these coals if kept ashed well, otherwise it ashes quickly and will go into the bowl.

Heat - 9, Gives off a decent amount of heat, larger pieces are required to stay lit, but 2 pieces will get my large bowl going well.

Ash - 5, These coals ash quickly and ash a lot, the ash is very fine and powdery so if not careful will go into the bowl and blow around the air too.

Longevity - 8, Small thin pieces are about completely useless since by the time they get lit, they fall apart very quickly.. So larger chunks like the size of .75"x1" is required, but get too big and they wont light. But they last for a good while, I have a large bowl and 2 to 3 pieces will last the whole hour and a half session.

Price - 7, Price could be better... I bought them off Hookah-Shisha. Got the 3 bag deal.

Size Consistency - 4, Hah, in a bag you can get pieces ranging from the size of a dime all the way up to the size of a softball... Take a lot of careful breaking up and will usually leave you with a good bottom of the bag full of little useless pieces and tons of powder.

Overall - 6, I cant say they are horrible, but I probably wouldnt but them again or recommend them. The only thing going for them is the taste, the smell and the heat of these coals.

[nathan_Choi]

Romman Natural Lemonwood Coals

Ease of Lighting - 5, Took quite a while to heat up properly, but so it goes with natural charcoals.

Smell - 4, Wayyyy to smoky of a smell when you're trying to get them to light, do NOT light them in your house

Taste - 8, I don't remember tasting much of anything when I used them. However....

Heat - 3, I could NOT get these suckers to heat up properly. From reading other reviews on Romman Lemonwood coals, I might not have let them sit enough in the burner. Still, I let them sit there for a ridiculous amount of time.

Ash - 6, Ash wasn't too bad, but sometimes it could get too fine and it would fall into the bowl.

Longevity - 8, At least they lasted a while.

Price - 10, Very cheap in price.

Size Consistency - 4, Crazy consistencies, from ones nearly as big as my fist (no joke) to little tiny ones I wouldn't be able to use. Most of the charcoal pieces would require some chipping away to be a decent size to smoke off of.

Overall - 4, Not really worth it to me. Just too much work to get to the right size, heat up properly, and smoke off of. Pass.